Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions. Oh, it could happen
Speaker 1: here is the podcast that you're listening to right now.
Speaker 1: And while we normally talk about it could happening here,
Speaker 1: if you've been living in France recently, then some of
Speaker 1: it has been happening to you. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a bad introduction. We're talking about the riots that
Speaker 1: have recently convulsed large chunks of both European France and
Speaker 1: some of their overseas territories. So we're gonna be chatting
Speaker 1: about that. I've seen a lot of disinfo. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of like people flipping out about guns and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of bad information, people blaming
Speaker 1: it on like Ukrainian weapons sneaking over all that's bullshit.
Speaker 1: But there's a real fascinating history here and the riots
Speaker 1: as much as people specific bad actors have attempted to
Speaker 1: make them into like some new and horrifying thing, It's
Speaker 1: not just like a oh France b riot and thing.
Speaker 1: There's like there's like a history.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty clear. That explains like why this this
Speaker 1: happened in France this time, why it happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, had happened in what the late eighties?
Speaker 3: Yeah, seven was I think the other big one in
Speaker 3: this company happening yea decades.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about all of that. Yeah. So so Mia,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you take take take the lead here
Speaker 1: and I'll chime in pr in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So okay, I guess we should we should basically
Speaker 3: briefly talk about, like before we go into this stree,
Speaker 3: like what actually this is so well, I guess it'll
Speaker 3: be two weeks ago when when the goes up, a
Speaker 3: cop was did like a traffic stop of this kid
Speaker 3: in a car and they just put the put a
Speaker 3: gun through the window and shot him. It's really bad.
Speaker 3: There's video of it. If for some reason you want
Speaker 3: to see a cop sticking a gun in a car
Speaker 3: and shooting a seventeen year old. It's really bad. This
Speaker 3: is kicked off, like I it's it's okay. It's always
Speaker 3: difficult to like measure how intense a riot is. When
Speaker 3: it started, people were I saw people saying it was
Speaker 3: like more intense than like the two thousand and five one.
Speaker 3: This is like, you know, we've talked a lot about
Speaker 3: French riding on the show. These specific kinds of riots
Speaker 3: are like by far the largest and most intense like
Speaker 3: kinds of riots that happened in France. This is like
Speaker 3: a significant escalation from everything that's been happening, even in
Speaker 3: the last sort of like yeah, seven years, which had
Speaker 3: been you know, there have been a lot of riots
Speaker 3: in France recently. These are by far the most intense
Speaker 3: in the time I've been writing this. The police killed
Speaker 3: a second person by okay, so I'm going to give
Speaker 3: my account of what I think happens. The French police
Speaker 3: are going on like, oh, who can say how this
Speaker 3: person was hit by a projectile? But as best I
Speaker 3: can tell, they shot a guy in the chest with
Speaker 3: a flashball, which is a flashball is like it's effectively
Speaker 3: a grenade launcher that shoots flash bang grenades. Now it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be like a it's a quote unquote less
Speaker 3: lethal munition. But the thing about less lethal munitions is
Speaker 3: that I have to shoot people directly with him they die,
Speaker 3: And they just fucking killed this guy.
Speaker 1: They're less lethal because they are not meant to be
Speaker 1: shot at people. They're meant to have a dispersal effect
Speaker 1: when shot near people. If you shoot people with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're very much lethal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, we talked about in the last episode
Speaker 3: that I did about this, there was another guy who
Speaker 3: thankfully has regained consciousness but was in a coma for
Speaker 3: several months because he was also shot by I think
Speaker 3: he was shot by a maybe I forget I should
Speaker 3: have actually looked before I did this, but he was
Speaker 3: shot by like a similar less lethal munition, and he
Speaker 3: thankfully has survived. This guy did not like they just
Speaker 3: killed him. The reporting about it has been terrible, Like
Speaker 3: the Guardian headlines said man struck by man struck by
Speaker 3: projectile let protests, which again, this guy was shot by
Speaker 3: the cops like directly into his chest with one of
Speaker 3: these weapons. So it's been really bad. And you know,
Speaker 3: because so again understanding of what's happening here to I
Speaker 3: want to go through this. There are sort of like
Speaker 3: four broad types of people who rioted France. So okay,
Speaker 3: so the first kind of writer, I think is the
Speaker 3: one where people are like maybe most familiar with, which
Speaker 3: is like the French far left like riots a lot.
Speaker 3: This is mostly anarchists some other people, and that's like
Speaker 3: a kind of standard Parisian riot will be these people rioting,
Speaker 3: you know, which we talked a bit about sort of
Speaker 3: the development of the Black bloc in France, and in
Speaker 3: the last episode we did about this. There's you know,
Speaker 3: there's also sort of like more mainstream, mainstream left, like
Speaker 3: trade union groups who will have giant marches and those
Speaker 3: also sometimes turn into riots because they get attacked by
Speaker 3: the police and stuff like that. And those ones tend
Speaker 3: to be larger, like the the trade union ones, have
Speaker 3: more people, but tend to be less riety. There's the
Speaker 3: Jean or the yellow vests, who are mostly people from
Speaker 3: rural areas who either sort of like do roadblocks in
Speaker 3: rural areas or they come into cities and do marches
Speaker 3: and riots and they riot pretty intensely. And these three
Speaker 3: groups have started to be, you know, part of what
Speaker 3: we've been seeing in the pension, like reform protests and
Speaker 3: like riots have been these groups were starting to work together.
Speaker 3: But there's another group of people in France who riot,
Speaker 3: who are the residents of the bon Luis. I that's
Speaker 3: not how you pronounce it, God damn it. Okay. Before, before,
Speaker 3: before I did this, I looked at how you pronounce
Speaker 3: it and have now forgotten. It's bond lie that that's
Speaker 3: how you well, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna for any advice.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, like I have to say this word like forty,
Speaker 3: I can't pronounce French words without doing the which is
Speaker 3: I know, like I'm a child of the post.
Speaker 1: Nine to eleven era. It's written into my dna. I
Speaker 1: can't help it. I'm sorry you guys were right about
Speaker 1: that war, but I still it's still it's still like
Speaker 1: it seared into me as if with a laser cutter.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to try to pronounce it.
Speaker 3: My my excuse is I'm holding a grudge from that
Speaker 3: time they owned a bunch of Shanghai for like a
Speaker 3: bunch of years.
Speaker 1: So's there's actually many fine reasons to insult the French,
Speaker 1: and they're just all things you can go after every
Speaker 1: other powerful white country that ever exists. Yeah, or other
Speaker 1: country for that matter. I mean, France is pretty classic
Speaker 1: classic colonialism in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah we are, Oh boy, are we gonna be getting
Speaker 3: into that? Actually that that's that's a good you know,
Speaker 3: a good jumping off by for who these people are.
Speaker 3: So the bun you So then I might just say
Speaker 3: suburb because I I can't do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, it's it's the French word for suburbs. Suburbs
Speaker 1: in France are different like in the United States, the
Speaker 1: sub suburbs have been up until at least pretty recently,
Speaker 1: fairly reactionary, like.
Speaker 3: What you might call it, uh white light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of white conservatives lived in
Speaker 1: the burbs. It was kind of like one of the
Speaker 1: reliable areas for Republican votes and stuff. In France, Like
Speaker 1: upper income people people with more money are a lot
Speaker 1: more frequently living near the center of town and the
Speaker 1: suburbs a lot of which were like built specifically for
Speaker 1: like communities of people from from French overseas population who
Speaker 1: were moving to the country. Like they set up like
Speaker 1: public housing and stuff for them. I think the under
Speaker 1: the idea was that if you like moved people over
Speaker 1: in communities into these neighborhoods, it might make integration and
Speaker 1: stuff easier. There's a lot of reasons why this this
Speaker 1: didn't work that I'm I'm, you know, not an expert on,
Speaker 1: but like, there were a lot of problematic aspects of
Speaker 1: the execution, including the attitude among the attitude that goes
Speaker 1: back pretty far among a lot of French folks that like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, a positive thing is if they just kind
Speaker 1: of become French and uh, drop any other aspects of
Speaker 1: their of their heritage and anyway whatever. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we're gonna work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we talk about suburbs in France, we are
Speaker 1: not talking about like areas where upper middle class people
Speaker 1: bought giant houses, right, Like, that's not what they are.
Speaker 3: These are These are very like they're not they're not
Speaker 3: exactly the same as like American housing projects, but they're
Speaker 3: much closer to that than they are like the you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of American white flight stuff. Yes, and the
Speaker 3: people who live there. There are some white people, like
Speaker 3: white French people who live there, but there's also a
Speaker 3: lot of French people who are like either like pretty
Speaker 3: some of them are pretty recent immigrants. Uh, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of people from Algeria, like specifically. And the way
Speaker 3: that like the French understand this basically it is like
Speaker 3: all these people are like black and Buslim and like that,
Speaker 3: you know, Okay, the French are very racist like and
Speaker 3: and and this is the thing that like I was
Speaker 3: in academia for a little bit, right, Like I I
Speaker 3: like thought I understood the like average level of racism
Speaker 3: of an academic. Holy fucking shit, Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna I'm gonna quote for something about the suburbs like that.
Speaker 3: That's from a piece. I'm gonna talk about pieces a
Speaker 3: little bit because I think it's a really interesting way
Speaker 3: of thinking about like what the attitude in front in front,
Speaker 3: like France is. So this is about the bondlier. The
Speaker 3: French word for suburb is bondlie, a word derived from
Speaker 3: bonnier mite a bond that is to exclude or banish.
Speaker 3: And this is the thing. This is from a a
Speaker 3: an article called the French Autumn Riots twosand and five
Speaker 3: and the Crisis of Republican Integration. And this is a
Speaker 3: really interesting piece because like half of it is like
Speaker 3: pretty reasonable sort of like analysis of how the left
Speaker 3: sort of just like failed and portrayed these people. And
Speaker 3: then the other half of it is them talking about
Speaker 3: how like like Muslim people and like people from like
Speaker 3: North Africa have like inherently patriarchal, like reactionary family structures
Speaker 3: and that because of this they can't be like integrated
Speaker 3: to French society. And I'm like, what the f luck Like,
Speaker 3: this is just a random academic and he just like
Speaker 3: sounds like a stormfront guy. It's it's it's fucking wild.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk a bit about how how
Speaker 3: these things came to be because I think it gets
Speaker 3: to sort of like you know, what what what what
Speaker 3: what these places actually are and why these people are
Speaker 3: writing and to do this for you to go back
Speaker 3: to the French conquest of Algeria. So all right, so
Speaker 3: so the French government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like yeah, it's it's second maybe to the
Speaker 1: Germans in terms of like the brutality of the conquest.
Speaker 1: And honestly, like that's it's kind of a they're both
Speaker 1: so horrific. It's kind of pointless to be like which
Speaker 1: of these is words. These are both like genocides that
Speaker 1: large chunks of the world just decided to pretend it
Speaker 1: didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, the thing with the French version of it
Speaker 3: is because it's the French, it's like like the actual end,
Speaker 3: the French political end of it is basically like a
Speaker 3: tragic comedy. So I'm gonna tell the story.
Speaker 1: It's the result of incompetence, and I mean we talk
Speaker 1: about this in our Napoleon the third episodes behind yeahs.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah. So, like like the official causes ballet
Speaker 3: for the French of this war is that the French
Speaker 3: took out all these grain loans under like the Directory,
Speaker 3: and then like under Napoleon from the Algerian government. The
Speaker 3: government was like, hey, are you ever paying this back?
Speaker 3: And the French were just like no. So this ended
Speaker 3: in like a tiff where the governor of Algeria hit
Speaker 3: the French ambassador with the flyswater and this this led
Speaker 3: to the French monarchy at this point is led by
Speaker 3: his guy named Charles the Tenth, who's Mike Duncan calls him,
Speaker 3: one quote, one of the great idiots of history, and
Speaker 3: he's like about to get overthrown. So he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna invade Algeria and this is going
Speaker 3: to like distract everyone from the fact that everyone hates
Speaker 3: me and they're gonna overthrow me. And this doesn't work, right, Like,
Speaker 3: so the French like conquer Algeria, but Charles Otant is
Speaker 3: overthrown literally three weeks after this finishes. But the sort
Speaker 3: of crucial thing here is that like the successive French
Speaker 3: governments keep control of Algeria and they you know this
Speaker 3: this is like one of the places where there's sort
Speaker 3: of like modern French racism emerges from is there there's
Speaker 3: this you know, the whole invasion is wrapped up in.
Speaker 4: This like.
Speaker 3: Monumental layer of racism that's about like, you know, we're
Speaker 3: gonna go we're gonna free Algeria from quote like oriental despotism.
Speaker 3: This is like a civilizing mission and we're gonna let
Speaker 3: you know, and this is like this is this is
Speaker 3: the stuff that you know, if you've been if you've
Speaker 3: seen any like French social media posts about this like
Speaker 3: now right, like this is the kind of racism they
Speaker 3: still do, which is they like they consider Islam like
Speaker 3: a backwards culture. It easy to be like integrated into
Speaker 3: French republicanism, and you know, this is yeah, this specific
Speaker 3: kind of French racism is very very old. You also
Speaker 3: briefly mentioned we're gonna mostly talk about Ageria here because
Speaker 3: like a lot of the people who end up living
Speaker 3: in the suburbs are Algerian. But like the French had
Speaker 3: a whole empire, they conquered a bunch of parts of
Speaker 3: like a bunch of Western Africa they you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was also it's worth noting a lot
Speaker 1: of it was conquered very frequently, very recently, Like it
Speaker 1: was only in the late eighteen hundreds, I think that
Speaker 1: they solidified their control over Algeria. It was kind of
Speaker 1: right in the same period, all just kind of directly
Speaker 1: ahead of the Franco Prussian War that they took a
Speaker 1: lot of Indo China, Like this was they were kind
Speaker 1: of later to having huge overseas possessions, but unlike the Germans,
Speaker 1: they made up for it in terms of the breadth
Speaker 1: of their acquisitions. If you can't call it.
Speaker 3: That, it gets it gets yeah freaking well. Although the
Speaker 3: one thing I think it's interesting about this is like Algeria,
Speaker 3: the Fresh conquer Algeria after they've lost Haiti, which is
Speaker 3: like a very interesting sort of like thing here, but like,
Speaker 3: you know, but one of the things that this gets
Speaker 3: to is that like the French state, you know, like
Speaker 3: literally did doesn't like it doesn't matter like who like
Speaker 3: in what period of time in French clobal history. You
Speaker 3: get to the straight is just the the French state
Speaker 3: is just structurally anti black, like it is so unfathomably racist.
Speaker 3: And you know, the way this sort of plays out
Speaker 3: in Algeria, right is like they hold on to Algeria
Speaker 3: for one hundred and thirty years. But one of the
Speaker 3: sort of products of this, right is that, okay, so,
Speaker 3: like Algeria is now part of just like the French
Speaker 3: Empire effectively, right, and this means that over the over
Speaker 3: the sort of decades, the French government starts like importing
Speaker 3: Algerian like workers into France because okay, so one of
Speaker 3: the the French carry out basically like a series of
Speaker 3: genocidal campaigns where they just like like progressive different French
Speaker 3: regimes like steal more and more of the land that
Speaker 3: anyone ever in Algeria had until you get to a
Speaker 3: point where Algeria is just effectively a French settler colony,
Speaker 3: and so Okay, so they they've displaced all these people
Speaker 3: and they start, you know, recruiting them to go work
Speaker 3: in France. But this this becomes a huge problem for
Speaker 3: the French state because you know, now they have a
Speaker 3: bunch of colonized people in France who they need to
Speaker 3: like keep colonized. And in order to do this, you
Speaker 3: get like, you know, you get Fucoast boomerang, right where
Speaker 3: you have these French police that are trained in Algeria
Speaker 3: who are used like against Algerians in France. And you know,
Speaker 3: I've said that was like it's not just that it's
Speaker 3: used against Algerians, right, It's used against like people from
Speaker 3: all over the sort of French empire, from like northwest Africa,
Speaker 3: even people who were from Haiti who like wound up
Speaker 3: in France. But this comes to a head in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty one when there's just one of the weirder parts
Speaker 3: of French history is there's like a second coup attempt
Speaker 3: where all of these officers, these like these French officers
Speaker 3: in Algeria are like terrified the French people had voted
Speaker 3: to like that could have led to Algerians getting the
Speaker 3: ability to like vote over like self rule. Right, and
Speaker 3: the French like colonial officers in Algeria go nuts over
Speaker 3: this and they try to overthrow the government and it fails.
Speaker 3: But the result of this is that Degaul gets like
Speaker 3: dictatorial powers in France for like five months, and in
Speaker 3: October of that year, the Algerian National Liberation Front, which
Speaker 3: is like the you know, this is like the giant
Speaker 3: sort of movements of the like franchise of the Augeri
Speaker 3: anticlonial move But like they have this giant protest in
Speaker 3: Paris and the police just start shooting them. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is this is this is this is you know,
Speaker 3: like this is not a riot, right, like this is
Speaker 3: this is just like they have a giant piece of march,
Speaker 3: the police start just killing them. They kill several hundred
Speaker 3: Augurian protesters. Uh, they throw their corpses into the Seine.
Speaker 3: I'm going to read this quote from the BBC. One
Speaker 3: photo captured the chilling sentiment of the time, showing graffiti
Speaker 3: scrawled along a section of the Sin's embarkment saying, here
Speaker 3: we drown Algerians. And they kill like at least two
Speaker 3: hundred people, probably more than that. They are like they're
Speaker 3: throwing like children into the river. To try to drown them.
Speaker 3: It is fucking awful. And the French government, like they
Speaker 3: deny that this happened for decades. The first this massacre
Speaker 3: is in nineteen sixty one, right, the first the first
Speaker 3: like French prime minister to are French president to admit
Speaker 3: that this happened. Did it in like it was I
Speaker 3: think it was. I think it was twenty eleven. It
Speaker 3: was fifty years later that the first French politician like
Speaker 3: admitted they did it, And the government has still never
Speaker 3: apologized for this. So these are this is what the
Speaker 3: French police are, right, Like they are These people they
Speaker 3: are you know, they're the people who like a bunch
Speaker 3: of Algerians did a protest for independence and they killed
Speaker 3: they like theyre they threw their children's corpses into a river.
Speaker 3: And this is the sort of long rage backdrop of
Speaker 3: like everything that's happening in modern France like today, right
Speaker 3: is the fact that like France was an empire still
Speaker 3: like is in a lot of ways an empire, and
Speaker 3: their police are just like unfathomably violent and racist.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think I might say, like if
Speaker 1: you're American, pretty fath mobly violent race.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but yeah.
Speaker 1: Like it is, it is. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: fair Yeah.
Speaker 3: If there was ever a reasonable society on earth that
Speaker 3: people could live in, it would be very easy to
Speaker 3: go this is the most racist thing you've ever seen.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately we all live in hell world, and you know,
Speaker 3: so our metrics are like is like have the Brazilian
Speaker 3: police killed more people per capitive in the American police?
Speaker 1: Again, it's one of these like we don't need to
Speaker 1: litigate this, Like, I think the point is that when
Speaker 1: when people kind of like flip out over these images
Speaker 1: of buildings being lit on fire and shit getting broken
Speaker 1: and you know, people shooting out cameras or even like
Speaker 1: beating folks you know in the street as part of
Speaker 1: a riot and freak out about you know, how the
Speaker 1: place has gone to hell. Like violence that exceeds that
Speaker 1: by by many factors, has been like the norm for
Speaker 1: segments of French society going back as long as the
Speaker 1: United States has existed. So you know, like the the
Speaker 1: the ugliness that you see in the moment of the
Speaker 1: riot is not like it like focusing on that and
Speaker 1: ignoring what what's caused it, Like why people have been
Speaker 1: like reached a pitch where they're doing stuff like that
Speaker 1: is kind of an error, an error at least in
Speaker 1: like historical analysis, and I think also an error in
Speaker 1: terms of like the severity of what we're looking at,
Speaker 1: Like none of like all of the ugly shit that's happened,
Speaker 1: because at least one person was killed by rioters and
Speaker 1: all this, but like all of the ugliness of this
Speaker 1: current set of riots doesn't compare to one boat sinking
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean. Yeah, like, and that those things are
Speaker 1: very much tied together. You know, France has had a
Speaker 1: significant role in why northern Africa is the way it
Speaker 1: is right now, and why large chunks of like the
Speaker 1: that continent have endured waves of successive starvation, famine, death war. Like,
Speaker 1: Like I want to I want to, like I want
Speaker 1: to just briefly talk about Vietnam for a little bit,
Speaker 1: because sure, I think something that like people don't really
Speaker 1: understand is.
Speaker 3: That, like okay, so right, like both in the thirties
Speaker 3: in Vietnam and sort of through World War two, like
Speaker 3: huge portions of the country were starving, and they were
Speaker 3: starving because the French had completely fucked their economy and
Speaker 3: was like was taking all of the food and was
Speaker 3: taking all of the resources and like you know, like
Speaker 3: like that's you know, that's a big part of the
Speaker 3: reason why the original sort of like war in Vietnam
Speaker 3: that the French fight happens, right, So it's like it's
Speaker 3: why people like drive them out, is that there are
Speaker 3: like just innumerable people who just fucking starve and die
Speaker 3: because the French colis which just like fuck you, and
Speaker 3: you know, like they the French Empire. It doesn't get
Speaker 3: as much attention as like the British or the Spanish
Speaker 3: or like the Americans, but it was like incomprehensibly inhuman
Speaker 3: in terms of just like the shit that they did
Speaker 3: and fuck them. They lost yen been food, they'll lose again.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think we should note when it comes
Speaker 1: to like the violence of the French police, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about how they are very American and the way
Speaker 1: they do violence that is reflected in the statistics the
Speaker 1: French police or the deadliest police force in continental Europe.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Part of why is that recent law that was passed
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen which made it a lot easier for
Speaker 1: French police to be able to fire their weapons specifically
Speaker 1: at people they think might be about to commit a
Speaker 1: serious crime. Part of the reason for the change in
Speaker 1: the law was the oh God, what the charlie hebdo
Speaker 1: shoot mash. Yeah, there was just this like belief that
Speaker 1: because two police officers were killed in that and there
Speaker 1: was this kind of belief among segments of the population
Speaker 1: that maybe if the police had been able to be
Speaker 1: more aggressive, they would have responded more successfully to the shooting.
Speaker 1: I think the existence of the American police and the
Speaker 1: number of mass shootings we have might argue against that.
Speaker 1: But that's one of the things people will say, is
Speaker 1: why this shooting happened?
Speaker 3: And yeah, kind and I think I think it's worth
Speaker 3: owing the effect of that law. That law, like it
Speaker 3: more than doubled the average number of like very very specifically,
Speaker 3: like the number of like North and West African people
Speaker 3: who like French people who get shopping the police doubled.
Speaker 3: And yes, depending on the year, right, it either doubled
Speaker 3: or in some cases almost tripled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been extremely stark the change. It's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that, you know, in two thousand and five, we
Speaker 1: had a huge set of riots in the suburbs of Paris.
Speaker 1: I think it killed one person, and the riots were
Speaker 1: sparked as the result of police were chasing two kids.
Speaker 1: I believe they were Algerian French kids, and they wound
Speaker 1: up like hiding from the police inside of a building
Speaker 1: that was part of like one of the trains and
Speaker 1: got electrocuted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were I think, I think what it was
Speaker 3: that they were they were they were like trying to
Speaker 3: they were trying to like go home, and they started
Speaker 3: they like cut they decided to cut through like a
Speaker 3: construction site, and someone called the police on them, so
Speaker 3: they were away from the police, and I okay, So
Speaker 3: I've heard different versions of this.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we're ever gonna know precise Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like there there was a version that was circulating at
Speaker 3: the time, and now that might be true, but I
Speaker 3: don't know about But there's a version of it that
Speaker 3: says that, like the police stood there and watched these
Speaker 3: kids get electrocuted, and yeah, that's possible. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that happened, but like a lot.
Speaker 1: Of people certainly believed that that had happened. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was not obviously the death of these kids,
Speaker 1: as is always the case when you have riots. This
Speaker 1: bit was sort of helped to catalyze existing feelings. One
Speaker 1: of the things that was sort of one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why people were angry was that Muslims in France
Speaker 1: at this point in time had essentially zero representation. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, Islam was France's second most popular
Speaker 1: religion after Catholicism. There were seven million French citizens of
Speaker 1: Arab or African origin. They had no representation in the
Speaker 1: National Assembly. Not a single member of the National Assembly
Speaker 1: was a Muslim or even Arab or African in their descent,
Speaker 1: so there was literally no representation. They were targeted by
Speaker 1: the police. These kids die a suspicious death and people
Speaker 1: people riot like like like motherfuckers, you know. And I
Speaker 1: was a pretty good set of riots. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: that one the five ones. I can pull some of
Speaker 1: the stats on it before I want to go back.
Speaker 1: I think I've got some right here. Actually, yeah, at
Speaker 1: least I.
Speaker 3: Think they burned. They earned ten thousand cars, yeah, toultiple
Speaker 3: police stations, government ministries like city halls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two hundred and thirty public buildings damaged. So it
Speaker 1: was they went pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was it was like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is only at the time, this was the biggest
Speaker 3: like unrest in France since nineteen sixty eight, and it.
Speaker 1: Is worth noting some of the differences between the government's
Speaker 1: reaction to the riots we just had and to the
Speaker 1: two thousand and five riots. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: the Interior Minister of France and Nicholas Sarkozzi called the
Speaker 1: people involved in the riots scum who needed to be
Speaker 1: got rid of. It was yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty ugly, and there was sort of immediate
Speaker 1: like defense of the police force for their actions. It's
Speaker 1: been a bit different in this most recent case. For
Speaker 1: one thing, Emmanuel mccron immediately like said that the shooting
Speaker 1: was horrible, like the actions of the police were bad,
Speaker 1: which got the police very angry at him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The camera footage of the shooting then came out and
Speaker 1: made it very clear that this was an execution as
Speaker 1: opposed to a complicated situation, which isn't to like overly
Speaker 1: defend Macron in the administration. You can see just some
Speaker 1: how things have changed in France politically.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: I thing the other thing that's going on there is
Speaker 3: that Macron is just a way weaker government than the
Speaker 3: French government wasn't in like just five, right, like one
Speaker 3: of the things, you know, So one thing I was
Speaker 3: looking at was so in just Justson five, the French
Speaker 3: deployed eleven thousand police to try to contain it, and
Speaker 3: they kind of didn't. But like the stuff that happened
Speaker 3: like two weeks ago, they there were forty five thousand
Speaker 3: police deployed. So this is I think, like it gets
Speaker 3: to like the severity of what's happening and how scared
Speaker 3: the French state is of it, because you know, like
Speaker 3: as the current French government is not very stable, they've
Speaker 3: been trying to like they're on you're like, this is
Speaker 3: like the fifth round of like riots that they've seen
Speaker 3: in the last like seven years. Yeah, yeah, which.
Speaker 1: Is also evidence that like the police, who have largely
Speaker 1: gotten what they wanted from the government in over the
Speaker 1: last seventeen years or so, have not succeeded in at
Speaker 1: all reducing the severity and in fact have continued to
Speaker 1: spark this kind of like these kind of riots.
Speaker 3: The other thing is going on here, right, So partially
Speaker 3: it's because the French police are like unbelievably racist. The
Speaker 3: other thing that's going on here is this sort of
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you could call it like the
Speaker 3: the long rage crisis of capitalism. Right, Like, youth unemployment
Speaker 3: in the suburbs is forty five percent, and this is
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that caused the air of spring,
Speaker 3: right was like, you know, you have all of these
Speaker 3: populations which are structurally unemployed, right, there are no jobs
Speaker 3: for them. What they you know, like they what jobs
Speaker 3: they can get are like the just awful, Like you know,
Speaker 3: like Americans are familiar with dogshit service sector jobs, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's like it's that kind of stuff. And you know,
Speaker 3: and this is a product of a lot of sort
Speaker 3: of long range like political trends, right. It's it's you know,
Speaker 3: like capitalism is and spitting people out of the social system.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I think is I think is
Speaker 3: really important about these protests is that like the kids
Speaker 3: in the suburbs are like not really connected to the
Speaker 3: French left. And there's a reason for that. And the
Speaker 3: reason for that is this movement that happened in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one. So in nine eighty one we got really
Speaker 3: the first of this kind of riots. So you know,
Speaker 3: these these suburbs were like mostly these like housing developments.
Speaker 3: I guess we're mostly built like in the seventies to
Speaker 3: accommodate like a new flow of migrant workers from mostly
Speaker 3: from Algeria, from other places too, And in nineen eighty
Speaker 3: one you get the first of these riots, and French
Speaker 3: society is like, holy shit because there's a bunch of
Speaker 3: non white people rioting and they lose their minds. And
Speaker 3: after the first set of riots, which the first, and
Speaker 3: the thing, the thing that's I think interesting about this
Speaker 3: too is the initial riots aren't that big, like they're
Speaker 3: they're like pretty small compared to like what has come
Speaker 3: after happen.
Speaker 1: Riot technology was in its infancy at that we were still.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's slightly unfair like people people in France in
Speaker 3: that period were pretty good at rioting. It's just that
Speaker 3: like these ones, it wasn't as bad as it was
Speaker 3: gonna get. And part of the reason it gets that
Speaker 3: bad ist So okay. So the first the after the
Speaker 3: first of these riots, there's this giant there's you know,
Speaker 3: there's an attempt by the French left to like organize
Speaker 3: these people, and they have this they have this thing
Speaker 3: called the weear movement. Here I don't know it's French,
Speaker 3: it's b you are.
Speaker 1: I think we've we've all established that we're not going
Speaker 1: to be impressing anyone with the level of our understanding
Speaker 1: of the French language.
Speaker 3: Yeah look, but you so that they have they have
Speaker 3: this sort of anti racism movement, and you know, they
Speaker 3: carry out in one hundred thousand person march from Marseille
Speaker 3: to Paris. But the problem is this movement starts to
Speaker 3: like fail almost immediately, it starts to fall apart because
Speaker 3: you know, at this point Midrand, who is he's like
Speaker 3: on and off again as the French Frime minister for
Speaker 3: a lot of the eighties, and Midrand is from the
Speaker 3: Socialist Party and his his plan for this is to
Speaker 3: basically to attempt to co opt this movement and to
Speaker 3: turn all of these people who live in the suburbs
Speaker 3: into like a new into a new voter base for
Speaker 3: the French Socialist Party. But the problem with this is
Speaker 3: that instead of you know, okay, so the Midran does
Speaker 3: some reforms kind of to like put money into these communities,
Speaker 3: but like again, these people are being structurally disenfranchised by
Speaker 3: a combination of sort of French racism, like the physical
Speaker 3: urban geography of these of these suburbs, like capitalism in general,
Speaker 3: and you know, these are these are sort of like
Speaker 3: macro forces, and I Mida RAN's plan to stop the
Speaker 3: riots is he has he has these summer music festivals
Speaker 3: that like higher unemployed youth that are that are that
Speaker 3: go by the name and I'm not making this up,
Speaker 3: so os receives me. So they're just like, this is
Speaker 3: this is our plan to saw the riots. We're just
Speaker 3: gonna have like these like good work guys music concerts.
Speaker 1: Now, I think I think you got it. I think
Speaker 1: you got it.
Speaker 3: This weirdly, this kind of works for a little bit.
Speaker 1: There is there was a there was apparently a fun
Speaker 1: version like a better version of that that occurred in
Speaker 1: in Oregon. Uh and like I think it was the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties when they were uh they were going to
Speaker 1: have like a Republican convention in town. And so the
Speaker 1: state governor, I think McCall was his last name, was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw a big like music festival like two
Speaker 1: hours south of Portland, and I'm gonna tell the cops
Speaker 1: not to bust people for drugs. But yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: different thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: The problem with this thing is is again like the
Speaker 3: point of this is not actually to sort of solve
Speaker 3: the sort of structural racism of French society or do
Speaker 3: anything about capitalism. It's it's to build a voter voter
Speaker 3: base for the Socialist Party. And you know, after a
Speaker 3: couple of years of this, the people in this movement,
Speaker 3: like the actual kids in the suburbs are like, what
Speaker 3: the fuck, Like our lives still sucks shit, Like you
Speaker 3: guys haven't changed anything. And and you know, there's and
Speaker 3: there's there's a lot of promises that the French Sovices
Speaker 3: Party breaks. One of the important ones is that they
Speaker 3: the French Loss Party had been promising to let immigrants
Speaker 3: vote in local elections and that's just fucking vanished, right,
Speaker 3: This has never happened. This is part of why there was, like, no,
Speaker 3: there's so little representation in the French governments. And you know,
Speaker 3: the actual the actual sort of broader goals of this
Speaker 3: anti Rais movement it fails. And there's a there's an
Speaker 3: undocumented workers movement that sort of comes that like splinters
Speaker 3: off from it, but it's completely destroyed by the French
Speaker 3: business class. And you know, France in this point period
Speaker 3: still has some very strong unions, and the unions just
Speaker 3: like we're like, now, fuck you, like die and just
Speaker 3: hold them to fuck off. And from there and from
Speaker 3: from the betrayal of the Socialist Party, and also simultaneously,
Speaker 3: the other thing that's happening in the eighties is the
Speaker 3: rise of sort of like these French new Like the
Speaker 3: French New Right is like resurgence. These guys. When I
Speaker 3: say the French New Right, these people are like fucking
Speaker 3: neo Nazis, right, like very very very very A bunch
Speaker 3: of very famous French neo Nazis who modern neo Nazis read,
Speaker 3: appear in this period and they start doing there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of anti immigrant murders that are just horrible, and
Speaker 3: but you know, the state is just kind of gone
Speaker 3: like eh, whatever, like fuck it, you guys can die.
Speaker 3: And so and this has a massive impact on the
Speaker 3: culture of these suburbs, and you know what what the
Speaker 3: what kind of political possibility these they have because these
Speaker 3: people like like to this day you will get people
Speaker 3: talking about like the Great talked about the Great betrayal
Speaker 3: and how they got fucked by the Socialist Party and
Speaker 3: so like these people don't like they have very little
Speaker 3: contact mostly with the mainstream French left the mainstream French
Speaker 3: left is, especially the central left is really fucking racist,
Speaker 3: like even like the communist parties really fucking And part
Speaker 3: of what was happening here too is the eighties the
Speaker 3: perid where the Communist party collapses and you know, and
Speaker 3: so like all of the sort of like the organized
Speaker 3: left factions like don't like them. The unions are like
Speaker 3: what the fuck are these Algerians? Like fuck them, they're Muslim,
Speaker 3: we hate them, uh, and you know, and so so
Speaker 3: the legacy of this is that the government does some
Speaker 3: welfare policies and they like try to do some job
Speaker 3: creation a little bit, but this was always just doomed
Speaker 3: to fail because these are you know, like what like
Speaker 3: France in this period is de industrializing. And so the
Speaker 3: product of this is like you have all of these
Speaker 3: people who are now just unemployed, who were attempted, like
Speaker 3: you know, there's a a temp to integrate them into
Speaker 3: the left and the left just fuck them. But you know,
Speaker 3: obviously they can't. They're not going to go to the
Speaker 3: right because the right hates them like even more than
Speaker 3: the French left does. And you get these you know,
Speaker 3: and what happens is like these people, these like these
Speaker 3: masses of like precariously employed like unemployed immigrants become this
Speaker 3: like massive focus of the French state. And when Conservatives
Speaker 3: take over in the nineties, like they use them as
Speaker 3: this like raci escape guilt for like every problem. They
Speaker 3: begin this like massive authoritarian like campaign against black and
Speaker 3: Muslim people and like you know, like we're we're in
Speaker 3: the US, right, like we know what that looks like.
Speaker 3: And you know, and one of the other things that
Speaker 3: that starts to happen is like like the French state
Speaker 3: and the French right like portray all these peoples are
Speaker 3: like like the eighties is also the period like you
Speaker 3: know this this is this is right after the uh
Speaker 3: the Iranian Revolution. There's this like rising fear of like Islamism,
Speaker 3: and you know, and and and the way that like
Speaker 3: the state responds to this is basically by just by
Speaker 3: going with all these people are like like Islamist terrorists,
Speaker 3: we hate them. All of all of the jobs programs
Speaker 3: that have been set up, and all of the wolf
Speaker 3: programs disappear, like there's the funding for the music concerts
Speaker 3: even just vanishes, and all of this stuff is happening.
Speaker 3: Particularly it is like particularly intensely in the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: and that's that's the other contacts that leads up to
Speaker 3: two thousand and five riots, is that like by by
Speaker 3: two thousand and five, people who are living in these
Speaker 3: places have seen like like really serious deteriorations in their
Speaker 3: standards living in like the last like four years because
Speaker 3: these programs are just being destroyed, and you know, and
Speaker 3: then you know, when you get these these protests thatts
Speaker 3: are in two thousand and five. And there's another very
Speaker 3: similar thing that happens in two thousand and seven when
Speaker 3: the police like crash into two kids on a motor
Speaker 3: like a police car crash into two kids on a
Speaker 3: motorcycle and kill them. And there's like there's like a
Speaker 3: smaller but like very very intense like series of riots.
Speaker 3: And then it's kind of weirdly quiet for a bit,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, I might I say quiet. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's been quiet from the rioting and the French police
Speaker 3: keep killing people. One of the things that everyone that
Speaker 3: people are talking about in this one is in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: it came out that the French police just like fucking
Speaker 3: raped a teenager and it's fucking horrible. Yeah, And then
Speaker 3: I think leads us kind of into like into the
Speaker 3: sort of modern like the thing that's happening right now,
Speaker 3: which is that you know, like the kids who are
Speaker 3: rioting in the street, And I think I think this
Speaker 3: is a big part of the reason why it's this
Speaker 3: intense is that you know, these are these are like
Speaker 3: seventeen and eighteen year olds, right, They're old, and they're
Speaker 3: you know, they're too old to believe in the sort
Speaker 3: of like fairy tales of French liberty inequality. Right, they
Speaker 3: know what that looks like. They know that it's like, friend,
Speaker 3: like French liberty inequality means a police baton fucking breaking
Speaker 3: your skull because you were walking down the street.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But they're also you know, they're seventeen or eighteen, they're
Speaker 3: too young to know that they're supposed to be afraid,
Speaker 3: and because of that they have, you know, like they
Speaker 3: burned down multiple police stations. Like it's the rioting has
Speaker 3: been just incredibly intense.
Speaker 1: One of the things that has probably been the major
Speaker 1: touchstone people have heard about these riots on social media
Speaker 1: and stuff is or at least the thing that I
Speaker 1: saw being spread the most was like the fact that
Speaker 1: rioters were using firearms. There's a couple of things that,
Speaker 1: like I noticed, one was people flipping out over like
Speaker 1: the presence of guns in France. And interestingly, folks on
Speaker 1: both sides of this I think got stuff wrong because
Speaker 1: people on one hand, you had people being like, where
Speaker 1: the fuck did they get guns? Something suspicious must have happened.
Speaker 1: They must have come in from Ukraine. France is a
Speaker 1: European country, and European countries don't have guns in the
Speaker 1: civilian population, like, yes, yes they do France. Actually, interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: France is one of those countries that primarily regulates who
Speaker 1: is allowed to own what kinds of guns, as opposed
Speaker 1: to what kinds of guns can be owned. So in France,
Speaker 1: with the right licensing, you can own most of the
Speaker 1: kinds of firearms that you can own in the United States.
Speaker 1: In fact, in France, if you have the proper kinds
Speaker 1: of permits, you can own something like an AR fifteen
Speaker 1: with a thirty round magazine, which you could not purchase
Speaker 1: in the state of California. Now these are these are
Speaker 1: these are still very stringent gun control if you're going
Speaker 1: to have because again they split the kinds of firearms
Speaker 1: into category and the most restricted kind of firearms are
Speaker 1: semi automatic rifles like ar platform guns. If you're going
Speaker 1: to have something like that, you're doing an intense background check,
Speaker 1: You're doing like you're submitting to random searches, you know,
Speaker 1: by the police. Like it's not nearly as easy as
Speaker 1: it is to acquire firearms in the US. But there
Speaker 1: aren't quite a lot of firearms. I think you're allowed
Speaker 1: to own up to like ten magazines per gun and
Speaker 1: a thousand rounds or something like that. That said, I
Speaker 1: don't believe the majority of the guns that we've seen
Speaker 1: on the streets and the riots are normal, legal, civilian
Speaker 1: owned arms. That said, the existence of guns in these
Speaker 1: protests has also been heavily overstated, largely result of footage
Speaker 1: of shit like people shooting out cameras with what are
Speaker 1: actually air rifles that folks just assume our real firearms.
Speaker 1: There's also been shit like there was one video that
Speaker 1: went really viral that was a petrol bomb being set
Speaker 1: off by protesters at a government building and it was
Speaker 1: just blue checks on Twitter. People who pay elon for
Speaker 1: it were spreading it saying, look, people are using RPGs
Speaker 1: in the riots. You know, rioters have rocket launchers. These
Speaker 1: are in some there were a number of folks who
Speaker 1: got tens of thousands of shares and likes claiming that
Speaker 1: this was These were examples of like heavy weaponry from
Speaker 1: Ukraine getting over to the US. For one thing, if
Speaker 1: guns were if weaponry was getting out of Ukraine, RPGs
Speaker 1: are not like the thing that people would be psyched
Speaker 1: to get. You can get RPGs in Europe, and you're
Speaker 1: generally getting them from North Africa, right like, or from
Speaker 1: the Balkans. You know, there's no shortage of com block
Speaker 1: weaponry in that part of the country, but it was
Speaker 1: not an RPG being used. Well.
Speaker 3: Also, something I want to talk about a little bit
Speaker 3: is that the actual thing, the actual weapon of the
Speaker 3: French writers is fire and this is this is something
Speaker 3: they are way better at this than the Americans are, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I saw a video, absolutely I've seen kind
Speaker 3: I saw a couple of videos that were just wild,
Speaker 3: Like there's so I don't even know how they did this.
Speaker 3: Someone had set like one of those like skyscraper tall
Speaker 3: construction cranes on fire and not the bottom of it, right,
Speaker 3: they set the they set the cabin on fire. It's like,
Speaker 3: I don't even know how you do that? Because like,
Speaker 3: like did they did they climb up the thing like
Speaker 3: they got like did they set it on fire and
Speaker 3: then climbed down will was on fire? Like, how do
Speaker 3: you even do that? I saw I saw another video
Speaker 3: that was unbelievably funny where a bunch of protesters like
Speaker 3: like in front of the mayor of their town, covered
Speaker 3: his car and gasoline and lit it on fire, which
Speaker 3: was very funny. But like, but like, you know, this
Speaker 3: is this is the thing like fire is.
Speaker 1: There Like fire is area denial, right, like yeah, that
Speaker 1: and and that's key. Yeah, it's areas avenues of advance.
Speaker 1: You're able to protect your flanks.
Speaker 3: And and also also it is it is a very
Speaker 3: very good way to like it is very very if
Speaker 3: you if if the thing you want to do is
Speaker 3: destroy a police station, like lighting it on fire is
Speaker 3: a very very good way to do that. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's very effective. It's like destroying cars too. Is
Speaker 3: the everything I think I think absolutely.
Speaker 1: Enough of it.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, and and and like everything that's been happening
Speaker 3: is there's been a lot of looting, but this is
Speaker 3: I actually think the most depressing part about these entire
Speaker 3: riots is that most of the looting, you know, like
Speaker 3: I am pro looting. This is this is like one
Speaker 3: of my stances, right, but like, like there is a
Speaker 3: lot of looting that is people looting high end goods
Speaker 3: that they normally just would never have access to. Right,
Speaker 3: That's not what's happening here. Most of the looting that's
Speaker 3: happened here is food and medicine. Yeah, and that is
Speaker 3: the most depressing thing. But the fact that people are
Speaker 3: doing subsistence looting is like maybe the most depressing thing
Speaker 3: I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, right, oh god, yeah, I mean it makes sense,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like the last like you know, it's the
Speaker 3: cost of living crisis, just like and again the fact
Speaker 3: that like we're talking about places with forty five percent
Speaker 3: youth unemployment, right, Like it's the conditions are so unbelievably
Speaker 3: bleak that like, yeah, I mean, like this, this is
Speaker 3: what happens when you do this to people, is like
Speaker 3: they fight back. The other thing I want to talk
Speaker 3: about is that a lot of these people are like
Speaker 3: one of the things that people focus on is I
Speaker 3: actually think it's very funny that there was there was
Speaker 3: a guy interviewed in the New York Times, who had
Speaker 3: like the moderate position on the riots, and their moderate
Speaker 3: position on the riots was it's okay that they're burning
Speaker 3: police stations, but why are they burning schools? And I
Speaker 3: want to talk about the burning schools thing a little
Speaker 3: bit because this is something that gets talked about a lot,
Speaker 3: and you know, okay, like this this is you know,
Speaker 3: this is the sort of sociological question that get because
Speaker 3: because this is like, burning schools has been a thing
Speaker 3: that's like this is this happened inwo thousand and five,
Speaker 3: happened in two thousand and seven, even going back to
Speaker 3: some of the riots in the eighties and nineties, people
Speaker 3: were burning schools. And the reason these kids are burning schools, right,
Speaker 3: is that most of the people, the people who are
Speaker 3: burning these schools are like there are kids who went
Speaker 3: to these schools, right, and you know, they were either
Speaker 3: in these schools or they just got out and they
Speaker 3: realized these schools didn't do shit, right, Like, going going
Speaker 3: to one of these schools doesn't lift you out of poverty.
Speaker 3: Studying heart doesn't lift you out of poverty. You're fucked,
Speaker 3: and you know, and so like yeah, of course, like
Speaker 3: of course these people are lighting these are lighting their
Speaker 3: schools on fire right there there. They're attacking. They're they're
Speaker 3: they're like they're they're attacking like the actual friends like institution,
Speaker 3: they were systematically set up to fuck them and one
Speaker 3: of one of the other, like you know, and like
Speaker 3: one of the things that always that people always talk
Speaker 3: about it is like, well why why you you know this?
Speaker 5: This?
Speaker 3: You get this with American riots too, it's people ask
Speaker 3: like why you burning your homes? Like why why are
Speaker 3: you burning your own community? And I mean particularly with
Speaker 3: the French suburbs, right, like these suburbs are a cage.
Speaker 3: They were built as a cage. They were built specifically
Speaker 3: as a cage to contain a bunch like as as
Speaker 3: France's way of containing this non white labor force that
Speaker 3: they that they imported into the country. And so you know,
Speaker 3: and it's like yeah, and every every single day, the
Speaker 3: bars of the cage are just are fucking getting are shrinking, right,
Speaker 3: the cage is shrinking, The walls are getting tighter and tighter.
Speaker 3: There's less food, there's less money, there's less opportunities, and yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, at some white people start burning down the
Speaker 3: cage and and everyone just is like walking around going
Speaker 3: why why are you burning your cage down? It's your home,
Speaker 3: but it's still a cage. Like the fact that the
Speaker 3: fact that people are made to live in the cage
Speaker 3: doesn't make it any less a cage. And that's that's
Speaker 3: why these people are That's why, that's why these people
Speaker 3: are burning it, because they like they know from you know,
Speaker 3: just the the the experience of their everyday lives of
Speaker 3: what it's like to live here, that this place is
Speaker 3: fucking killing them. And so you know, they're they they
Speaker 3: they responded in sort of the classic French fashion, which
Speaker 3: is to light it on fire.
Speaker 1: It is like if the goal was to integrate these
Speaker 1: people into French culture, there's an extent to which.
Speaker 3: They did work.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, absolutely, there you go. You know, you
Speaker 1: created like the beauty of globalization.
Speaker 3: Of France.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I again, like in terms of the people
Speaker 1: flipping out about stuff, like I think it is important
Speaker 1: to think about to keep in mind why people are
Speaker 1: doing this, how bad a situation has to be for
Speaker 1: people too, as you said, like burned their houses, their
Speaker 1: homes down around themselves, like the when you think about
Speaker 1: like looting as a function of basic survival, like that's
Speaker 1: the degree to which these people have been like stretched out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the fact that people are freaking out over shit
Speaker 1: like guns. And it's largely honestly when I talk about that,
Speaker 1: Largely the reason why is because there's a whole ecosystem
Speaker 1: of mainly largely right wing people, like media influencers, a
Speaker 1: lot of whom got blue checks as soon as Elon
Speaker 1: offered it because it puts them up higher and the
Speaker 1: search results. Who started making money in twenty twenty posting
Speaker 1: riot born from the United States and who are desperate
Speaker 1: to return to those days. So anytime there's disturbances anywhere,
Speaker 1: they're going to try to like what is the most
Speaker 1: you know, Oh, you know, a lot of folks on
Speaker 1: the far left and a lot of folks on the
Speaker 1: riot are angry at you know, the US for sending
Speaker 1: weapons to Ukraine. Well let's blame this on that, or
Speaker 1: you know, I want to make some sort of point
Speaker 1: about gun control and pretend that like French gun control laws,
Speaker 1: you know, don't work because some of the Rioters have
Speaker 1: old shotguns or aks that got smuggled in from across
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. So I'm going to make it about that.
Speaker 1: But all of which is number one, like calculated in
Speaker 1: order to increase the profit of a specific a specific
Speaker 1: kind of dishonest media influencer, and all of which ignores
Speaker 1: like the humanity of people who are are in a
Speaker 1: desperate situation and acting desperately as a result.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I think the everything that that
Speaker 3: really pisses me off about this is that it obscures
Speaker 3: the actual parts of this that are interesting and that
Speaker 3: are you know, like that that are genuinely radical in
Speaker 3: ways that I don't like. One of the things that
Speaker 3: they that people tried to do in this was like
Speaker 3: people tried to break their like their friends who'd been
Speaker 3: like arrested by the French state out of prison, and
Speaker 3: they they didn't, they didn't. They ended up failing. Because
Speaker 3: this is one of the other things that's been happening
Speaker 3: is lots of countries have police anti terrorism units, right,
Speaker 3: the French have like multiple kinds of them. They also
Speaker 3: have like military police units, but the French were using
Speaker 3: these like anti like like specifically anti terrorism units against
Speaker 3: the protesters, and that that's one of the units that
Speaker 3: got deployed. I'm pretty sure if if i'm if I
Speaker 3: if I if if the sources have been reading, are correct,
Speaker 3: that was one of the things that happened in this
Speaker 3: was an anti terrorists. They sent an anti terrorism needed
Speaker 3: to stop a prison break, and that's I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's a really sort of emblematic thing of of
Speaker 3: what the French state is and like where it's going. Right,
Speaker 3: It's like the the French Republic was born from a
Speaker 3: bunch of people trying to storm a prison, and it
Speaker 3: has now gotten back to a bunch of people trying
Speaker 3: to storm a prison, and they send a bunch of
Speaker 3: like fucking anti riot like antim Some.
Speaker 1: Of these weird right wingers were like, look, this is
Speaker 1: what happens when you when you let all these foreigners
Speaker 1: into your country that destroy the culture. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: there's not a goddamn thing more French than tottacking a
Speaker 1: prison then attacking your own prison, like that is the
Speaker 1: most there. Like these people have literally returned to tradition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they think they've become French royalists together. It's just like,
Speaker 3: oh God, like in shalah, they suffer the same fate like.
Speaker 1: I anyway, whatever, It's it's very frustrating the way in
Speaker 1: which like we're seeing kind of I think, I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll see. I probably shouldn't be such a doomer because
Speaker 1: I don't actually know the extent to which all that
Speaker 1: worked for the uh the kind of people who were
Speaker 1: attempting to grapple and wrestle these riots into something that
Speaker 1: could make them quick cash. Yeah, but it is kind
Speaker 1: of a reminder that those people are still there, that
Speaker 1: like infrastructure of deceit still exists, and every time, you know,
Speaker 1: the next time there's big riots or protests here, every
Speaker 1: time it happens anywhere, that shit is all going to
Speaker 1: spin up. I will say one of the in terms
Speaker 1: of like stuff that worked, the use of pellet guns
Speaker 1: to take out cameras was seemed to have been extremely effective.
Speaker 3: Oh I should Okay, there's another thing I should talk
Speaker 3: about that like didn't doesn't doesn't show up on film
Speaker 3: much for obvious reasons. But like one of the most
Speaker 3: effective things that was happening in these riots was people
Speaker 3: using cars to break down the fronts of stores.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and the second, the second one that was very
Speaker 3: effective was people using like there's a lot of use
Speaker 3: of scooters as like a way to get as a
Speaker 3: way to get like move around really quickly as a
Speaker 3: way to redeploy, as a way to like like as
Speaker 3: but like like you know, Okay, the thing about these
Speaker 3: protests that is that is really sort of interesting a
Speaker 3: lot of ways is like it's what what what they've
Speaker 3: basically done, like not not from a sort of anarchist
Speaker 3: ideological perspective, but from an organizational perspective, is that they've
Speaker 3: created like a bunch of networks with affinity groups. And
Speaker 3: so though like the way this stuff is happening is
Speaker 3: you get a very small group of people who are
Speaker 3: capable of moving very quickly and they just go do
Speaker 3: a thing, right, they don't they don't tell anyone else
Speaker 3: what they're doing. There's no sort of like there's there's
Speaker 3: no sort of like top down central command that you
Speaker 3: can just sort of like stop.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It's it's this incredibly sort of decentralized like it's an
Speaker 3: incredibly sort of centralized movement. And the police just like
Speaker 3: it took them like a week like over like about
Speaker 3: to like really like take back control of these places.
Speaker 3: And you know, and like right now with the period
Speaker 3: we're entering is like a period that we saw right
Speaker 3: after the George Floyd uprisings, which is like, this is
Speaker 3: the period where like the police cracks down or like
Speaker 3: tries to arrest a bunch of people right simultaneously. Like
Speaker 3: I don't see a world where we don't see another
Speaker 3: one of these in the next like five maybe ten years,
Speaker 3: because none of the structural problems are like all the
Speaker 3: structural problems with the French state are just getting worse
Speaker 3: and worse and worse and worse. And ye, you know,
Speaker 3: at some point someone is like, like, I think, I
Speaker 3: think the problem with this and the problem with the
Speaker 3: French movement in general has been for the last about
Speaker 3: twenty years, there have been a lot of very very
Speaker 3: similar sort of riots trying to bring down governments and
Speaker 3: they mostly don't work. But at some point someone is
Speaker 3: going to figure out something and they are going to
Speaker 3: do it, and France like could well be a place
Speaker 3: where that happens, just because the state's capacity to do
Speaker 3: violence is you know, like, well, the state's legitimacy is
Speaker 3: just purely reduced to its capacity for violence. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, that's not great, but I mean it's what's happening.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I hope, I hope, I hope someone beats them and
Speaker 3: I hope the people that beat them are better than
Speaker 3: the current like a pack of murderers jackals.
Speaker 1: Speaking of other things that are like a long and
Speaker 1: proud tradition in French politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like there's nothing more French than overthrowing the That's.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's like everywhere where. You're like, wow, these
Speaker 1: people suck. I hope they get overthrown and also not
Speaker 1: by someone worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no more Napoleons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no more, No more Napoleon's Napoleon's Bonaparte. That's plural.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Uh well, I feel like are we uh is that
Speaker 1: us for today?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think I think I think that's that's that's that's
Speaker 3: been our riots.
Speaker 1: All right, That's been our French Riots episode. Everybody, Uh
Speaker 1: until next time, I don't know, maybe a choir and
Speaker 1: train with a pellet gun. You know, they're easy to get, uh,
Speaker 1: surprisingly effective legally not firearms.
Speaker 3: You know, you can like look the thing they're very
Speaker 3: useful for if there's like small animals that are like
Speaker 3: trying to eat your fucking garden.
Speaker 1: Yep, you can use them on that as well, small
Speaker 1: animals for the government. Hey, everybody, welcome back to it
Speaker 1: could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and this is a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and nowhere. I don't know
Speaker 1: showcases collapse quite as well as the US Mexico border.
Speaker 1: And that's my little introduction. Now I'm going to pivot
Speaker 1: over to James Stout. James, what are we talking about today?
Speaker 6: Well, today we are talking about the US Mexico boarder
Speaker 6: is specifically in the Great State of Texas, which people
Speaker 6: might remember from its winter power grid failures. It's upcoming
Speaker 6: summer power grid failures. And Greg Abbott's sort of hilarious
Speaker 6: and also very cruel and terrible antics on the border.
Speaker 6: And we're joined today by one guest who two guests
Speaker 6: we've had before to talk about the border on the podcast.
Speaker 6: We've got Gen Budd, a former senior Border Patrol agent,
Speaker 6: an author, and an activist. And Marianna Travina Wright, who
Speaker 6: people remember as the Butterfly Lady, the previous owner of
Speaker 6: an M four assault rifle, the lady who made the
Speaker 6: cop walk off her butterfly sanctuary once, and hero occasionally
Speaker 6: of Twitter dot com.
Speaker 3: How are you, guys, We're good, We're good.
Speaker 7: Good to see you guys.
Speaker 1: It's nice to hear because we are this is normally
Speaker 1: the time of year where Texas is rough climactically, in
Speaker 1: this particular year, it's it's downright apocalyptic down there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we just don't go outside. You're likely to vaporized spontaneously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks bad.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And so what I've gathered us here today to
Speaker 6: discuss is the upcoming implementation of a a floating border wall,
Speaker 6: a barrier which is going to make children drown. I
Speaker 6: don't really know how to describe it. Press one, if
Speaker 6: you could sort of describe this proposed Greg Abbott's talking
Speaker 6: about it, but but it's it's clearly like a not
Speaker 6: just a state thing. So perhaps we could start out
Speaker 6: by explaining exactly what he's been talking about, what this
Speaker 6: design looks like.
Speaker 2: So the floating border wall, I confess in the beginning
Speaker 2: I was kind of like, I don't get it because
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of a wall, you know, going extending upwards.
Speaker 2: But essentially what it is are these giant booyes plastic
Speaker 2: booies that are very tightly woven together so that you
Speaker 2: can't go in between them. And then the booyes also spin,
Speaker 2: so if you grab onto them, you're going to just
Speaker 2: spin down, and then underneath the booys is four feet
Speaker 2: of netting, so if you try and swim underneath it,
Speaker 2: you will be captured in the netting and then you
Speaker 2: will likely drowned. It's originally I think the original design
Speaker 2: for the makers was to prevent groups like Green Peace
Speaker 2: and so forth from getting to oil what do you
Speaker 2: call them, oil stands out in the middle of the
Speaker 2: ocean and keep their boats from getting to them. So
Speaker 2: now they're going to use them and string them because
Speaker 2: the border technically most Americans, I don't think. No, there's
Speaker 2: the border technically along a lot of parts of the
Speaker 2: Rio Grande and Texas is in the middle of the river,
Speaker 2: depending on where the river's flowing that year, and so
Speaker 2: they will have to also be weighted down as well.
Speaker 2: And the hope for the governor is that most of
Speaker 2: the people will drown trying to get over to the
Speaker 2: US side, which means their bodies will remain in Mexico
Speaker 2: and then we won't have to deal with them easypasy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is a particularly dark consideration. They hadn't thought of.
Speaker 6: Our border is already. If people aren't familiar with di
Speaker 6: colonial atlats, they have some good visualizations, but you can
Speaker 6: see where migrants die, and they have one I think
Speaker 6: it's called where Migrants Die, and there are various sort
Speaker 6: of colors for different people dying from exposure, people die, dehydration, drowning,
Speaker 6: and overwhelmingly people don't die on the way here. They
Speaker 6: die within a few miles of US border, normally on
Speaker 6: the northern side our borders already and Jen has covered
Speaker 6: this extensively how our border is already killing people, But
Speaker 6: this is I think particularly cruel. Is it something that
Speaker 6: like Abbott started talking about it maybe a month or
Speaker 6: so ago, maybe two months ago?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 6: Is it something that he's doing sort of of his own,
Speaker 6: like they Arizona sort of contain a wall, or is
Speaker 6: it something that he's proposing as a sort of federal operation.
Speaker 2: What's going on with I think he originally probably got
Speaker 2: the idea because in the Trump administration they had promoted this,
Speaker 2: and so I believe that the former chief under Trump,
Speaker 2: Rodney Scott, was probably they were probably researching him and
Speaker 2: CBP were researching how to do this, because it would
Speaker 2: take quite a few quite at least quite a few months,
Speaker 2: if not years to research this and make something like
Speaker 2: this happen. Yeah, but I think that they in that
Speaker 2: because they knew that that's just not going to fly federally.
Speaker 2: But although why wouldn't it. I mean, all deterrence policies
Speaker 2: are based on this kind of cruelty, so I guess
Speaker 2: visually they thought it would be too much. But since
Speaker 2: since Rodney Scott is no longer the chief of the
Speaker 2: Border Patrol and he resigned, he's been working with the
Speaker 2: State of Texas and specifically with Governor Greg Abbot to
Speaker 2: develop new policies and so forth. And he's been down
Speaker 2: there helping the union and helping other ex Border Patrol
Speaker 2: agents come up with new policies and new cruelties for
Speaker 2: Greg Abbott to install. So I think originally the idea
Speaker 2: was a federal idea, and now it's come down to
Speaker 2: the State of Texas.
Speaker 6: Okay, So I guess how far along is the State
Speaker 6: of Texas in Like I know, before Trump built his
Speaker 6: border warr we had these little thirty foot prototypes.
Speaker 3: In San Diego.
Speaker 6: He gave a lot of contracts people who'd given him
Speaker 6: a lot of money in his election campaign. Wheatland Tube,
Speaker 6: I think is a big one, and the mixed deal,
Speaker 6: But how far is the State of Texas along in
Speaker 6: its plan to create a floating murder barrier.
Speaker 8: The booy barrier border barrier is already created and it's
Speaker 8: available in various links.
Speaker 7: And I should add in addition to.
Speaker 8: The booys in between the booys are spinning radial blades.
Speaker 8: So you yeah, it just I mean every aspect of
Speaker 8: this I I miss. That is a bloody nightmare. I
Speaker 8: went to the manufacturer site and it addresses this too,
Speaker 8: So you can't even get to like the middle of
Speaker 8: the booy with you know something, and cut the string
Speaker 8: of booys because there are these radial razor blades too.
Speaker 7: So the state will.
Speaker 8: Be deploying it in thousand foot strips. And Jin and
Speaker 8: I did a little podcast on this, I don't know
Speaker 8: a couple of months ago when we first saw these
Speaker 8: signs appearing on the river and they were super strange.
Speaker 8: It was Memorial Day weekend, I believe, and they were
Speaker 8: numbered and they said like RGV for Rio Grand Valley
Speaker 8: RGV one ninety one, one ninety three. We thought, are
Speaker 8: these mile markers like we have on the freeway, But
Speaker 8: they weren't at any particular distance and they were put
Speaker 8: at various spots that appeared as though they could be
Speaker 8: areas where migrants crossed. They can also be the paths
Speaker 8: where the cows and the horses come down to drink.
Speaker 8: Jenn's been on the river with us. She's observed that
Speaker 8: at various platforms on the river where water pump stations
Speaker 8: are for farmers and irrigation districts and such. So we
Speaker 8: saw these signs. The RGV one ninety one is facing
Speaker 8: the river facing Mexico. The backside of it is a
Speaker 8: caution danger risk of drowning sign in English and in Spanish,
Speaker 8: but it is facing the United States, on the bank
Speaker 8: of the Rio Grande River in the United States, so
Speaker 8: it's in no way a caution to anyone who might
Speaker 8: be approaching the river. And we thought, why are they
Speaker 8: suddenly putting up these signs, because you know, forever people
Speaker 8: have been crossing the river, and Border Patrol is on
Speaker 8: the boats there, Texas DPS, the Coast Guard, the US
Speaker 8: Coast Guard now Game Wardens now Florida Highway Patrol and
Speaker 8: Florida Fishing Game and all these. I mean, it is
Speaker 8: everybody's floating the river now, not for recreation but hunting migrants.
Speaker 7: And so then we thought, well, maybe these.
Speaker 8: Are so that when these out of state interlopers, and
Speaker 8: at times even the militia who show up to help them,
Speaker 8: could easily communicate with the authorities, say I'm at marker
Speaker 8: number one ninety one or whatever. Then it was just
Speaker 8: a few days after that that the announcement of this
Speaker 8: floating border buoy barrier came up. And my guess is
Speaker 8: the markers will be used to determine where those are deployed,
Speaker 8: where they get moved, and that sort of thing, so
Speaker 8: that then they can be account four.
Speaker 6: Right, So are they proposing the entirety of the river
Speaker 6: be covered by the single They're going to move segments
Speaker 6: of it to areas where they think it's a high
Speaker 6: traffic area.
Speaker 8: They're going to begin an Eagle Pass where four people
Speaker 8: drown just this weekend. But then, according to Steve McGraw,
Speaker 8: who's head of Texas DPS, it sounds like they will
Speaker 8: be putting them all along the river in areas they
Speaker 8: believe are high traffic.
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, yeah, and Jesus Christ, it is the dock
Speaker 6: se and yeah, Eagle Pass is where all those people
Speaker 6: died in the in the anac conditioned trailer. Like I
Speaker 6: think two years ago, right, was that Eagle Pass.
Speaker 8: Those kind of trailer horrors have happened near US and
Speaker 8: fell furious in San Antonio. Unfortunately, they happen throughout the
Speaker 8: border region. And there are so many ports of entry
Speaker 8: land ports of entry along the Texas Mexico border because
Speaker 8: Texas is I mean Mexico is our number one trading
Speaker 8: partner with the US, and we have NAFTA, which established
Speaker 8: the North American Free Trade Zone. So if you have
Speaker 8: a television or a refrigerator, or you drive a car
Speaker 8: in the United States today, chances are those pieces and
Speaker 8: parts are manufactured in Mexico in the Free Trade Zone
Speaker 8: and then they get brought over by truck. Same thing
Speaker 8: with so much of our produce, So the amount of
Speaker 8: that trailer traffic is enormous, and those trailers are used
Speaker 8: for human smuggling at much higher numbers, we should note
Speaker 8: than the river area. Same as for narcotics trafficking. Those
Speaker 8: things are coming across by the truckload and in shipping vessels,
Speaker 8: not in small bundles across the Rio Grand River.
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, I think most is I think most narcotic
Speaker 6: center the country through ports of entry, red than between
Speaker 6: ports of entry against nodding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, especially the narcotics that are very expensive. Even
Speaker 2: when I was an agent in the mid nineties, I
Speaker 2: used to say, why do we only get marijuana and
Speaker 2: and the agents would say, well, because cocaine's too expensive
Speaker 2: to put on somebody's back and hike it through the mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 2: across the river or in the desert too. It's just
Speaker 2: easier to buy off a CBP agent or a Border
Speaker 2: patrol agent and just get waved on through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not like dumb otherwise, Like these these are
Speaker 1: huge money businesses. You're not throwing a half a million
Speaker 1: dollars of cocaine on some guy's back, yeah.
Speaker 7: Right and risking it floating away.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, this valuable merchandise. Like they're no like
Speaker 1: no more cavalier with it, like Target is, you know, Like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the obviously this is part of a sort of
Speaker 6: larger ABBOTT does a lot of posturing on the border, right,
Speaker 6: and that posture has real consequences for migrants, and it
Speaker 6: has real consequences for people living on both sides of
Speaker 6: the border as well, right, especially I think people to
Speaker 6: our previous coverage that will be very well aware of that.
Speaker 6: Perhaps we could sort of characterize this within the context
Speaker 6: of Operation Loan Star within the other like you've said, right,
Speaker 6: the other deployments. It's not just even Texas National Guard
Speaker 6: who are now deployed to the border. So could you
Speaker 6: give us like an overview of all the ridiculous lapping
Speaker 6: that's been done.
Speaker 8: Well, there are twelve or thirteen states to date that
Speaker 8: have sent prison guards, their national Guards, game or wildlife officers,
Speaker 8: and state police to the border.
Speaker 7: And this is related to you two different.
Speaker 8: Campaigns basically by the Border Patrol Union. One is Biden
Speaker 8: Border Crisis with that hashtag which they launched in March
Speaker 8: of twenty twenty one, and the other is every State
Speaker 8: is a Border State, which was a battle cry for
Speaker 8: MAGA politicians during the midterms. And so what we see
Speaker 8: now are these red states with governors who want to
Speaker 8: capitalize on looking tough on immigration sending reinforcements to the border.
Speaker 8: DeSantis obviously was the first to do that because he's
Speaker 8: been very vocal about envy Abbot and how Abbot had
Speaker 8: kind of a leg up on him in any campaign because.
Speaker 7: Abbot got the border and Abbot got.
Speaker 8: To as you said, posture there and be you know,
Speaker 8: the new sheriff in town and you know, stepping in where.
Speaker 7: Sleepy Joe is, you know, not performing.
Speaker 8: But what we see in reality is Brandon Judd, who's
Speaker 8: the president of the National Border Patrol Council, was stuck
Speaker 8: to Trump. You know, they were best buddies and and
Speaker 8: you know, basically campaigning together.
Speaker 7: And then.
Speaker 8: Brandon Judd kind of fell away from Trump when he
Speaker 8: lost reelection and has become Greg Abbott's best buddy and
Speaker 8: press junket sidekick and helped stage the launch of opera
Speaker 8: Lone Star, which you know, was like a Fourth of
Speaker 8: July type parade with the tanks and the helicopters and
Speaker 8: the planes and the boats and the you know, the
Speaker 8: ATV agents and the horses, the whole nine yards. And
Speaker 8: people think, I think most people in the United States
Speaker 8: believe that Abbot is this renegade doing this all on
Speaker 8: his own. And what we see is the reality is
Speaker 8: it is a joint operation between the state government and
Speaker 8: the federal government, but the Feds won't admit to it
Speaker 8: because of the optics. It's bad enough that Biden continued
Speaker 8: border wall construction, which most of his supporters opposed. Now
Speaker 8: he is working hand in glove with Abbot. And when
Speaker 8: I say our experience, what we see daily and what
Speaker 8: I have documented is US Border Patrol working with Texas
Speaker 8: Department of Public Safety troopers and Operation Loan Star Texas
Speaker 8: National guardsmen literally riding in the same vehicles together, responding
Speaker 8: to scenes, patrolling together. And at the Butterfly Center, we
Speaker 8: had National Guard Texas National Guard parked on the levee
Speaker 8: at our property, blocking our access back and forth. And
Speaker 8: I went and said, hey, guys, you know this is
Speaker 8: our property and we have to have access to it
Speaker 8: during regular business hours for you know, my staff who
Speaker 8: are working here and our members and visitors who come
Speaker 8: to explore and enjoy. So I need you all to move.
Speaker 8: I need you to move your humbyes so we can
Speaker 8: get back and forth. And I recorded this interaction as
Speaker 8: I do all and they said, ma'am, we don't take
Speaker 8: our orders from you. We take our orders from Border Patrol.
Speaker 8: And that was a revelation to me when this happened
Speaker 8: a couple of years ago. So I actually got on
Speaker 8: the phone with the patrol agent in charge, the highest
Speaker 8: ranking Border Patrol agent at the McCallen station, and I said,
Speaker 8: his name is Tony Crane. I said, Tony, you need
Speaker 8: to come out here and tell these guys to move.
Speaker 8: They're saying they'll only do it for you, and they
Speaker 8: only take orders from you. And Tony drove out there
Speaker 8: to the Butterfly Center, to the levee and instructed the
Speaker 8: National Guard to move their vehicle and they did. And
Speaker 8: this is something we've seen over and over. And I
Speaker 8: now have in email commander or Regional director rather of
Speaker 8: Texas DPS, Victor Escalon, who the rest of the nation
Speaker 8: may know from the Uvaldi tragedy. I have email from
Speaker 8: him where he is invoking the federal statute that DPS
Speaker 8: claims gives them the authority to ignore our Fourth Amendment
Speaker 8: rights and enter private property without warrant as long as
Speaker 8: they're working with Warner Patrol, and they are claiming that
Speaker 8: they are doing so at the request of the United
Speaker 8: States Attorney General according to the federal statute.
Speaker 6: Wow A Importantly, the federal government, in any of its aspects,
Speaker 6: is in saying no, this isn't true, or like that
Speaker 6: they're what do you get, Like you say, hand in
Speaker 6: hand with these and like it's not even just a
Speaker 6: joint federal and state operation. Like I know, I think
Speaker 6: it was South Dakota's deployment. Was it that was funded
Speaker 6: by a wealthy individual? Like the state didn't pay for it.
Speaker 6: I can't remember which to couture it was, but yeah,
Speaker 6: it was funded by a wealthy donor who paid for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So whichever state CHRISTI Noem is in charge of, Yes,
Speaker 8: And I believe that also happened in Kentucky or Tennessee.
Speaker 7: Same thing.
Speaker 8: It was a wealthy donor who funded their state National
Speaker 8: Guard deployment.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And then perhaps Jen, you could explain to people
Speaker 6: why it is so different if they believe they have
Speaker 6: these within one hundred miles of border, and then again
Speaker 6: within twenty five miles of the border, so many of
Speaker 6: your fundamental rights don't apply, And could you explain how
Speaker 6: that works? And then how if the National Guard seat
Speaker 6: themselves is also having the ability to sort of wave
Speaker 6: the Fourth Amendment, what that would mean for the privacy
Speaker 6: of people living along the border.
Speaker 2: In the United States Border Patrol Academy, So I went
Speaker 2: through the academy and I started in June of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, so I can at least testify to that. Basically,
Speaker 2: you know, I had a four year in law, so
Speaker 2: I knew a little basics about it, and then going
Speaker 2: to the academy, it was really kind of sad because
Speaker 2: they don't really teach you much of anything. They're just like,
Speaker 2: you know, their rights are limited. We're allowed within twenty
Speaker 2: five miles of the border by the law to go
Speaker 2: on anybody's private property and even search their buildings, as
Speaker 2: long as it's not a domicile, and that can sometimes
Speaker 2: be in question whether it's being used as a domicile
Speaker 2: or we consider it as a domicile. And then within
Speaker 2: one hundred miles of any land or sea border, which
Speaker 2: encompasses two thirds of the United States population, we can
Speaker 2: basically stop you and ask you to prove that you're
Speaker 2: a United States citizen. And so then they increase that
Speaker 2: with checkpoints that are a little ways away from the border,
Speaker 2: where they under the guise of asking for or your citizenship.
Speaker 2: They then get to police American citizens or legal residents.
Speaker 2: And as the years have progressed, Border patrol keeps trying
Speaker 2: to push those authorities. In the beginning, you know, we
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to work with local PD, the local sheriffs.
Speaker 2: There was a very clear separation, a very clear line
Speaker 2: between Border Patrol and local cops, or at least legally
Speaker 2: on written paper, there were supposed to be. And after
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, what we end up seeing is the
Speaker 2: Border Patrol decides to get very heavily invested into surveillance.
Speaker 2: And it's not a coincidence. Former Chief Rodney Scott was
Speaker 2: in charge of that during that time, and his basic
Speaker 2: statement was, you know, if a car is bombed in Iraq,
Speaker 2: the Border Patrol needs to know about it. So they
Speaker 2: considered anything in the world to be important to the
Speaker 2: Border Patrol, and they wanted the Border Patrol to be
Speaker 2: the go to agency and as far as surveillance. So
Speaker 2: that's why you see them being used in Black Lives
Speaker 2: Matter protests and things like this. And we saw them
Speaker 2: a lot in the Trump administration where they were supposedly
Speaker 2: guarding federal buildings and then went and attacked them. So
Speaker 2: what you see is the Border Patrol trying to quietly
Speaker 2: eke into what is typically considered peace officer authority. So
Speaker 2: they're trying to get peace officer authority in Texas through
Speaker 2: the state legislature, and they just keep trying to expand
Speaker 2: their authority more and more. What I see in Texas specifically,
Speaker 2: is when you look at the history of immigration when
Speaker 2: the United States, when we first you know, when Texas
Speaker 2: first became a state and all this other stuff. Originally
Speaker 2: the states did their own immigration patrolling. And so if
Speaker 2: you went and you just decided you're going to somehow
Speaker 2: you landed on the coast in Georgia, then you would
Speaker 2: have to go to a Georgian official and pay whatever
Speaker 2: it is that they require of you and stuff. And
Speaker 2: so what I see more and more is like Texas
Speaker 2: is taken back that authority and saying we're the ones
Speaker 2: that are going to say this, and so then they
Speaker 2: can make money off of the deterrence policies and all
Speaker 2: of this other stuff. So it's just a constant expansion
Speaker 2: of the rights of the cops, while at the same
Speaker 2: time constantly reducing the rights to the people who live
Speaker 2: here and even the people that cross here. A lot
Speaker 2: of people think, they'll say, you know that migrants don't
Speaker 2: have any constitutional rights.
Speaker 7: Well that's not true.
Speaker 2: They have constitutional rights because it says people in the
Speaker 2: US Constitution, it doesn't say citizens. So in certain in
Speaker 2: certain areas it will say citizens. And then that is
Speaker 2: exclusive to United States citizens, but they're you know, the
Speaker 2: basic rights are afforded to even migrants. But because the
Speaker 2: migrants don't have much of a void, the border patrol
Speaker 2: gets away with with everything. Secret teams, cover up teams,
Speaker 2: and all this other stuff. Border patrol agents will just
Speaker 2: flat out tell you constitution doesn't exist down here, and
Speaker 2: they never get in trouble for it.
Speaker 8: So yeah, one of one of the things Jen just
Speaker 8: touched on is Texas DPS getting in on this immigration business.
Speaker 8: Is when Governor Abbott declared that Operation Loan Star would
Speaker 8: be targeting Hispanic males and in some places they talk
Speaker 8: about of fighting age. So they're already depicting all of
Speaker 8: these individuals as like soldiers in some invasion in a
Speaker 8: gang war, and you know that they're again hostile combatants
Speaker 8: to the United States. But they were going to charge
Speaker 8: them all with criminal trespass. So we hear a lot
Speaker 8: about how awful the cartel is and how much money
Speaker 8: they take from migrants and then hold them for ransom,
Speaker 8: and how expensive it is to get across. Well, once
Speaker 8: they get across the state of Texas becomes the cartel,
Speaker 8: they arrest them, charge them with criminal trespass, put them
Speaker 8: in the county jail. It's a five thousand dollars fine.
Speaker 8: Then when they're released from state custody, they're immediately handed
Speaker 8: over to federal detention, and that is generally the for
Speaker 8: profit geogroup or cor civic. And there my understanding is
Speaker 8: fines for detention can be ten thousand to twelve thousand
Speaker 8: dollars for your federal detention. And so here we have
Speaker 8: it used to be just the for a profit federal
Speaker 8: detention facilities cashing in on our criminal immigration policies. And
Speaker 8: Governor Abbot's like, hey, why aren't we getting a piece
Speaker 8: of the pie. So that is what Operation Loan Star
Speaker 8: is really about. It's not about public safety. It's not
Speaker 8: that all this fetanyl is coming across the Rio Grande
Speaker 8: River being smuggled by migrants. It's about chi ching chi Ching,
Speaker 8: chi ching, chiching, putting all of them in to the
Speaker 8: county jail at five thousand dollars ahead.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and it's all the while right like he's that.
Speaker 6: I know, some of the Texas National Guard people aren't
Speaker 6: getting the benefits they would normally get if they've been
Speaker 6: mobilized or deployed because it's a state deployment, not a
Speaker 6: federal deployment. And like as much as Abbott and DeSantis
Speaker 6: try and paint, the border is a dangerous place full
Speaker 6: of like had no like drug warlords and cartel violence.
Speaker 6: Overwhelmingly the people in that in Lone Star who have
Speaker 6: died have died because they've got drunk and drove because
Speaker 6: they had an accident with a personally owned firearm. Because
Speaker 6: Texas law doesn't allow them to stop the National God
Speaker 6: bringing their own weapons.
Speaker 1: They're they're not getting into gunfights with Cikarios, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not any any anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: the standard problem of taking a bunch of men away
Speaker 1: from the place they normally live and making them do
Speaker 1: mine numbing duty.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, they're they're doing mine numbing duty in you know,
Speaker 8: exasperating heat. It's boring as hell. We see them asleep
Speaker 8: in vehicles, watching Netflix, doing other things. When National Guard
Speaker 8: totaled their Enterprise rental truck on the gate at the
Speaker 8: National Butterfly Center, what we found were bud light cans
Speaker 8: on the ground, which we can only assume bounced out
Speaker 8: of the truck bed when that truck made impact and
Speaker 8: was destroyed. The local police will not release any public
Speaker 8: information related to calls and reports that they have to
Speaker 8: take of drunken disorderly conduct, noise complaints, property damage, sexual assault,
Speaker 8: all of these things happening at the hotels where National
Speaker 8: Guard is staying. But we know from visitors and from
Speaker 8: property managers and others that.
Speaker 7: This is happening regularly because.
Speaker 2: They don't get leadership and it's frankly, it's like really
Speaker 2: young kids that are down there. And the other day
Speaker 2: that we need to say too, is that the National
Speaker 2: Guard that's being posted there, the young National Guard kids
Speaker 2: are seeing increase rates of suicide. And that's that's something
Speaker 2: that's particular to Border Patrol agents because when you're an
Speaker 2: oppressor and you do that cut of work, then you're
Speaker 2: going to end up the suicide rates go through the roof,
Speaker 2: as they are with the Border Patrol, and now you're
Speaker 2: seeing that with the National Guard. But Marianna's right, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff that they're suppressing about what these
Speaker 2: National Guard kids are getting into because they're bored down there.
Speaker 2: So they're sitting down there in Texas drinking and opening
Speaker 2: it up and getting in trouble. But it's all kind
Speaker 2: of hush hush quiet about that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and not only are they bored, but these are,
Speaker 8: like you said, eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one year old's
Speaker 8: getting paid six thousand dollars a month, like they have
Speaker 8: never had this kind of cash before, and what are
Speaker 8: they going to do with it? Go buy guns at
Speaker 8: our local pawn shop.
Speaker 7: They pay the National Guard that will, that's what they're
Speaker 7: being paid.
Speaker 8: And initially their taxes were not being withheld or anything.
Speaker 8: So yeah, that was a whole nother issue. And then
Speaker 8: for a while they were trying to unionize because they
Speaker 8: were not getting the benefits of a regular deployment. And
Speaker 8: the ones who were working in law enforcement already as
Speaker 8: police officers, firefighters, paramedics and such, they also, while they're
Speaker 8: on deployment do not accrue their hours toward their pensions,
Speaker 8: so they're taking another hit for that. And so these
Speaker 8: were all things that I guess the state didn't really
Speaker 8: think through when they called all these people up and
Speaker 8: forced them to come sit on the border and do
Speaker 8: mind numbing work.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's a terrible idea, like comprehensive.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things if you if you spent
Speaker 1: any time studying the surge in Iraq and kind of
Speaker 1: the later part of the Bush Ears and some of
Speaker 1: the shit that happened when they just grabbed a bunch
Speaker 1: of National Guard guys and through the like, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of the same shit. It's people who were like
Speaker 1: finding ways to get alcohol and drugs, who were crashing cars,
Speaker 1: who were because like, yeah, you were. It's just this
Speaker 1: is this is an inevitable consequence, which is why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do something like this unless there's like a dire
Speaker 1: reason to need to bring the National Guard into a
Speaker 1: situation like a natural disaster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 8: I would I would say that they all need house mothers.
Speaker 8: I mean, like fraternities have and stuff, because every time
Speaker 8: I run into one of these young men and they
Speaker 8: start to like look at me or open their mouth
Speaker 8: a certain way, I just want to grab them by
Speaker 8: the ear and be like, ah, you know, junior, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna spank you.
Speaker 7: You know, my first snapper.
Speaker 1: Yeah you are nineteen. You should not be in this
Speaker 1: position right now. Yeah, get out of here. Yeah go ahead,
Speaker 1: we'll take your gun from you too.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: But we spoke to a few of them at grub
Speaker 6: At and I when we were down there, and one
Speaker 6: of them was just saying like he was trying to
Speaker 6: get some money for college, and yeah, I don't think
Speaker 6: they're reccring those benefits because if they're under state orders
Speaker 6: in it, they don't get it. So Greg Abbot's kind
Speaker 6: of screwing everyone apart from himself and his little friends.
Speaker 6: I guess maybe to finish up. I know that one.
Speaker 6: I think the only case like I can come across
Speaker 6: of this happening of someone dying trying to rescue migrants
Speaker 6: was a National Guard soldier who tried to rescue some
Speaker 6: people from the river and drowned from what I understand,
Speaker 6: and like, obviously this drowning barrier is going to if
Speaker 6: border patroller even invested in investing in getting people from
Speaker 6: the river, which they might not be if they're from
Speaker 6: the Mexican site, if they're still on the Mexican side
Speaker 6: of the border, right in theory, would put those people,
Speaker 6: those like National Guard and Border patrol agents in danger
Speaker 6: to So what have Border patrol to say about the
Speaker 6: floating barrier so far?
Speaker 2: They haven't said anything about it so far, and there
Speaker 2: have been a few Border patrol agents who've lost their
Speaker 2: lives jumping into the river as well. There have been
Speaker 2: other migrants who have lost their lives trying to save
Speaker 2: their children and so forth. Migrants die every day in
Speaker 2: that river, and the Border Patrol is just going to
Speaker 2: stay quiet about it because they like it's it's their
Speaker 2: management who's gone along with it. And if they didn't
Speaker 2: like and if the buying administration didn't like it, then
Speaker 2: they would come out and say so, or they would
Speaker 2: come out and have Chief Gloria Chaveez come out and
Speaker 2: say no, we're not going.
Speaker 9: To have this.
Speaker 2: This is going to kill people. This is not right,
Speaker 2: you know on our first blah blah blah, which we
Speaker 2: all know it's bullshit. But the truth is is they
Speaker 2: really don't care.
Speaker 9: They just don't care.
Speaker 2: And as they say in the Border Patrol, and we
Speaker 2: learn and you all learned. I knew it, but you
Speaker 2: all learn from the ten to fifteen group on Facebook
Speaker 2: they call them floaters and take pictures of them and
Speaker 2: make fun of it. So the Border Patrol could care less.
Speaker 2: It's just one less migrant. They got a process.
Speaker 8: Well, and you know, as Jim said, if US Border
Speaker 8: Patrol was opposed to this new border barrier, they would
Speaker 8: say something well, I think it's.
Speaker 7: Even worse than that.
Speaker 8: In twenty eighteen, Trump got border wall funding, and as
Speaker 8: you mentioned, he had his you know, Commando climb, all
Speaker 8: these border wall prototypes in the desert and all of that.
Speaker 8: In twenty nineteen he got his second tranch of border
Speaker 8: wall funding, but twenty and twenty twenty one were continuing resolutions,
Speaker 8: so he was getting barter wall funding after that, but
Speaker 8: it was always for existing approved designs, and those are
Speaker 8: the concrete with the steel ballards. So for even though
Speaker 8: Trump floated the idea of this Wui border barrier, this
Speaker 8: floating border wall, to get congressional approval or US Army
Speaker 8: Corps of Engineer approval for such a thing would have
Speaker 8: been an issue. Also there's the issue of the International
Speaker 8: Boundary and Water Commission Treaty, which is a bi national
Speaker 8: treaty with Mexico that governs the Rio Grande River, the
Speaker 8: water that flows in it, the boundaries, who gets to
Speaker 8: take how much water from it, things that are built
Speaker 8: and might affect the flow of the river. As Jen mentioned,
Speaker 8: the inter national boundary is the middle of the river,
Speaker 8: no matter where the river is flowing now, because over
Speaker 8: millions of years, it has shifted. The channel has shifted many,
Speaker 8: many times and greatly. So we know the FEDS probably
Speaker 8: border patrol with the Trump administration. So DHS wanted this
Speaker 8: floating border wall. The easiest way for them to get
Speaker 8: it is to have Governor Abbott do it. In two
Speaker 8: thousand and five, the real ID Act, in that act
Speaker 8: of legislation, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the
Speaker 8: authority to waive every law local, state, federal for border barrier.
Speaker 8: So it doesn't say border wall, it says border barrier.
Speaker 8: So presumably this buoy border barrier would also be covered,
Speaker 8: so the FEDS don't have to worry about something like
Speaker 8: the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act
Speaker 8: or the Rivers and Harbors Act in deploying this. But
Speaker 8: they do not have authority to waive treaties or the Constitution.
Speaker 7: So since.
Speaker 8: At least two thousand and five, the federal government has
Speaker 8: been trying to devise ways to effectively waive the IBWC treaty.
Speaker 8: One of the ways in which they have done that
Speaker 8: is with the We Build the Wall campaign, which built
Speaker 8: you know, they built border barrier on the International boundary
Speaker 8: line in Sunland Park, New Mexico and in Mission Texas,
Speaker 8: and the US government settled with them, allowing this illegal
Speaker 8: structure to stand in violation of the Tree in spite
Speaker 8: of Mexico's objections, thereby setting a legal precedent, effectively waiving
Speaker 8: the treaty.
Speaker 7: But now Abbott can do this, and who's going to
Speaker 7: sue him?
Speaker 8: The IBWC isn't going to do a damn thing because
Speaker 8: they have no authority to sue on their own. They
Speaker 8: have to go to the federal government and ask the
Speaker 8: Department of Justice to sue on their behalf. And it's
Speaker 8: the Department of Justice that has already settled with Fisher
Speaker 8: Industries for the we build the wall fraud fence in
Speaker 8: violation of the treaty. The other issue is Texas doesn't
Speaker 8: have to abide by NEPA or any equivalent law. And
Speaker 8: we know that the FEDS have in the past devised
Speaker 8: really nasty reach arounds for the law where if they
Speaker 8: get busted doing something illegal like having Customs and Border
Speaker 8: Protection spray imas appear a broad spectrum herbicide that is
Speaker 8: a known carcinogen all over people, animals, and plants on
Speaker 8: the border, they get sued and made to stop that,
Speaker 8: they'll simply pass the money through to the state of
Speaker 8: Texas and ask them to continue it. And I think
Speaker 8: this floating buoy border barrier is exactly that kind of thing.
Speaker 8: The Biden administration can say, we're not doing it, and
Speaker 8: they don't have to get approval for this design, and
Speaker 8: they'll just find a way to either pass the money
Speaker 8: through to Texas or allow Texas to continue to basically
Speaker 8: fundraise for it by prosecuting immigrants for criminal trespass and
Speaker 8: finding them to get out of county jail.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Wow, that is dark.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to point out though, that when
Speaker 2: Governor do See of Arizona put up his train car thing, yeah, Biden,
Speaker 2: the Biden administration did get involved with that and they
Speaker 2: and they were upset about that. So far, we haven't
Speaker 2: seen anything about this, and so we'll see if they
Speaker 2: deploy it and the Biden administration stays quiet about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, we're closing in on like November twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four, and I think Biden really is very sensitive
Speaker 6: about being seen as quote unquote weak on the border,
Speaker 6: and like, given the absolute disaster it was the end
Speaker 6: of Title forty two and the way they handled that,
Speaker 6: and they didn't really say anything when border patrol with
Speaker 6: clearly holding people in conditions that are in violation of
Speaker 6: their own detention standards. Like, I don't have high hopes
Speaker 6: for the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's interesting because you would think, like a
Speaker 2: whole thing from the Union and everybody that is pro
Speaker 2: border patrol and anti immigrant was like, if you in
Speaker 2: Title forty two, then then it's just going to overwhelm
Speaker 2: the border patrol and more people will come. And we
Speaker 2: kept saying for a year like no, that's not going
Speaker 2: to happen. It's going to be drastically cut. And so
Speaker 2: it's drastically cut. And you would think the Bide administration
Speaker 2: would be like look what I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but they're not.
Speaker 2: I mean like they have no clue how to talk
Speaker 2: about the border and what to do on the border.
Speaker 2: It's sad.
Speaker 8: Well, it's this double edged sword of get in line,
Speaker 8: do it the legal way. So the people who say
Speaker 8: we're not anti immigrant, we just want them to do
Speaker 8: it the legal way and get in line. So Title
Speaker 8: forty two ends, we've got the CBP one app which
Speaker 8: gives them an appointment so they can stand in line
Speaker 8: to cross at a legal point of port of entry
Speaker 8: and do it legally. And now they've got to find
Speaker 8: a way to thwart that and to mess it up.
Speaker 8: And Biden, as you said, is not saying, look at
Speaker 8: what we did. We've got everybody standing in line doing
Speaker 8: it the legal way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think they don't want to look at CBP one too,
Speaker 6: given what a disaster it's been and how biased it's
Speaker 6: been and how bad it continues to be. For sure,
Speaker 6: for sure, they've failed to offer any other options. And yeah,
Speaker 6: I don't really have any hope that things will not
Speaker 6: just get worse. There seems to be a bipods and
Speaker 6: consensus that it's okay to kill lots of people trying
Speaker 6: to come to our country for help because it's bad
Speaker 6: if folks news just mean to you.
Speaker 8: Jen has been very vocal and produced lots and lots
Speaker 8: of research and documentation on how our deterrence policies are
Speaker 8: designed to kill and they're not a whole lot of
Speaker 8: people using the G word, but Jen has been courageous
Speaker 8: enough to do it. I was recently told by my
Speaker 8: employer that I could not use it, and I think
Speaker 8: it's it's a horror, but Jen can speak to it.
Speaker 2: We have to do a whole other episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we should be.
Speaker 3: We will.
Speaker 6: We're definitely going to keep covering this because it's one
Speaker 6: of the things it just disappears from a lot of
Speaker 6: national media in between election cycles or in between.
Speaker 1: Well and unfortunately it's it's one of the things where
Speaker 1: kind of the numbers are heading in the wrong direction
Speaker 1: nationwide because like the border, like the right is winning
Speaker 1: on border stuff right now, the right is winning on immigration. Like,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty dark polling likes as much as you know,
Speaker 1: some of the last couple of elections have been positive
Speaker 1: in terms of the pitiful performance of like kind of
Speaker 1: maga Republicans. Like if you if you look at kind
Speaker 1: of how Americans are polling on border issues and immigration issues,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty bleak at the moment. And I don't really,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has a great clear clue as
Speaker 1: to like how to reverse that at the moment, which
Speaker 1: isn't to say that it can't be reversed, it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult.
Speaker 2: Well, it's difficult, especially when the Democrats are always ceding
Speaker 2: the argument to the Republicans, like they're afraid to make
Speaker 2: the argument that a robust and humane asylum system that
Speaker 2: can inspect the people requesting asylum is a national security
Speaker 2: issue and you need one. You can't just not have
Speaker 2: a NASH. You can't have an asylum not have an
Speaker 2: asylum system. You have to have It's an essential part
Speaker 2: to the national security infrastructure. So people that argue that
Speaker 2: we shouldn't have an asylum system because it's a threat
Speaker 2: to national security or completely ignorant about what they're talking about,
Speaker 2: and so they have to start framing it as as
Speaker 2: a national security issue, you know, one where we can
Speaker 2: have people come and be inspected and so forth. And
Speaker 2: then the people who are the affair various people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're going to go in between the ports of entry, fine,
Speaker 2: arrest those people, but let's have a humane system otherwise.
Speaker 8: It's also fundamental to the success of our economy, and
Speaker 8: with the US birth rate is declining and without a robust, safe,
Speaker 8: timely immigration system, ideally one that allows people to go
Speaker 8: back and forth. Because what I hear from people here
Speaker 8: is I miss my country. I want to return to
Speaker 8: my country. I want to come here to see my family,
Speaker 8: to work for a season or for a spell, to
Speaker 8: send money home, but then I want to be able
Speaker 8: to return, and our current system it's too deadly to
Speaker 8: allow them to make it through and then go back
Speaker 8: and attempt to do that a second time.
Speaker 7: Another issue related to.
Speaker 8: The narrative and read winning on immigration is we found
Speaker 8: at the Butterfly Center that when.
Speaker 7: Biden continued building border wall.
Speaker 8: And we said, oh my gosh, you know this is
Speaker 8: what's happening, and we posted photos and video and everything
Speaker 8: of it, people who had supported US, Democrats, liberals with
Speaker 8: a capital L who had supported US said, you're lying,
Speaker 8: or that's just their continuing trumps. They had to and
Speaker 8: then when we contradicted every one of those arguments with facts,
Speaker 8: then they said, oh, well, if Biden's doing it, then
Speaker 8: there must be a good reason. And you know, the
Speaker 8: US can't accept everybody. And you know, you get this
Speaker 8: walking back of.
Speaker 9: All of the.
Speaker 8: Things that they were saying when Trump was president.
Speaker 7: About.
Speaker 8: Being humane, about needing an effective system, about creative solutions
Speaker 8: and all of this, and now it's suddenly, well, you know,
Speaker 8: we can't let everybody in. And and so I have
Speaker 8: honestly found and I'm going to take a lot of
Speaker 8: hit flat for this, but there's basically no difference between
Speaker 8: a moderate Republican and a liberal capital l.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's me seems that way sent me. Uh, Trump
Speaker 6: had months of time before you two, Biden had years
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, certainly, I mean it's it's I think
Speaker 1: pretty much impossible to argue with that, at least on
Speaker 1: the on a broad scale, like if you're just kind
Speaker 1: of like looking at at national trends. Uh, there's there's
Speaker 1: ample support for that argument.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Biden, I mean Obama deported more people than anyone.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, massive number. Yeah, well cool, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Where can people find out more terrible stuff about the border?
Speaker 6: Is there in podcast they can listen to.
Speaker 2: We do have a podcast, Border Patrol Watch. Marianna and
Speaker 2: I have kind of started it just to talk about
Speaker 2: a lot of these issues that we feel are being
Speaker 2: left out. And it's on YouTube. We also have a
Speaker 2: TikTok account and Twitter for the moment, we'll see how
Speaker 2: that goes. And Facebook and Facebook and Instagram, And there
Speaker 2: is Border patrol watch dot com. Yeah, and that list.
Speaker 2: There's a page on there for all the agents arrested
Speaker 2: for rape and pedophilia.
Speaker 7: There's a corruption page.
Speaker 2: There's a page on how they try and indoctrinate the
Speaker 2: youth down here on the Borderlands and so forth.
Speaker 9: So I'm all about that jazz.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's hashtag on a first and so where could
Speaker 6: people it's all buttiplar watch. How about you two? Do
Speaker 6: you guys have individual accounts? Where can they find you?
Speaker 8: Jin is doing most of this, and I believe it's
Speaker 8: under the Border Patrol watch banner. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 8: both of us found ourselves targeted or throttled or being
Speaker 8: you know, really suppressed by Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 2: And lost my forty thousand followers.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, Yeah, but buttomtry watch is great.
Speaker 6: You had a great thread on agents who have facing
Speaker 6: charges for sexual assault, and that's a very small minority
Speaker 6: of agents who have done sexual assaults certainly, but yeah,
Speaker 6: there's some really good information for people on there.
Speaker 8: Those are just the ones who are being prosecuted or
Speaker 8: have been convicted.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, most of them sadly have not, and
Speaker 6: even the ones who have, it took too long and
Speaker 6: it was far too completed. We can, Yeah, we can.
Speaker 6: I talk again on that happy topic another day. But
Speaker 6: thank you so much for giving us some of your afternoon.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 6: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Thank thank you guys for all you do and forgetting
Speaker 7: the word out.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 3: It could happen here. It's it's the podcast that's happening here.
Speaker 3: That's not what we called it that, but you know,
Speaker 3: such as such as such such as such as the world. Uh.
Speaker 3: And today I'm going to be talking about one of
Speaker 3: one of one of our I don't want to say rare,
Speaker 3: but we're we're doing one of our how do we
Speaker 3: put the World back Together? Episodes And in order to
Speaker 3: do that, I'm going to be talking with Miro and Krant,
Speaker 3: who are two organizers for the Dual Power Gathering bit
Speaker 3: West that's happening in what like two months ish. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's Cordon Miro. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 9: Thanks, it's great to be on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. It's great to have you too. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I guess I should I guess we should start
Speaker 3: with so this is this is well, I don't know
Speaker 3: if seconds the right term. The first of these happens
Speaker 3: last year in Indiana? Is it last year?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was last year. I had to I had I
Speaker 3: had to make it. I had to do a quick
Speaker 3: checking my memory to make sure that twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: was in fact last year and we haven't somehow, so
Speaker 3: we kept in the twenty twenty four already. Oh boy,
Speaker 3: things are things that things are going great here. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I wanted to, I guess start with talking about what
Speaker 3: the dual power gathering is and yeah, like what what
Speaker 3: what happened at the first one and how did it go?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so dual power gathering. Uh, I guess maybe I
Speaker 5: think to start with is what is dual power?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have talked about that in a bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it.
Speaker 5: Maybe the best way to put it is something that
Speaker 5: maybe a lot of people have heard before, which is
Speaker 5: building a new world in the shell of the old.
Speaker 5: So we live in a society, right, so there's a
Speaker 5: lot of institutions that we have to deal with, and
Speaker 5: for a lot of people it's essential to rely on
Speaker 5: these institutions because there's not other options. And as anarchists,
Speaker 5: it's kind of our goal to build those other options.
Speaker 5: And dual power is that building a second power in
Speaker 5: opposition to the state powers. So you know, like tech stuff,
Speaker 5: so internet, mesh, networks, just alternative infrastructures, alternative medical care.
Speaker 5: Though I'm sure that specific phrasing can and imply something
Speaker 5: else which I did not mean, but just working with
Speaker 5: communities to try to not rely on the state. And
Speaker 5: so dual power gathering is bringing together you know a
Speaker 5: bunch of people from orgs and independent activists and honestly
Speaker 5: people who just want to get involved and don't know
Speaker 5: a lot to help build those counter structures. And honestly,
Speaker 5: this cool Zone media brought a lot of people went
Speaker 5: to the podcast from last year, so it seems like
Speaker 5: your audience really really likes this stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm sad I wasn't able to go to last year's
Speaker 3: I was in the process of like setting up for
Speaker 3: and then I had a COVID scare. It had to
Speaker 3: like lock down for like an entire week in it,
Speaker 3: and it turned out that I didn't have it. But
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm very sad. I preferred that you didn't
Speaker 3: spread COVID. Yeah, I was like, so, okay, let's not
Speaker 3: like endanger people's lives. Seems better than in fact doing that.
Speaker 5: And on that note, since there's been questions both other events,
Speaker 5: we will be having mass requirements and at the event
Speaker 5: to make sure the immunal compromise people are not being excluded.
Speaker 5: I want to make that clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is this is like you know, so
Speaker 3: I like the last one from my understanding, you like,
Speaker 3: you know it was it was a bunch of it
Speaker 3: was bunch of people like camping in the dunes basically,
Speaker 3: And is this one also going to be sort of
Speaker 3: like mostly an outdoor thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's going to be We're not just going
Speaker 5: to say the location here, you can find that out
Speaker 5: through registering, but the location is just near Chicago and
Speaker 5: it's similarly outside. It's a big open space, not a
Speaker 5: lot of trees, which is sad this year. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it'll be mostly camping, but there's cabins and people can
Speaker 5: stand hotels nearby also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess okay, we've thought, we've talked a
Speaker 3: bit about what dual power is and sort of building
Speaker 3: this kind of counterpower and building you know, like and
Speaker 3: like I I guess I just want to say a
Speaker 3: little bit like these are like dual power institutions are
Speaker 3: just a lot of the things that you know, just
Speaker 3: we talk about building or like people you know or
Speaker 3: we've been involved in building and there's these are these
Speaker 3: these can be things like tennis unions like different like
Speaker 3: different well different like regular unions like caucuses and unions,
Speaker 3: uh like mutual aid networks like worker centers, and so
Speaker 3: there's there's you know, there's all sorts of things that
Speaker 3: can be involved in this. But so now now now
Speaker 3: having gotten we've gotten through dual power, we've sort of
Speaker 3: gotten through gathering, but we should should Yeah, I want
Speaker 3: to ask a bit more about like what what Okay,
Speaker 3: what what happens at the thing when you go to it?
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So it's built on the unconference model of doing things,
Speaker 9: which in essence is able to kind of counteract the
Speaker 9: idea that we need to have a sort of structured
Speaker 9: event that's you know, you do this at this point,
Speaker 9: you do this at this point, you do this at
Speaker 9: the point. Instead, is meant to be built more towards
Speaker 9: libertarian socialist principles, and it is where people are able
Speaker 9: to kind of build their own agenda from the start
Speaker 9: of the event and kind of structure their day how
Speaker 9: they want to. So you can talk to these people
Speaker 9: to go to a skill sharing event on stop the
Speaker 9: Bleed training, you can talk to these people to go
Speaker 9: to a skill share event on how to facilitate meetings.
Speaker 9: You can talk to these folk to learn a bit
Speaker 9: about anarchist history. You know, just all these different things
Speaker 9: that can be formatted however that you may so choose,
Speaker 9: and that are all kind of happening at the discretion
Speaker 9: of people who are involved. So it's very much so
Speaker 9: just up to you to build your own day, and
Speaker 9: of course you can also talk to other people there
Speaker 9: if you need some help. Plenty of the organizers involved
Speaker 9: are more than willing to help out and you know,
Speaker 9: lend people a hand in figuring out where everything is
Speaker 9: and what they might want to do and what other
Speaker 9: people are doing start their day around. But at the core,
Speaker 9: you know, it's built around individual choice, autonomy and just
Speaker 9: a non hierarchical method of going about it.
Speaker 5: So I can talk a little bit more about how
Speaker 5: that looked practically from last year. So the first night
Speaker 5: I wasn't there, so I can't talk much about that,
Speaker 5: but it was just mostly getting to know everybody. People
Speaker 5: were coming and throughout the night because work and all
Speaker 5: that on a Friday. But then that Saturday, after breakfast,
Speaker 5: which I don't even remember, it was like oat meal
Speaker 5: or something, we got together in this assembly area and
Speaker 5: brought out whiteboards and marked out days and people just
Speaker 5: stuck up what they wanted to talk about in a
Speaker 5: session on the board in a time slot, and then
Speaker 5: we got everyone to figure out, you know, which ones
Speaker 5: of these can be condensed. You know, do two people
Speaker 5: have similar ideas, can they talk about how they might
Speaker 5: want to have a session together, And then people just
Speaker 5: chose which sessions to go to. We kept the whiteboards
Speaker 5: up so people could see what was going on and where,
Speaker 5: and that worked out pretty well. I think the biggest
Speaker 5: concern from that was people wanted to go to everything.
Speaker 5: We simply did not have time, and they were like,
Speaker 5: can we make this a week And I think that's
Speaker 5: pushing it money wise. It's expensive enough to rent a
Speaker 5: campsite for a weekend, but it has.
Speaker 3: Like just a bunch of land they have sitting around
Speaker 3: they want to give to us for this.
Speaker 5: If you can, if you can make whatever ranch or
Speaker 5: farm you have like accessible for people, then yes, please
Speaker 5: reach out future gatherings.
Speaker 4: But the.
Speaker 5: Most important part I think was that the gathering model
Speaker 5: allowed all different groups there who had similar interests. For example,
Speaker 5: there was a POC caucus to self organize. There's also
Speaker 5: like a sex workers group. They were able to come
Speaker 5: together on their own figure out what's going on. And
Speaker 5: it wasn't based on what organizers thought was important. It
Speaker 5: was based on what participants thought was important. And I
Speaker 5: think that also facilitated a lot of networking. You were
Speaker 5: able to see, hey, there's a DIY medicine circle going
Speaker 5: on in this camp site. Well I'm going to go
Speaker 5: maybe stop by. I might not say the whole time,
Speaker 5: but I'm gonna check it out. See if I'm interested,
Speaker 5: see if I like I like the people there, And
Speaker 5: it allowed for especially newer folks to interact with veterans
Speaker 5: veteran activists and just engage with stuff they might have
Speaker 5: only felt uh interested in slightly and actually get involved
Speaker 5: and contribute. So yeah, that that's how it practically went
Speaker 5: for the unconference, And we didn't hear that many complaints
Speaker 5: about it, except that it maybe sometimes sessions were not
Speaker 5: time like the time was too short or too long,
Speaker 5: or that it wasn't like a week or two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, and then that that's stuff
Speaker 3: that likes, especially the first time you're running an event
Speaker 3: like stuff, Stuff like that happens, and you know, we
Speaker 3: can okay, this is I have not an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of experience running like panels and stuff, but like I've
Speaker 3: done it, and it's like god, getting the timing rights
Speaker 3: really hard and very annoying, but it's you know, this,
Speaker 3: this is a this is a thing that subsequent events
Speaker 3: will can and will sort of iterate on and get
Speaker 3: better at because you know, I guess what what what
Speaker 3: what what of One of the things that we are
Speaker 3: in fact learning at these is how to do these
Speaker 3: things that you know, I guess in this way hasn't
Speaker 3: been done before.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's not i mean not technically not been
Speaker 5: done before, but not done it this way. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: like like there's crime, think convergences or like the bashback.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, well I think it's an interesting thing
Speaker 3: too on a sort of like I don't know, I
Speaker 3: think I think there's a way in which this is
Speaker 3: in some sense kind of getting back to like older
Speaker 3: like models of anarchists organizing that kind of like I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna say they disappeared, but there's been sort of
Speaker 3: less of them due to like, you know, we just
Speaker 3: sort of like political shifts and like shifts the white
Speaker 3: people organized and like just what kinds of stuff were
Speaker 3: happening at any given time, and so you know, and
Speaker 3: I think that the consequence of this is a lot
Speaker 3: of people sort of relearning or you know, relearning and
Speaker 3: inventing things that like had been known. But you know, ever,
Speaker 3: everyone's working through it together, and you know, it turns
Speaker 3: out we're like we're pretty good at building things.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Like one thing that I think is really cool
Speaker 9: about DPG that kind of shines through is seeing how
Speaker 9: something like building an event like this, Like when I
Speaker 9: first got involved, you know, I pictured building an event
Speaker 9: like this is a huge ordeal.
Speaker 2: You know it was.
Speaker 9: You needed all these big connections, You needed to know
Speaker 9: a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy,
Speaker 9: and needed so many different resources at your disposal. It
Speaker 9: never really hit me that this could be something that
Speaker 9: just regular people could just up and decide to do.
Speaker 9: It's not to say it doesn't take a lot of
Speaker 9: effort and work. It does, but it's still ultimately something
Speaker 9: that is in the power of people to do if
Speaker 9: they really set themselves onto it and are able to
Speaker 9: find enough helping hands, both physically and in terms of
Speaker 9: the actual event. So it's like it's really cool to
Speaker 9: see just everyone coming together in the organizing process and
Speaker 9: it just being a very organic, natural thing. It's like,
Speaker 9: I don't know, you see it a lot with like
Speaker 9: other specific events I've done food not bomb stuff, and
Speaker 9: I've seen it there too, but like it's different, but
Speaker 9: it's something that you typically for see, at least I
Speaker 9: did for sea as like, oh, you know, building a
Speaker 9: whole weekend long event, you know you need, yeah to
Speaker 9: have corporate big shots doing that, you know, how can
Speaker 9: you expect the little guys to do that?
Speaker 5: And Yeah, it's also cool to see people just jump
Speaker 5: in and help who might not even have other organizing
Speaker 5: experience that this last year too, near the end of
Speaker 5: the planning for the gathering, there were so many people
Speaker 5: joining little circles on planning food and transportation logistics and
Speaker 5: how can I contribute? And I think the resounding result
Speaker 5: was people finding political hope. That was a term I
Speaker 5: heard a lot from from individuals who both went and
Speaker 5: helped organize the last one. And we're hoping to create
Speaker 5: a similar, similar thing this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's something that like I think I think
Speaker 3: everyone can use a bit more of right now. In
Speaker 3: a sort of in a very sort of depressing and bleak,
Speaker 3: like there's there's a lot of bad there's a lot
Speaker 3: of bad stuff happening and the ability to generate hope,
Speaker 3: and I you know, you could even think of it
Speaker 3: as sort of in just in terms of like morale, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's it's really really, really hard to actually achieve
Speaker 3: or change anything if everyone has just sort of given
Speaker 3: up already, and you know, like being around other people
Speaker 3: and being like planning events with people and doing stuff
Speaker 3: with people like is a very very good way to
Speaker 3: you know, just sort of break the kind of like
Speaker 3: existential dread and like depression of like living and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of hopelessness of like living in in in this
Speaker 3: like disaster that we've all been thrown into.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Something that somebody had mentioned at the last gathering
Speaker 5: that really stuck with me was that because of the
Speaker 5: uprising and COVID, most leptist organizing was formed through trauma bonding. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it was really nice to form relationships outside of
Speaker 5: traumatic incidents and they felt longer lasting and much safer
Speaker 5: than relationships built during crisis.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, I think,
Speaker 3: like I think that's just sort of important along those
Speaker 3: lines to remember is that like like building relationships, there's
Speaker 3: a decent extent to which that's just all organizing is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's it's not all organizing is, but
Speaker 3: it's it's a really important part of it. And the
Speaker 3: way that people are able to do this, especially in
Speaker 3: the wake of a bunch of like, you know, i mean,
Speaker 3: really sort of traumatic and horrible experiences people went through,
Speaker 3: Like yeah, glad we have a better way to do this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like, stuff like this is essentially well of some
Speaker 9: of the only things that give me a sense of
Speaker 9: optimism for the future, because those who know me know
Speaker 9: I tend to be a very pessimistic person. I don't
Speaker 9: look at current events, to put it concisely, and say, oh, wow,
Speaker 9: things are going pretty topsy turvy out there.
Speaker 4: I'm so.
Speaker 9: But when we have stuff like this going on that's
Speaker 9: just built at the level of, hey, where people trying
Speaker 9: to make things better and prevent the chaos from the
Speaker 9: outside world and the world around us from just consuming everything,
Speaker 9: It's like it gives a nice sense of community and
Speaker 9: a nice sense of hey, we're not alone in this,
Speaker 9: and that maybe tomorrow things will be a little bit
Speaker 9: better than they were today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's especially important in my opinion. I the first
Speaker 5: gathering I was not living in a city as I
Speaker 5: do now. I was livingd in not a city that
Speaker 5: people in big cities would call a city.
Speaker 3: I was in Nebraska, and I was gonna make a
Speaker 3: joke about Davenport or something, and that's kind of favorite Daport. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So being able to meet other rural organizers in various places,
Speaker 5: especially honestly the Appalachia region, which I did not realize
Speaker 5: was so related in their struggles, was important because no
Speaker 5: matter how much I wanted to network, it wasn't really
Speaker 5: that opportunity as much as there is in cities. And
Speaker 5: in cities there's a doesn't mean you're necessarily meeting more
Speaker 5: people or people that you necessarily would like to organize with.
Speaker 5: There's just there's often more need and not necessarily more anarchists.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And I mean, you know, it's something that
Speaker 3: we've talked about before, but we've basically built it. Well okay,
Speaker 3: well I say we didn't really build this, but the
Speaker 3: whole story we lived in the social system that we
Speaker 3: live in has been built sort of very specifically and
Speaker 3: very deliberately to isolate people. And yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of functions in different ways depending on sort
Speaker 3: of geography and regional stuff. But yeah, like I think
Speaker 3: I think this is you know, an important tool to
Speaker 3: sort of break that and to bring people together and
Speaker 3: to bring like I don't know, like I think I
Speaker 3: think like another part of this we haven't talked about
Speaker 3: as much as like just like really incredible things happen
Speaker 3: when you bring people together from struggles that like turn
Speaker 3: out to be very similar, but like aren't like aren't
Speaker 3: usually involved with each other, Like aren't you sort of
Speaker 3: like not like I haven't been able to sort of
Speaker 3: like link up before. You get very sort of like
Speaker 3: I don't know, you get a lot of really interesting
Speaker 3: sort of like ideas and strategic stuff from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like.
Speaker 9: One thing that I've noticed, especially and because I've done
Speaker 9: a lot of small town rule organizing, is that you
Speaker 9: can kind of easily develop like very isolated communities and
Speaker 9: isolated radical cultures and like specific regions. And it's not
Speaker 9: a great pitfall to fall into because you miss out
Speaker 9: on law of developments that might happen else sort of
Speaker 9: nice out a lot of other things that might happening
Speaker 9: in other regions, and even beyond just regions, going into
Speaker 9: specific intersectional issues like different different organizers who might focus
Speaker 9: specifically on racism versus corphobia, versus ableism. There's all things
Speaker 9: to learn from each other. Yeah, there's all interconnectedness, and
Speaker 9: when you tie that into interconnectedness of different regions, there's
Speaker 9: just a big need for things to be kind of
Speaker 9: like a large web of connectivity instead of just you know,
Speaker 9: oh things are kept separate and now we're stuck developing
Speaker 9: on a road.
Speaker 3: And that's that's another fun Yeah, and you know what,
Speaker 3: I guess circling the sort of back around to the
Speaker 3: specific event. The thing that y'all are doing to combat
Speaker 3: this is the is the Dual Power Gathering Midwest. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk a little bit about like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: when is this happening and also what are the plans
Speaker 3: so far for what it's going to look like and
Speaker 3: what people are going to be doing.
Speaker 5: So it's August seventeenth through twentieth, and this year is
Speaker 5: going to be pretty similar to last year. And you
Speaker 5: can also look at Dual Power West, which had their
Speaker 5: gathering earlier this summer. There's a good if you go
Speaker 5: to Sabo Media I think it's Sabomedia dot no blogs
Speaker 5: dot org or whatever. The no blogs addresses. You can
Speaker 5: look it up. They did a good report back on
Speaker 5: how that went, and we'll also have a documentary if
Speaker 5: people want to learn more.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that's sidetracked, but we'll put links to that in
Speaker 3: the description.
Speaker 9: So right now we're soliciting a lot of people to
Speaker 9: come and bring what they have to offer to the table.
Speaker 2: We are.
Speaker 9: In the end stages of setting everything up and getting
Speaker 9: everything connected, and part of that is we want people
Speaker 9: to bring over what they want to share, you know, skills,
Speaker 9: they want to share cool things they've learned about leftist history,
Speaker 9: things that are important to know for modern day society,
Speaker 9: intersectional issues, discussions, basically anything that people could think of
Speaker 9: that might be worthwhile. Come on over, bring it in.
Speaker 9: We'd love to talk to people and hear more about it.
Speaker 9: So in terms of specific so we might have planned
Speaker 9: at is where we're currently at. We're aiming for it
Speaker 9: to be like last year in that it's a skill
Speaker 9: share event and a discussion. It's, like I said, of
Speaker 9: discussions and just a way for people to share what
Speaker 9: they know with each other. And a few of us
Speaker 9: currently involved, you know, we all have our own ideas.
Speaker 9: I personally want to talk about unions and kind of
Speaker 9: be like, hey, unionize your workplace, but that's more so
Speaker 9: just me, and that it could be up to anyone,
Speaker 9: but what they want to do, kind of building off
Speaker 9: the Young conference model. It's if people want it, and
Speaker 9: you know, it's not like how to be a fascist
Speaker 9: one on one, then it's welcome.
Speaker 5: Some things we predict that will happen at the gathering
Speaker 5: will probably be circles on trans healthcare and abortion care
Speaker 5: give in recent events, well it doesn't even it's not
Speaker 5: really recent feeling anymore. But that plus, I think much
Speaker 5: more community defense is coming up because of those and
Speaker 5: I think as always there's all the DIY folks who
Speaker 5: come in last year pretty cool and I might overemphasize
Speaker 5: how much that's a part because I'm also one of
Speaker 5: those DIY people. It's a problem and an addiction at
Speaker 5: this point, but like you know, people who wanted to
Speaker 5: just build their own car, it's cool stuff. Yeah. The
Speaker 5: the random expertise of people coming was wonderful, and that
Speaker 5: all came together in ways I don't think anyone could
Speaker 5: have predicted, like literally the showing how to use batteries
Speaker 5: and how to like in a correct way chaining them education.
Speaker 5: I have an engineering degree. A lot of this stuff
Speaker 5: was so new to me in a very good way,
Speaker 5: and I hope that similar people come back. We can
Speaker 5: never predict. Leftists are wild. You never know if they're
Speaker 5: going to take to something. If we don't even know
Speaker 5: if certain people liked it because they just dropped off
Speaker 5: the map because they were, you know, just walking to
Speaker 5: Denver or something after the gathering. But I think the
Speaker 5: gathering is our focus has been on getting people to network,
Speaker 5: and so I think what we've planned besides food, which
Speaker 5: I think we can talk about in a second, is
Speaker 5: just making sure people come away with the relationships we've
Speaker 5: talked so much about already, and trying to give people
Speaker 5: the opportunities explicitly to socialize, because we also know that
Speaker 5: people tend to be not veries friendly when approached in
Speaker 5: maybe every day organizing, even though you say they should be. Maybe,
Speaker 5: but life stressful, and I don't blame people, So we're
Speaker 5: trying to make it a very friendly environment for talking
Speaker 5: to other people and trying to maybe make that the
Speaker 5: only other structured thing in the day besides meals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I guess I should also say that, like,
Speaker 3: if you can do something cool and you want to
Speaker 3: go show people that, I mean something cool. You should
Speaker 3: in fact do this because it rips.
Speaker 9: Please, yes, just for me, like, please come and show
Speaker 9: us some cool stuff, like there is so much opportunity
Speaker 9: for amazing things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess you know, speaking of amazing things, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we should talk about food a little bit because you know,
Speaker 3: food important part of all human societies.
Speaker 9: So for food, we're aiming for it to be petered.
Speaker 9: Vegan food from local restaurants along with various cooked meals
Speaker 9: as well is what we're kind of shooting for. So
Speaker 9: we're going to be covering three meals a day breakfast, lunch,
Speaker 9: and dinner, and aiming to have enough to cover everyone
Speaker 9: for the three days of the gathering.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and if food we have doesn't work, we also
Speaker 5: have plans to make sure that we can accommodate people.
Speaker 5: This is not far from other It's not like out
Speaker 5: in the middle of nowhere. We'll be able to access
Speaker 5: various stores and stuff. A lot of the gatherings would
Speaker 5: rely on the typical way of just having I don't know,
Speaker 5: some gatherings just have the food happen. They just say, well,
Speaker 5: foods on the group and that's fun and all, but
Speaker 5: we also want to ensure.
Speaker 3: That there is food and that there's like vegan for people,
Speaker 3: which is absolutely yeah, and stuff like that. Do you
Speaker 3: do you have anything else that you want to talk
Speaker 3: about about the event before we close out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I'll just say too that we are aiming for this
Speaker 9: event to be accessible to folk with disabilities, folks with children,
Speaker 9: essentially to anyone and everyone would be interested if we
Speaker 9: want to be accessible. On our website we talk a
Speaker 9: bit more in detail about the specific ways in which
Speaker 9: the site itself is divisibility accessible, and we also invite
Speaker 9: folk to if there's any suggestions, concerns, anything of the
Speaker 9: sort for how we can make this more accessible for people,
Speaker 9: more welcoming, more open. We invite people to come and
Speaker 9: let us know. We're still learning and still trying to
Speaker 9: do this better. So anything we can improve upon, please
Speaker 9: let us know, because we want to do right by folk.
Speaker 5: And on the note of families and kids, youth are
Speaker 5: absolutely welcome. We have some families in well, some parents
Speaker 5: specifically in the organizing right now. We hope we want
Speaker 5: kids to be able to be as involved as they
Speaker 5: want to be. Last year, I think that it ended
Speaker 5: up working out with the kids that were there, and
Speaker 5: they're amazing and you can see that in the documentary too,
Speaker 5: but we want to make sure that's something we actually
Speaker 5: plan for this time, to make sure that they don't
Speaker 5: feel excluded and also that parents are able to fully participate.
Speaker 5: And yet you can see more on our website which
Speaker 5: is Dpgmidwest dot org.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we'll have links to that in the description too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and on there you'll see linked is our open
Speaker 5: collective where if you go there you can There's a
Speaker 5: variety of options on there which might be overwhelming. There's
Speaker 5: a donation option if you can't come but would like
Speaker 5: to donate, and then there's tickets they don't you can
Speaker 5: use pseudonyms. It's pretty anonymous. It's fine and you don't
Speaker 5: have to pay necessarily, but there's a suggested donation listed
Speaker 5: on there so that we are able to afford the
Speaker 5: campsite and people don't have to pay too much upfront. Two. Uh,
Speaker 5: by the by the campsite, I guess rent the campsite
Speaker 5: for the days and get food and stuff, and then
Speaker 5: there's options to get reserve a spot in a cabin
Speaker 5: if there's still spots left. We don't need to have
Speaker 5: a reservation, but we're trying to make sure that it's
Speaker 5: that we're prioritizing people with those access needs. And of
Speaker 5: course our emails also listed on both the Open Collective
Speaker 5: and the website, so that'll probably be the main source
Speaker 5: for info. We also have a collective account.
Speaker 3: Despite the problems. Right now, learn offseck do that people,
Speaker 3: It's good, you will go far.
Speaker 5: Yeah. God, I'm thinking about making a tumbler because what's happening.
Speaker 5: But the Yeah, it's also at DPG Midwest at collect
Speaker 5: the Social.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and once again, this is running from August seventeenth
Speaker 3: to the twentieth, and yeah it sounds interesting. Go sign
Speaker 3: up and yeah, yeah, thank you to so much for
Speaker 3: joining us. Why am I saying us? Sorry, I just
Speaker 3: I just reflectively do the US. And then I'm like, wait,
Speaker 3: hold on, hold on, there's the Royal WE and the
Speaker 3: Anarchist US. Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm excited. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I may be there, I may not be. It depends
Speaker 3: on a bunch of scheduling stuff that I have very
Speaker 3: little control over. But yeah, other people should go. It's
Speaker 3: going to be a good event. And yeah, thank you
Speaker 3: to again, thank you, thank you. Yeah, and this has
Speaker 3: been it can happen here. You can find us in
Speaker 3: the usual places if they still exist by the time
Speaker 3: that's eppen so it comes out. Oh yeah, we now
Speaker 3: have the cooler Zone media thing. If you don't want
Speaker 3: to listen to the Reagan ads or like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: a bunch of other ads for podcasts or whatever weird
Speaker 3: things playing right now. I think I've been getting casino
Speaker 3: ads lately, which is kind of interesting. But if you
Speaker 3: don't listen to that, we have a subscription service from
Speaker 3: Apple that you can buy, and then you don't want
Speaker 3: to have ads for all of our shows. We're working.
Speaker 3: We're still working on the Android one that hopefully will
Speaker 3: be happening soon. But that's anoverything that's we're doing. We're
Speaker 3: doing our best. We're not we unfortunately are not Apple,
Speaker 3: Like we don't own all of the stuff, so we
Speaker 3: have to do a bunch of stuff to work through it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, go go out into the world, build dual
Speaker 3: power and have a good time while you do it.
Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen
Speaker 4: Here with your guest host Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism. Today,
Speaker 4: I'm joined by Mia and I'm looking to discuss a
Speaker 4: topic that I brought up in passing in a previous episode,
Speaker 4: that being the idea of conviviality, and the episode in
Speaker 4: question being in my podcast on the Growth. So when
Speaker 4: I first stumbled upon this concept of conviviality, I thought
Speaker 4: it was just you know, one of those exciting, fluffy
Speaker 4: aged prop buzzwords, right, something you you throw into you know,
Speaker 4: your your propaganda, your conversations, your descriptions of a better world.
Speaker 4: You like, Oh, I would love to live in a
Speaker 4: world it's more convened on these different things. Convivial being
Speaker 4: defined in the Dictionary as the quality of being friendly
Speaker 4: and lively.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: Synonyms include amiability, affability, continuality, et cetera, et cetera. I
Speaker 4: didn't come here to be a thesaurus. I came here
Speaker 4: to talk about the deeper meanings behind these things. Right. So,
Speaker 4: in such in this world, in this term up in
Speaker 4: more depth, I ended up going down this rabbit hole,
Speaker 4: and I discovered there's a whole history to the term
Speaker 4: that spans. I mean, I mean, I'm not going as
Speaker 4: far back as its Latin origins, right, I mean, we
Speaker 4: could talk about the French and their loan words making
Speaker 4: their way into the English language. We could talk about
Speaker 4: the Spanish concept of contivencia being interpreted literally as living
Speaker 4: in the company of others, or in one particular context,
Speaker 4: such as in Spain between the eighteenth and fifteenth centuries,
Speaker 4: describing the peaceful co existence between different religious groups. But
Speaker 4: I'm not going that far back. I'm sticking to the
Speaker 4: history of the term, from ivan Ilich to the de
Speaker 4: growth movement to the conviviality manifestos that have come out
Speaker 4: of online and offline discussions, academic and nonacademic discussions of
Speaker 4: this idea of conviviality. Now, I gave a sort of
Speaker 4: a basic dictionary definition before, but I want to go
Speaker 4: a bit deeper, right, So what is conviviality exactly? Conviviality
Speaker 4: is about creating a fun and friendly atmosphere where people
Speaker 4: can come together and have a great time. That's it
Speaker 4: in this essence, right, It's that feeling you get when
Speaker 4: you're surrounded by lively conversations and laughter and a sense
Speaker 4: of celebration. You know, those moments where everyone's enjoying each
Speaker 4: other's company and it's a real sense of camaraderie. I
Speaker 4: think using conviviality as a barometer is really helpful in
Speaker 4: organizing situations. Right, If you're in an environment where you
Speaker 4: are organized and where you're doing practice and you're not
Speaker 4: picking up those convivial vibes, it may be a sign
Speaker 4: that there's some toxicity in the mix there. I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that the work of activism has to be a
Speaker 4: trip to amusement park, right, It doesn't have to be
Speaker 4: a carnival, but I think there does need to be
Speaker 4: for sortidarity to exist. I think there should have some
Speaker 4: level of camaraderie and conviviality in the atmosphere. So you
Speaker 4: can think of conviviality as the spirit of hospitality and
Speaker 4: warth Right. It's like when you gather with your friends
Speaker 4: or when you have those family occasions and bring it
Speaker 4: around together. Even in workplace, you know, when union workers
Speaker 4: get along really well and you're organizing to create this
Speaker 4: union and you're going to take down your boss. It's
Speaker 4: a fun time, right, And so how do we get
Speaker 4: from this, you know, sort of seemingly simple, sociable idea
Speaker 4: of living and enjoying life in the company of others,
Speaker 4: making people feel welcome and included. How do we move
Speaker 4: from that idea this conviviality is a vital part of
Speaker 4: human interaction, to conviviality in a more political context. How
Speaker 4: do we go from just talking about social connections and
Speaker 4: adding meaning to our lives and enjoying festivities and shift
Speaker 4: to conversations about the social and political stay of the world.
Speaker 4: Right now, Right, there's this one particular guy who's kind
Speaker 4: of respons reponsible for this, A guy I personally like
Speaker 4: to call the illest, that being the one and only
Speaker 4: Australian philosopher, social critic and Catholic priest Ivan Elch Over
Speaker 4: the course, it was nearly eighty years of life since
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty six. This multi hyphenate, I think that's the
Speaker 4: tam where you use people who have a lot of
Speaker 4: different titles. Right, This multi hyphenate from Vienna, Italy had
Speaker 4: a significant impact on a bunch of fields, you know,
Speaker 4: from education to medicines, technology to social justice. I know
Speaker 4: his name because he came up a lot when I
Speaker 4: was doing research on unschool and te school and and
Speaker 4: just the education system as a whole. But apparently he's
Speaker 4: done a lot more than just that. He's challenged. He's
Speaker 4: challenged conventional thinking in all sort fields, and he's questioned
Speaker 4: the inherent assumptions and structures of modern society. Evans, and
Speaker 4: I hope he doesn't mind that I call me I Van,
Speaker 4: because I don't know if I'm pronouncing his German name correctly, right,
Speaker 4: his German lasting correctly, So just call him Ivan. He
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't mind, because he's dead. But Evan's intellectual journey
Speaker 4: took him through a bunch of different paths. Right. He
Speaker 4: studied theology and philosophy and eventually became a priest, and
Speaker 4: he lived and worked in different parts of the world,
Speaker 4: including Latin America, where he witnessed firsthand the effects of
Speaker 4: development projects and the power dynamics between developed and developing nations,
Speaker 4: and those experiences deeply influenced his critical perspective on the
Speaker 4: modern industrialized world. He also became a very prolific author,
Speaker 4: known for his thought provoking and often controversial writings such
Speaker 4: as The School and Society, which he published nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 4: Tools for Comality published nineteen seventy three, and Medical Nemesis,
Speaker 4: published in nineteen seventy six, and in these books he
Speaker 4: challenged established institutions and systems offered alternative visions that emphasized
Speaker 4: individual autonomy, community engagement, and wait for it, convivial relationships
Speaker 4: ilicious or evans critique of education systems contributed to development
Speaker 4: of altunative educational approaches such as homeschooling, on schooling, and
Speaker 4: learners centered education. His examination of the medical establishment sparked
Speaker 4: discussions on patient empowerment and the need for a more
Speaker 4: participatory model of healthcare, something I would like to discuss
Speaker 4: in a future episode, though I would like to find
Speaker 4: someone in the disability justice space to have that discussion with,
Speaker 4: because that is an area of experiential ignorance for me. Yes,
Speaker 4: So if anybody has a suggestions, I'd appreciate it. But
Speaker 4: Evan's legacy, right, it extends far beyond his lifetime, as
Speaker 4: it's clear he has elasting impact on critical theory, on
Speaker 4: social philosophy, and the quest for a more just and
Speaker 4: humane world. And I'm gassed up the guy a lot,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure he has some flaws that someone will
Speaker 4: no doubt inform me about and I have not read
Speaker 4: all of it. Yeah, he does go. He did go
Speaker 4: sign the Catholic Change byb being a priest, I se right,
Speaker 4: So I'm sure he has his flaws, and I have
Speaker 4: not read all of his literature. I haven't even read
Speaker 4: Medical Nemesis yet. But in Tools of Conviviality in particular,
Speaker 4: I want to discuss his perspective on conviviality and its
Speaker 4: role in society. Right in the book, he expresses these
Speaker 4: deep concerns about the negative effects of modern institutions and systems,
Speaker 4: and he argued that they often hindered personal freedom, autonomy,
Speaker 4: and human flourishing. He believes many of our social structures
Speaker 4: had become oppressive as they dictated not only how we
Speaker 4: should live, learn, and interact, but also how we saw
Speaker 4: ourselves as people. He argued that our systems had become
Speaker 4: highly centralized, reliant on professional expertise and complex technologies that
Speaker 4: limited individual agency and self determination. Now, one could be
Speaker 4: bad faith, I suppose and say that, Oh, is he
Speaker 4: saying that Ivan was anti complex technology? Is he some
Speaker 4: sort of popular culture vasadization of Luodites or something. But
Speaker 4: his concern was not necessarily on the technology itself and
Speaker 4: the complex dat of technology, but more so how that
Speaker 4: technology slotted into the structured society as a whole. Right,
Speaker 4: his concern was about how these elite professional groups had
Speaker 4: established called a radical monopoly over fundamental human activities including health, agriculture,
Speaker 4: home building, and learning. And this monopoly, it's monopoly is
Speaker 4: criticized and all the technology, but the monopoly, according to Ivan,
Speaker 4: had led to a detrimental war and subsistence that deprived
Speaker 4: formerly pasant societies of the essential skills and know how.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, like I feel like that's a
Speaker 3: pretty I think I think it's pretty hard to.
Speaker 4: Like tour that line.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if I think, like I think
Speaker 3: specifically that line of agriculture is pretty hard to like
Speaker 3: not fought, like, not agree with if you look at
Speaker 3: the effects that the Green Revolution had on other people
Speaker 3: who do agriculture. Oh yeah, sure, Yeah, I mean and
Speaker 3: I think this goes to it, like this falls in
Speaker 3: with the sort of like you know, like the sort
Speaker 3: of social technological aspect of it. Of like the fact
Speaker 3: that this was combined with this massive sort of social
Speaker 3: technological push to you know, dry farmers into debt, you know,
Speaker 3: so they could afford the inputs for this stuff, and
Speaker 3: what it did to sort of what it did to
Speaker 3: the actual farming communities and what it did to people's livelihoods.
Speaker 3: And you know the way that like a lot of
Speaker 3: this was just the sort of smoke screen for like
Speaker 3: consolidation of major landowners, et cetera, et cetera. Like I think,
Speaker 3: I think he's pretty on the right point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, For those who don't know, by the way,
Speaker 4: the Green Revolution refers to a period of technological advance
Speaker 4: moments and agricultural strategies that took place during the mid
Speaker 4: twentieth century, primarily in developing countries. It aimed to increase
Speaker 4: agricultural productivity and food production to the adoption of high
Speaker 4: yielding crop varieties, increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, and modern
Speaker 4: farming techniques. And the Green Revolution is basically responsible for
Speaker 4: a lot of the most damaging practices that we see
Speaker 4: in agriculture today, right from the heavy reliance on chemical
Speaker 4: inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, which leads to you know,
Speaker 4: soil degradation with war's a pollution lost by diversity, you know,
Speaker 4: the emphasis on monocultures and replacements of traditional crop varieties
Speaker 4: of high yielding ones that reduced agrobi diversity and led
Speaker 4: to diseases proliferate in between certain species, intensive farming practices
Speaker 4: that could not be kept up with by small scale farmers,
Speaker 4: like Mio was saying, the consolidation of land and the
Speaker 4: ability to manage that land into these acribusiness corporations and
Speaker 4: major landowners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's worth emphasizing that this was
Speaker 3: very explicitly see anti communist thing. I mean, the State
Speaker 3: Department's like actual explicit line was a great revolution to
Speaker 3: stop a bread revolution. So like a big part of
Speaker 3: what this was about was like stopping land reform from happening,
Speaker 3: which right, yeah, is incredibly bleak.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and now it's the dominant practice globally and it's
Speaker 4: having detrimental impacts globally the end. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 4: some of those some of them are going to be
Speaker 4: dead very soon. Yeah, the rest of us have to
Speaker 4: suffer the consequences story of my life, yeap, which.
Speaker 3: Is right. Yeah. You think that's sort of wild about
Speaker 3: it too, is that like the countries that did land
Speaker 3: reform like developed better capitalist economies and the ones who didn't.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you know, like yeah, yay, the better doing copless.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean and like yeah, it's like they're
Speaker 3: they're better. It turns out doing land reform actually does
Speaker 3: help both like non capitalist and capitalist economies. But unfortunately
Speaker 3: the green revolutionary people, the revolution people like already even
Speaker 3: like people who care about the efficiency of capitalism, they
Speaker 3: care about like the power of the land owning class.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and I mean that I don't know if
Speaker 4: this is a saying, but I might make it a
Speaker 4: say in I think socialists are beat are doing copitless
Speaker 4: and then copless.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean the entire is this is the
Speaker 3: entire story of China, right, It's like, yeah, like Marc's
Speaker 3: Leninism is a really really efficient way to turn a
Speaker 3: feudal economy into a capitalist economy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, if I was in charge of capitalism, I
Speaker 4: was going to make sure that the people at the
Speaker 4: bottom class brought into the system. Who will see and yeah,
Speaker 4: propaganding education is a part of it, but also you
Speaker 4: want to make sure they're not vulnerable to being radicalized.
Speaker 4: The best way to do that is to ensure the
Speaker 4: basic needs are met. Yeah, but you know, even arguing
Speaker 4: that will have some people, uh, misinformed, I would say,
Speaker 4: but well intentioned labeling you a socialist, Like I think
Speaker 4: people should have good things. Oh you're dirty red comedy
Speaker 4: you but you know it's it's just well, it's just
Speaker 4: literally wealthier capitalism. But apparently that's too much for a
Speaker 4: lot of capitalists. Apparently. I mean literally, the reason we
Speaker 4: have welfare capitalism is because socialists forward for it in
Speaker 4: the early twentieth century and early to mid twentieth century.
Speaker 4: So you know, we have socialists to thank for everything, basically.
Speaker 4: But I'm getting off track, right, So, like I was saying,
Speaker 4: this monopoly, this radical monopoly over fundamental human activities, that's
Speaker 4: a detrimental war and subsistence that are deprived peasant societies
Speaker 4: of the essential skills and know how, instead of promoting
Speaker 4: human flourishing, all this economic development ended up feeding into
Speaker 4: what Yvane has termed modernized poverty. And it's something I
Speaker 4: think about often, right, this idea of the poor back
Speaker 4: then versus the poor now, right, And of course it
Speaker 4: depends on which society you're talking about, which time period
Speaker 4: you're talking about. But let's just pick some random like
Speaker 4: historic poor person. Right, Let's just say, I don't know,
Speaker 4: generic civilization, A. This person is poor, right, They after work,
Speaker 4: they have to work the land, backbreaking toil. Sometimes raiders
Speaker 4: would roll it and be like, oh, we're going to
Speaker 4: take your stuff now, and then they would like ride
Speaker 4: their horses away and probably I don't know, dab on
Speaker 4: you or whatever, or the raiders will roll in, they'll
Speaker 4: take your stuff and then they'll be like, oh, I
Speaker 4: want to stay, and then now you have to pay
Speaker 4: taxes to me every year. And you know, that's how
Speaker 4: a lot of states were created. But whether it's you know,
Speaker 4: nomadic warlords or settled warlords, at least you had a house.
Speaker 4: At least you had a community. At least you had
Speaker 4: the ability to grow your own food, even though a
Speaker 4: lot of that food was being taxed. And you know,
Speaker 4: at least you had certain skills that you could use
Speaker 4: to sustain yourself. Right. Compare that to modern poverty, where
Speaker 4: you have this large swath of people who are dependent,
Speaker 4: who are mechanical parts in a system that they cannot
Speaker 4: fully understand, comprehend and control for themselves. With this, you know,
Speaker 4: whole industrial revolution, where you take this process of making
Speaker 4: a chair, for example, and you break it up into
Speaker 4: a bunch of different steps, and each person that step, well,
Speaker 4: you knows how to do one thing, but they don't
Speaker 4: have to do the entire thing right. Like the poor
Speaker 4: today versus the poor of yesteryear, the latter still had
Speaker 4: these skills for subsistence, and many of today is poor,
Speaker 4: particularly the urban poor, because I know the rural poor,
Speaker 4: a lot of them still sustain themselves, still practice you know,
Speaker 4: sustem subsistence farming and that kind of thing, but particularly
Speaker 4: the urban poor, they don't even have like a lot
Speaker 4: of those skills to rely on to even sustain themselves
Speaker 4: in that level. For the urbanists in the audience, you
Speaker 4: might appreciate the Devan also talks about the dominance of
Speaker 4: cars and how they've created this radical monopoly over land
Speaker 4: sitting out urban environments into the domain of cars, which
Speaker 4: not only compromises the environment for pedestrians and cyclists, but
Speaker 4: also disrupts our innate mobility as human beings. Stephen takes
Speaker 4: it a step further right. And this particular opinion, opinion
Speaker 4: of his is a bit shaky for me, so something
Speaker 4: I've been let in stewing my brain a little bit more.
Speaker 4: But let me just read the quote. The radical monopoly
Speaker 4: cars establish is destructive in a special way. Cars create distance.
Speaker 4: Speedy vehicles of all kinds render space, scarce. They drive
Speaker 4: wedges of highways into populated areas and the next door
Speaker 4: tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between people that
Speaker 4: was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly overland tour in
Speaker 4: space into cough fodder. It destroys the environment for feet
Speaker 4: and bicycles, even if polices and buses could run as
Speaker 4: non pollutant, even if planes and buses could run as
Speaker 4: non pollutant, non deplice in public services, they're inhuman velocities,
Speaker 4: wo degrade mans inned mobility and force him to spend
Speaker 4: more time for the sake of travel. I'm sure he
Speaker 4: could pick up on why that particular opinion is a
Speaker 4: bit shaky, right, Yeah, it's not just anti car. He's
Speaker 4: also a bit anti fleen and bus.
Speaker 3: To be fair, I'm also anti bus, but like planes,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like, are they great for the environment?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Do you sometimes need to go to another continent? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so he is. He probably reads like
Speaker 4: r slash f cars and he's like, uh, y'all, don't
Speaker 4: take it far.
Speaker 3: You know, you guys are filming models.
Speaker 4: Liberals. But yeah, so, I highly recommend reading the actual
Speaker 4: book and full for further insight and context, and I
Speaker 4: do want to dig into his thoughts on it further
Speaker 4: in the future, but you know, food for thought. Let
Speaker 4: me know what you think of those inhuman velocities. But anyway,
Speaker 4: memes aside, I think the benefit of Evan's critique of
Speaker 4: the radical monopoly is that it provides a different perspective, right.
Speaker 4: It sheds light on the negative consequences of excessive specialization,
Speaker 4: technocratic control, and the prioritization of speed and efficiency over
Speaker 4: human well being. Zoeb on YouTube actually has a really
Speaker 4: great video and the idea of efficiency as this ultimate
Speaker 4: moral good, so I recommend checking that out, especially since
Speaker 4: the standard narrative that we are utterly bombarded by is
Speaker 4: that all these things are uncontroversially good.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: What I appreciate about Yvan and his ideas is that
Speaker 4: they challenge us to reconsider our relationship with systems, tools,
Speaker 4: and institutions, and he encourages us to strive for more
Speaker 4: balanced and confivial society. And what does that convivial society
Speaker 4: look like to him? Well, let's continue. Ivan's solution argues
Speaker 4: for the developments of new, accessible and user friendly instruments
Speaker 4: that would allow average citizens to regain practical knowledge and
Speaker 4: reclaim control over their lives, as well as resist the
Speaker 4: domination of specialized elites. That's why Ivan Ilich's book Tools
Speaker 4: for Conviviality is sponsored by Skills. All right, I know
Speaker 4: that's a bad joke. Yvan believed that society should be
Speaker 4: organized to save the needs and aspirations of individuals, rather
Speaker 4: than creating systems that their potential and autronomy. And so
Speaker 4: for Yvan conviviality. Here we are back to the original topic.
Speaker 4: Conviviality represented a society in which individuals had the power
Speaker 4: to shape their own lives, free from excessive dependence on
Speaker 4: institutionalized systems. He envisioned a will people had access to
Speaker 4: convivial tools, simple user friendly technologies that empowered them to
Speaker 4: take control of their own destinies. For example, the dominant
Speaker 4: education system separates learners from the real world and disempowers them.
Speaker 4: Yvan advocates for more self directed and community based education,
Speaker 4: where people could pursue knowledge and skills according to their
Speaker 4: own interests and needs. Van also critiques the over reliance
Speaker 4: on medical professionals and call for a shift towards a
Speaker 4: more participatory model of healthcare that gives individuals access to
Speaker 4: information and resources that allow them to actively participate in
Speaker 4: their own health decisions rather than be in these passive
Speaker 4: recipients of medical interventions. In transportation systems, he also advocates
Speaker 4: for more human skill and community oriented transportation alternatives. He
Speaker 4: envisions neighborhoods designed for walking and biking, which would foster
Speaker 4: social interactions and reduce the environmental impact of excessive motorized transport.
Speaker 4: In essence, Evan viewed conviviality as a transformative concept that
Speaker 4: aimed to restore individual agency and personal connections and a
Speaker 4: sense of empowerment in society. He challenged the prevalance structures
Speaker 4: and systems that limited human potential and proposed more participatory,
Speaker 4: community driven alternatives, and to this day, his ideas continue
Speaker 4: to inspire discussions on how we can create a convivial
Speaker 4: society that values human relationships, self determination, and a shared
Speaker 4: responsibility for shaping our own lives. What I found particularly
Speaker 4: in in researching this was learned that the book's vision
Speaker 4: of tools that would be developed maintained by a community
Speaker 4: of users that actually had significant influence on the first
Speaker 4: developers the personal computer mind blowing I know most notably
Speaker 4: one of the create first developers of the PC, Lee
Speaker 4: Felt Felsenstein, Lee Felsenstein, he and several others were just
Speaker 4: were inspired by this idea within the book, because we
Speaker 4: remember Ivana's righting this before the internet, and they go
Speaker 4: and they take this idea, and then they make the internet,
Speaker 4: or they make the personal computer, because computers existed prior
Speaker 4: to the personal computer, but they weren't as accessible, they
Speaker 4: weren't a tool of conviviality, whereas the personal computer of
Speaker 4: today is. And I just think that's beautiful and amazing.
Speaker 4: But Ivan's ideas did more than just, you know, shape
Speaker 4: the course of human history. He also would shape the
Speaker 4: creation of confivulist movement. In twenty ten, eight years after
Speaker 4: Ivan died and thirty seven years after Yvan published Tools
Speaker 4: for Conviviality, Raymond de Boiver published Confivialism, a philosophical Manifesto,
Speaker 4: and in it, Barvert begins by discussing the key theme
Speaker 4: in Michael Polland's books The Botany of Desire, which is
Speaker 4: a creage read by the way, and The Omnivores Dilemma,
Speaker 4: which I haven't read yet, But the key theme is
Speaker 4: co evolution.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The first book humorously suggests that plants manipulate humans to coevolve,
Speaker 4: with them taking care of their needs in exchange for
Speaker 4: nutrition or beauty, and the second book, The Omnivoe Dilemma,
Speaker 4: the importance of interconnected components for vibrant pharm is emphasized,
Speaker 4: with Korn serving as an example of a plant that
Speaker 4: relies on humans for survival. Bavert proposes that focusing on
Speaker 4: the prefix co in co evolution could have philosophical implications
Speaker 4: similar to William James's emphasis on the preposition with by
Speaker 4: you know. Examining the significance of these prepositions co com
Speaker 4: con or coal as well as sin, the author argues
Speaker 4: for a philosophy that recognizes omnipresent interconnection. Michael Polland's books
Speaker 4: do this well in the context of food, but Waver
Speaker 4: wants to take this The implications of this uh taken
Speaker 4: preposition seriously into rearrangement the philosophy itself, and now we're getting,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of heavy, right, As Quavert argues, philosophers
Speaker 4: have often neglected the significance of interconnected relationships, while farmers
Speaker 4: recognize the importance of interconnectedness. You know how things like
Speaker 4: land and water and stuff all work together. Modern philosophy,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, according to Bova, since the Renaissance
Speaker 4: has been focused on these self standing and independent entities,
Speaker 4: not interconnected entities. And I don't know how true this
Speaker 4: is because I'm not I didn't study philosophy. I'm just
Speaker 4: communicating Varveir's arguments here, right. And so the idea of
Speaker 4: autonomy in modern philosophy, according to Barva, seem to exclude
Speaker 4: the with factor in existence, relegating relations and interconnections to
Speaker 4: a secondary role. So Whatver is saying is that philosophy
Speaker 4: is sort on this foundation that we are autonomous and
Speaker 4: self sufficient first, right, and then everything else comes after.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: Rousseau, for example, portrayed an idyllic existence where connections independencies
Speaker 4: with viewers the impositions. You know, we went from being
Speaker 4: autonomous to being stuck in this whoever inter dependencies, and
Speaker 4: then as a result coming out to that, the philosophical
Speaker 4: idea of liberation for some ended up returning for some
Speaker 4: meant to return into this original state of authenticity and
Speaker 4: disengagement from connections. The concept of freedom itself became something
Speaker 4: that was anti interdependency, and so the focus shifted away
Speaker 4: from this idea of humans being inherently interdependent. But then
Speaker 4: this alternative point of view came about, right, And this
Speaker 4: shift coincided with the introduction of the term symbiosis and biology,
Speaker 4: which combined the Greek word for life with the preposition
Speaker 4: with and the concept of sympiosis found its way eventually
Speaker 4: into everyday language and discourse. So that's the Greek term symbiosis.
Speaker 4: Let me go to the Latin term conviviality, meaning with living,
Speaker 4: and that long predated you know, science and philosophy used
Speaker 4: to describe just ordinary experiences. And so to avoid getting
Speaker 4: lost into the philosopher's favorite past time of you know,
Speaker 4: navigating various words and all their package to bort a
Speaker 4: downed simplicity, Boivert is seeking to ask what a conviviloust
Speaker 4: turn in philosophy might look like and what changes in
Speaker 4: philosophy might be taken place. For one, he's concerned with
Speaker 4: how embracing convivialism might change our understanding of metaphysics.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: By embracing this metaphors of existence as about the relation
Speaker 4: and conjunction between components, about the interplane interconnectedness of various elements,
Speaker 4: rather than about a collection of separate units, you end
Speaker 4: up going from this position of isolation to this position
Speaker 4: of profound interrelation, and then you begin to focus on
Speaker 4: the interactions between people rather than just the experiences within people.
Speaker 4: In the sphere of philosophical anthropology, while Vera argues that
Speaker 4: are contrivial to and would mean redefining humanity, you know,
Speaker 4: taking this concept that you know, we're not just these
Speaker 4: purely logical and calculating beings. We are Homo sapiens. And
Speaker 4: the term sapiens is derived from the Latin word for taste,
Speaker 4: which highlights the human capacity to constantly try and test,
Speaker 4: to constantly experiments, to actually participate in interactions with our surroundings.
Speaker 4: So in this cond of your turn, we return to
Speaker 4: the original definition of the name we gave ourselves right
Speaker 4: as taste does as flexible, educable, subject to investigation and improvement,
Speaker 4: constantly testing and experiment and then seeing what is best
Speaker 4: in specific contexts. Seeing that taste as sapiens, as homo sapiens,
Speaker 4: taste is inherently pluralistic because there is no universe cell taste.
Speaker 4: There is no single taste that is like, oh, this
Speaker 4: is the taste. Everybody must have cared to this taste.
Speaker 4: Everybody has a different taste. We talk about that when
Speaker 4: we talk about taste, and I think the implications are
Speaker 4: particularly profound when we bring it into the preferative, this
Speaker 4: sphere of profriative politics. Right whereas tasters as experimenters, we
Speaker 4: are looking for ways to prefigure new social relations and
Speaker 4: institutions and relationships and structures and systems for the future
Speaker 4: in the here now, and that requires tastes, and that
Speaker 4: requires experimentation. That requires an acceptance of pluralism, because everyone
Speaker 4: has a different taste, and everyone's going to bring something
Speaker 4: different to the table, and that's beautiful. And then also
Speaker 4: in the field of epistemology, the confribulist perspective challenges the
Speaker 4: opposition between subject and object to understand reality, rejects the
Speaker 4: idea of the mind as a mere mirror reflecting reality
Speaker 4: or project imposts and conceptual schemes onto reality. Because confivialism
Speaker 4: is about how the intermediaries, the facility to interactions, how
Speaker 4: they affect the way that we perceive and reflect on
Speaker 4: reality itself. It also requires us to let go of
Speaker 4: this subject object dichotomy in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding,
Speaker 4: which itself has implications on even the field of science.
Speaker 4: Because you know, the idea of the scientists and the
Speaker 4: popular imagination is you know the subject who is whatever
Speaker 4: that scientist is studying, that is the object. But contrivialism
Speaker 4: caused us to pause and reflect on how that subject,
Speaker 4: that object, and how intermediary is between them affect their
Speaker 4: perception of each other, affect the subject, the scientist's ability
Speaker 4: to pursue knowledge and understanding the objects if the object
Speaker 4: is a pooston to do the same. And finally, Baver
Speaker 4: digs into the rigid division between nature and culture and
Speaker 4: how the convivilous perspective challenges that. The continuous interactions and
Speaker 4: transformations that occur in existence makes it problematic to consider
Speaker 4: the divisions between human societies, between human societies and the
Speaker 4: ecosystems that surround them as fundamental aspects of existence. Right,
Speaker 4: the boundary between nature and culture is one that constantly blues.
Speaker 4: It is difficult to place, particularly when there's an embrace
Speaker 4: by certain cultures of that interconnectedness and interdependence between their
Speaker 4: culture and the nature that surrounds them. And then when
Speaker 4: you see that blurring of lines between culture and nature,
Speaker 4: you might also recognize a blurring of lines between human
Speaker 4: and non human In the context of community, the idea
Speaker 4: of community being exclusively human domain becomes less apt, I suppose,
Speaker 4: as it recognize the way that non humans influence and
Speaker 4: effect and engage and interact with humans in this you know, collectivity.
Speaker 4: We use terms like community and city and society and
Speaker 4: stuff to refer to the human aspects of interaction, and
Speaker 4: we use things like ecosystem and biome to emphasize non
Speaker 4: human aspects of interaction. But the interactions in humans, animals,
Speaker 4: and inanimate entity is to not always thought so neatly
Speaker 4: into that metaphysical description of reality. Of course, we use
Speaker 4: these divisions for certain specific research purposes. We say, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm a sociologist, I'm an anthropologist, I'm a biologist and ecologist,
Speaker 4: et cetera. But we can't forget that convivialism. Conviviality asks
Speaker 4: us not to forget that those are human impositions that
Speaker 4: we should not let obscure our ability to make sense
Speaker 4: of reality as a whole. I know, things got really
Speaker 4: heavy there. I hope that everything I said made sense.
Speaker 4: And if you need a breather or some time to
Speaker 4: pause and reflect further on the implications on this simple
Speaker 4: cute fun to say a little Latin word conviviality. We're
Speaker 4: going to take a pause here, but next time you
Speaker 4: can join us as we discuss how people have gone
Speaker 4: from this term to urge his ideas two Jourve's philosophical
Speaker 4: indications to more recent manifestos of the convivial movement and
Speaker 4: how they can relate to the growth and beyond. You
Speaker 4: can find me on YouTube dot com slash Andrewism and
Speaker 4: you can support beyond peach in dot com slash Saint
Speaker 4: Drew once again, I'm Andrew, joined by Mia and this
Speaker 4: is it could happen here. Its welcome to Part two
Speaker 4: of conviviality.
Speaker 8: What is it?
Speaker 4: What are people thinking about it? How is this funky
Speaker 4: Latin would changing and evolving and sitting into an entire movement,
Speaker 4: and how is it affecting other movements. The last time,
Speaker 4: we spoke about the idea of conviviality, you know, which
Speaker 4: is essentially good vibes, fun, happy, chill, cool interactions between
Speaker 4: people you know, living well together and joint life in
Speaker 4: the company of others, making sure people are included and
Speaker 4: welcomed so they can relax and have a great experience.
Speaker 4: We spoke about the illist multi hyphen it. That is
Speaker 4: Ivan Ilich. We spoke allut the philosophical foundations that are
Speaker 4: being built around conviviality, what those implications have been on
Speaker 4: metaphysics and philosophical anthropology and epistemology and more. And so
Speaker 4: now we're going to get into the actual movement. So
Speaker 4: the first manifesto was published by the Center for Global
Speaker 4: Cooperation Research in twenty fourteen. It discusses some of our
Speaker 4: current threats, including global warming and its consequences, ecosystem degradation,
Speaker 4: nuclear disaster risk, resource case ty, poverty, well disparities, political disintegration,
Speaker 4: instate conflicts, terrorism and security, criminal networks, influencers, specultive of
Speaker 4: financial politics, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, you
Speaker 4: know the drill. If you're in this space, everything sucks.
Speaker 4: It could happen here. That's the name of the show,
Speaker 4: et cetera. The central challenges that we could drive ourselves
Speaker 4: the extinction right now, and if we don't turn this
Speaker 4: car around, and we could take most of the world
Speaker 4: with us. This particular manifesto, which is asking four basic
Speaker 4: questions and their considerations and what we should consider about them.
Speaker 4: Right For one, for moral question, what may individuals legitimately
Speaker 4: aspire to and where must they draw the line? And
Speaker 4: the Manifesto answers with considering that every individual has a
Speaker 4: legitimate aspiration to be treated with equal dignity, to have
Speaker 4: access to the necessary material conditions for their vision of
Speaker 4: a good life or considering other's perspectives, and participate meaningfully
Speaker 4: in political life and decision making. However, individuals must also
Speaker 4: avoid exceed inbounds and succumb in to this infantile desire
Speaker 4: for power and control, which jeopardizes social cohesion and the
Speaker 4: principle of common humanity. What that means is that we
Speaker 4: need to actively be combatant corruption, refusing to engage in
Speaker 4: actions that compromise police and values for personal gain, posing
Speaker 4: the corruption others to the extent of wuntabilities encourage fighting hierarchy.
Speaker 4: I mean to manifesto doesn't say a thing about fighting hierarchy,
Speaker 4: which I think is a fall to the manifesto. But
Speaker 4: I think for ANATICI is reading it, the implications are
Speaker 4: pretty clear. And that's what I have to do with
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff I read, you know, like read
Speaker 4: between the lines and pick up the points that the
Speaker 4: author missed. And so that's the moral consideration right, What
Speaker 4: should we aspire to? Where must we draw the line?
Speaker 4: We aspire to being true with equal dignity, have an
Speaker 4: access to decision making power, having a good life by
Speaker 4: having access to material conditions met, and we try to
Speaker 4: avoid exceeding boundaries our social boundaries, and we should try
Speaker 4: to avoid exceeding social boundaries related to hierarchy and control
Speaker 4: and power. The second question is political. It asks us
Speaker 4: which are the legitimate political communities. So the manifesto argues
Speaker 4: that the establishment of a single wild state in their
Speaker 4: future is unlikely and the political organization will continue to
Speaker 4: be based on the plurality of states, and that I
Speaker 4: think demonstrates the limitations of this manifesto's imagination are configurable.
Speaker 4: This well, that's what happens when you have this clearly
Speaker 4: radical idea and you try to squeeze the radical idea
Speaker 4: into a fundamentally unradical and statistical idea as nation states.
Speaker 4: But let me not excessively editorialized. I'm just presenting this
Speaker 4: movement and what its proponents have been arguing. Right, according
Speaker 4: to their perspective, states and political institutions are considered legitimate
Speaker 4: only if they uphold principles such as common humanity, common sociality, individuation,
Speaker 4: and managed conflict. To me, that's wishful thinking. But I
Speaker 4: digress legitimate states, and it pains me to even say this.
Speaker 4: But again, just communicating, just communicating what the manifesto argues.
Speaker 4: The legitimate states extend rights beyond civil and political rights,
Speaker 4: encompass economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. They ensure a
Speaker 4: minimum income for the poorest citizens, while also implemented a
Speaker 4: maximum income to prevent excessive wealth accumulation. The legitimate states
Speaker 4: maintain a balance between private, common, collective and public goods
Speaker 4: and promote associational activities within a global civil society. They
Speaker 4: view digital networks as cools, as tools for democratization and
Speaker 4: treat them as commons foster and openness, free access and
Speaker 4: partiality and sharing. And they also revive the tradition of
Speaker 4: public service and prioritize the preservation of existing common goods
Speaker 4: while promoting the developments of new common goods for the
Speaker 4: benefit of humanity. Again, it goes without saying I take
Speaker 4: issue with this investment in states. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of their goals are noble, if not if they were
Speaker 4: not so tied down with this investment in this state structure.
Speaker 4: Because from an anarchist perspective, many of these ideas are
Speaker 4: not compatible with the structure of a state. And even theoretically,
Speaker 4: even hypothetically, if a state would implement all these changes
Speaker 4: where people had full participerty involvement and decision making, where
Speaker 4: the where the hierarchies were flattened, and where everyone had
Speaker 4: free access and open access and their commons and all
Speaker 4: this laddida some anarchists, not every but some anarchists wouldn't
Speaker 4: even consider that to be a state anymore. But that's
Speaker 4: just getting the weeds of anarchist discourse and we're moving on.
Speaker 4: The third question that the Manifesto ask is an ecological question,
Speaker 4: which is what we may take from nature and which
Speaker 4: is what we must take from nature? Which is what
Speaker 4: we may take from nature and what we must give back?
Speaker 4: And the Manifesto asks us to consider that human beings
Speaker 4: should no longer see themselves as owners and masters of nature,
Speaker 4: but rather interconnected with it. Right to ensure ecological justice
Speaker 4: and preserve a well managed natural heritage for future generations,
Speaker 4: humans us establish a relationship with nature based on giving
Speaker 4: back as much or more than they take. The Manifesto
Speaker 4: argues that the level of material prosperity that can be
Speaker 4: sustainably extended to the entire planet is roughly comparable to
Speaker 4: the average wealth of the wealthiest countries in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: and that wealthier nations must be the responsibility to reduce
Speaker 4: the demand on nature relative to nineteen seventy standards, even
Speaker 4: as they maintain their current quality of life. Priorities of
Speaker 4: this Manifesto include reducing to two emissions, emphasize and renewable
Speaker 4: energy sources over nuclear and fossil fuels, and shifting away
Speaker 4: from viewing animals as mare resources for industry. The principles
Speaker 4: of gift and interdependence should thus guide relationships with animals
Speaker 4: and the earth as a whole. Lastly, the first Manifesto
Speaker 4: leaves us with an economic question, which is how much
Speaker 4: material wealth we may reproduce and how should we go
Speaker 4: about producing it? If we had to remain true to
Speaker 4: the answers given to the moral, political, and ecological questions,
Speaker 4: Manifesto asks us to consider there's no proven connection between
Speaker 4: monetary or material wealth and happiness, which promotes the need
Speaker 4: then to explore alternative forms of prosperity beyond economic growth.
Speaker 4: As you can see early on, we're making those connections
Speaker 4: to the idea of de growth. More on that later,
Speaker 4: And so this cause for a plural economy that balances
Speaker 4: the market, the public sector, and social solidarity economy based
Speaker 4: on the nature of goods and services involved. Again their perspective,
Speaker 4: but while the markets and profitability are legitimate, they must
Speaker 4: align with principles of common humanity, social cohesion, and ecological considerations.
Speaker 4: And by addressing the issues of the financial economy such
Speaker 4: as renterrorism and speculation through strict regulation, oversight, market restrictions
Speaker 4: and elimination of tax events, humanity can tap into a
Speaker 4: broader spectrum of riches beyond economic and material wealth, including
Speaker 4: fulfillment derived from duty, solidarity, enjoyment, and creativity inferious domains,
Speaker 4: which of course highlights the importance of creativity and meaningful
Speaker 4: relationships with others as an essential component of a prosperous society,
Speaker 4: even if not materially or monetarily prosperous. The manifestor goes
Speaker 4: on to define confrivulism, the term that they use to
Speaker 4: describe all those elements and existing systems of belief that
Speaker 4: help us identify principles for enabling human beings simultaneously to
Speaker 4: compete and cooperate with one another with a shared concern
Speaker 4: to safeguard the world and the full knowledge the reformed
Speaker 4: part of that world and that its natural resources are finite.
Speaker 4: When it comes to convivialism, it's crucial for us to
Speaker 4: hold on certain principles that can guide us imagine conflict,
Speaker 4: prioritizeing cooperation while being mindful of the limitations posed by
Speaker 4: scarce resources, recognizing respect not to interviewpoints and doctrines, opening
Speaker 4: the door to engage in dialogue and praise to his perspectives,
Speaker 4: and being open to question it and growth. All of
Speaker 4: that this manifesto sees as essential to the idea of confibulism.
Speaker 4: It even goes on to propose convivialist policies, right, you know,
Speaker 4: the minimum maximum income, protecting natural resources through various reforms
Speaker 4: and regulations, tackling unemployments, promoting reduced working hours, supporting the
Speaker 4: growth of the Associationists economy. Of course, I feel that's
Speaker 4: where the manifesto falls short, But I do appreciate they
Speaker 4: had some of the ideas that it introduces or that
Speaker 4: it expounds upon. I mean, I'd appreciate all of the
Speaker 4: answers to the questions that itself that it raises. But
Speaker 4: I appreciated raising those questions, even if I might have
Speaker 4: slightly different answers to them. The thesis of this manifesto
Speaker 4: seems to be that a different kind of will is
Speaker 4: not just possible, but crucial and urgently necessary. I don't
Speaker 4: like that it doesn't call out capitalism sufficiently or really
Speaker 4: at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems to have an overly cozy relationship with
Speaker 3: the state, too.
Speaker 4: Which is yeah, yeah, greatest not cool.
Speaker 3: They do say.
Speaker 4: Quote, there will clearly be as many, perhaps conflicting permutations
Speaker 4: of convivialism as there are of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, liberalism, socialism, communism,
Speaker 4: et cetera, not least because convivialism in no way invalidates
Speaker 4: these So fair enough, in a sense, I appreciate that
Speaker 4: they can accept that their particular interpretation is not the
Speaker 4: only one that there can be. I'm sure by this
Speaker 4: particular passage they mean that there will be socialist orientations
Speaker 4: of convivialism and liberal orientations of convivialism, and Christian orientations
Speaker 4: of convivialism and et cetera, because they don't see convivialism
Speaker 4: as incompatible with any of them. I think I might
Speaker 4: take some issue with I guess not refining contribualism further.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that they themselves didn't refine it, because you know,
Speaker 4: they're clearly quite liberal, but I think that contribualism as
Speaker 4: an idea is something at least we uh distilled further.
Speaker 4: Because when you have this sort of free for all,
Speaker 4: everybody and everything goes approach to the ideology, I think
Speaker 4: it opens up a lot of room for states and
Speaker 4: corporations and ngus to kind of slip in there and
Speaker 4: be like, oh, look at us, we are going to
Speaker 4: add confriviunism to our constitution and that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: It's like then they go and everyone applause and like wow,
Speaker 4: xyz government just added contribualism to their constitution. Three chairs
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 2: And then the.
Speaker 4: Government just continues doing what it usually was doing before
Speaker 4: it added convicuim to its constitution.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like with the whole I spoke about in my
Speaker 4: vere podcast episode. Yeah, it's kind of like a situation
Speaker 4: yasunni it t right. Ecadorian government was like, we are
Speaker 4: going to protect this forest. We're not going to drill
Speaker 4: for oil in this forest, even though it has a
Speaker 4: bunch of oil in this forest, over six billion dollars
Speaker 4: with oil in this forest. We're just going to ask
Speaker 4: the international community for like three point six billion of
Speaker 4: that oil, and once you'll pay that, we're not going
Speaker 4: to drill the oil. And we want to set this
Speaker 4: precedent for other countries to follow, and YadA YadA, and
Speaker 4: we added to our constitution and all our cash money. Right,
Speaker 4: but then they got like two hundred million dollars worth
Speaker 4: of pledges, and then they were like, actually, you know,
Speaker 4: we're still going to do it even though we didn't
Speaker 4: get all the money. And then related they're like, nah,
Speaker 4: we're not going to do it anymore. And then a
Speaker 4: couple of years after that they started drilling in the
Speaker 4: National Park, and a couple of years after that, yeah,
Speaker 4: they started drilling even for the even closer to indigenous
Speaker 4: territories within the park. So you know, that's like I
Speaker 4: caught up in the fluffy words of states and corporations.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there was a there's a there's a version
Speaker 3: of this that happen in Bolivia where they did like
Speaker 3: a very similar thing. And then within half a decade, uh,
Speaker 3: like riot police were storming the offices of like of
Speaker 3: one of the giant like indigious confederations.
Speaker 4: So it's you know, yeah, I mean keep in mind,
Speaker 4: a lot of what states do, a lot of politicians too,
Speaker 4: is just pr right, And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: people are able to recognize that when it's happened in
Speaker 4: their own country, but due to ignorance perhaps of other countries,
Speaker 4: they see a politician doing the same thing in another
Speaker 4: country and they're like, wow, why can't we be more
Speaker 4: like them? And it's like, well, yeah, it to be fair,
Speaker 4: you know, there are politicians and governments that are doing
Speaker 4: better than other politicians and governments, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: like blind my eye to that.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, there's
Speaker 4: still politicians, there's still governments. They're still doing their pr
Speaker 4: putting out their best image, put on the best foot forward,
Speaker 4: to hold on to whatever poet they have.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and with both Ecuador and Bolivia too, it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: if if you want your politicians to have pr like that,
Speaker 3: like you two can block every single road and your
Speaker 3: country start starving your capital out.
Speaker 9: Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the politicians do not descend from the heavens.
Speaker 3: They are the product of a combination of material conditions
Speaker 3: and social forces, so get better social forces.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, that's that's the that's how it elevates a
Speaker 4: pitch for anarchism. By the way, but I did say
Speaker 4: they were two manifestos, right, So what about the second
Speaker 4: manifesto right, Contributist Manifesto number two published by the Convivialist
Speaker 4: International in twenty twenty recent and they define Confiviualism as
Speaker 4: a comprehensive philosophy that encompasses humanist, civic and political principles
Speaker 4: aimed at foster and harmonia scooling systems in the modern era,
Speaker 4: emphasize and the importance of living together and outlining normative
Speaker 4: principles to guide that enteval second Manifesto of Convivialism emphasizes
Speaker 4: the need for a new political philosophy to challenge neoliberalism
Speaker 4: and address global issues. Pause. This idea of is something
Speaker 4: that you see a lot, particularly in that sort of
Speaker 4: engio space. Right, A lot of not radical organizations and
Speaker 4: movements will speak about challenging in newliberalism. And he could
Speaker 4: usually tell because they specify new liberalism, they don't say capitalism.
Speaker 4: They're not anti capitalists. They're just anti neoliberalism, which in
Speaker 4: itself is not u radical because new liberalism in itself
Speaker 4: is just a recent permutation of capitalism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I should point out, like they're as bad
Speaker 3: as neoliberalism is, like there are forms of capitalism that
Speaker 3: are worse than it. So yeah, yeah, you know, see
Speaker 3: see as evidence world War two. Uh yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 3: why I just wanted to put that on the record. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but just.
Speaker 4: Just for the sake of people's own ability to scrutinize
Speaker 4: information and scrutinized movements. It's an interesting trick of the
Speaker 4: language because by rallying against newliberalism, they're able to like
Speaker 4: bring in all of the anti capitalist people into the
Speaker 4: mix and draw from that crowd. But a lot of
Speaker 4: these movements are not themselves anti capitalists. And you know,
Speaker 4: if you want something more than a nicer capitalism, that
Speaker 4: is something to keep in mind. Even if you and
Speaker 4: even if you know you take part in the movement,
Speaker 4: nothing wrong with that, still something to keep in mind.
Speaker 4: So the Second Manifesto, it also highlights the interconnectedness of
Speaker 4: young people's concerns about climate change and environmental degradation. Talks
Speaker 4: about the struggles of those seeking freedom from dictatorships or
Speaker 4: those being forced to migrate, and it aims to offer
Speaker 4: an alternative vision for a post neoliberal world where promoting
Speaker 4: shared values and a sense of agency. Furious intellectuals, activists,
Speaker 4: rights and artists so all committed to this collective project
Speaker 4: with the aim of creating this globally shared vision for
Speaker 4: the future that is more inclusive and more participatory. The manifesto,
Speaker 4: the second manifesto, like the first one, talks about the
Speaker 4: post World War two growth in principles like human rights
Speaker 4: and the shift in capitalism towards speculative and rent air practices.
Speaker 4: Talks about the decline of liberal democracies and the rise
Speaker 4: of illiberal democriturs, and it speaks about resentment growing from
Speaker 4: pastical domination and radical movements including Al Qaeda, reflecting that animosity. Again,
Speaker 4: like the previous manifesto, talks about ecological threats like global
Speaker 4: warming and air pollution, oceanic pollution and accumulation of plastic waste,
Speaker 4: nuclear disasters, weekends, ecosystems rise and employment, job displacement, wealth inequality,
Speaker 4: lack of regulation for transnational company is, political fragmentation, and terrorism.
Speaker 4: All that fun stuff and this time the second Manifesto
Speaker 4: outlines five principles to form the basis of policies or
Speaker 4: ethics or organizational actions. Right common naturality, common humanity, common sociality,
Speaker 4: legitimate individuation, and creative opposition. These principles emphasize one the
Speaker 4: interconnectedness of humans with nature to the importance of respecting
Speaker 4: the shared humanity of all individuals, three the value of
Speaker 4: social relationships for the need for individuals to develop the
Speaker 4: individuality or respecting others, and five the recognition of peaceful
Speaker 4: rivalry for the common good. These principles are meant to
Speaker 4: be guided by the imperative of hubrist control, which promotes
Speaker 4: cooperation and prevents the desire for power and excess. The
Speaker 4: manifesto all symphasizes the importance of balance and these principles
Speaker 4: to avoid their potential negative consequences. One of the things
Speaker 4: that the Manifesto is really trying to get at in particular,
Speaker 4: and the reason that it even establishes this imperative for
Speaker 4: hubrist control, is because it argues that ideologies focus primarily
Speaker 4: on satisfying material needs and overlook the crucial role of
Speaker 4: recognition and desire, and that by reducing politics of the
Speaker 4: fulfillment of needs. Ideologies fail to address the problem of
Speaker 4: limiting the desire for power and control. To me, it
Speaker 4: just seems like the people who wrote this manifesto aren't
Speaker 4: familiar with anarchism and anarchism's centuries long confrontation with power,
Speaker 4: control and the desire for it that has altered the
Speaker 4: course of very various human societies. Right I digress. Manifestoo
Speaker 4: instead points to religions as playing the historical role of
Speaker 4: trying to curb our desire for power and control. That
Speaker 4: seems to me like a very poor argument considering the
Speaker 4: history of religion. But the point that the manifestoro is
Speaker 4: trying to make is that modern democratic discourses struggle to
Speaker 4: restrain limitless desire and often reproduce the humors that they
Speaker 4: aim to combat, and so the role of a contributist
Speaker 4: movement then should be in part on persuading individuals to
Speaker 4: renounce the desire for dominance and reinforce the principles of
Speaker 4: common humanity, sociality, naturality in legitimate interviewation and create opposition. Again,
Speaker 4: I don't think that the direction people are taking conviviulalism
Speaker 4: is rotically enough, because I think it leaves room for
Speaker 4: it to fall into existing structures. I mean, the manifest
Speaker 4: even talks about creating a convivialist party to reignite hopen
Speaker 4: liberal democracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I also want to just point out the
Speaker 3: sort of like.
Speaker 4: Just how.
Speaker 3: How weak of a position it is to you know,
Speaker 3: have one of your goals be just to convince individual
Speaker 3: people to want less power. Like I think that's just
Speaker 3: just sort of boldly anti structural as a present prescription.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean, I guess that's something that I've
Speaker 4: come to expect from Sid millieuse, right, a lack of
Speaker 4: engagement with structural domination and how struct just inform how
Speaker 4: individuals behave you know, like, yes, individuals act within structures,
Speaker 4: but I think people have asked your underestimate structural incentives,
Speaker 4: Like it's not just about oh, if you get rid
Speaker 4: of this bad person from a position of power, but
Speaker 4: this good person in a position of power, and everything
Speaker 4: will be hunky dory. Like nah, there's still there's still
Speaker 4: like you still haven't confronted the way that that structure,
Speaker 4: that position incentivizes certain behavior. But like I said before,
Speaker 4: I'm an anarchist. I take what I like, I leave
Speaker 4: what I don't They're also say, a manifest with the
Speaker 4: confivilism belongs to nobody. So I've decided that, you know,
Speaker 4: my version of confiviulism is not going to be this
Speaker 4: water down, watercress salad kind of pathy, weak limpristed take on,
Speaker 4: you know, world alter and structural change. Lastly, I didn't
Speaker 4: want to touch on because I could say I would.
Speaker 4: The significant role that conviviality is played in the de
Speaker 4: growth movement, particularly highlighted in texts like The Growth of
Speaker 4: Vocabulary for a New Era inspired by Evan's ideas conviviality
Speaker 4: and the growth has referred to me nature society that
Speaker 4: values joyful sobriety, responsible consumption, and the use of limited
Speaker 4: tools that are emmanspiratory and responsor to human needs. The
Speaker 4: ideas that Ivan outlined and tools of conviviality which I
Speaker 4: spoke on in the first part of this two parter
Speaker 4: is considered part of the intellectual roots of the growth
Speaker 4: as an idea itself, and conviviality is often discussed in
Speaker 4: relation to technologies, including digital technologies, and how technology is
Speaker 4: suitable to a de growth society must be convivial. One
Speaker 4: particular tool has been developed for self assessment political education
Speaker 4: and researcher and I with confivial principles, and that is
Speaker 4: the matrix for contrivial technology or MCT, and the matrix
Speaker 4: for convivial technology is to go through a very basic definition,
Speaker 4: a normative schema that Forster's discussion concerning de growth technologies
Speaker 4: in context of political education them city is meant first
Speaker 4: to reflect on the dimensions of the materials we use
Speaker 4: in technology is and how we produce the technologies, how
Speaker 4: we use the technologies, how technologies fit into the infrastructure,
Speaker 4: how accessible they are, how interactive they are with the environment,
Speaker 4: how adaptable they are and change in circumstances, and much more,
Speaker 4: how appropriate they are and much more. But beyond the MSCT,
Speaker 4: conviviality is are also being used in the de growth
Speaker 4: space to describe public spaces, goods, conservation movements, and even humans.
Speaker 4: Within the growth literature, transitioning to a convivial society is
Speaker 4: considered to be one of the core objectives of the
Speaker 4: de growth movement, one of the core shifts that needs
Speaker 4: to take place us for us to de grow as
Speaker 4: a society. And so that's all in short of it.
Speaker 4: The convivialist manifesto convivialism and contriviality, as ideas how they've
Speaker 4: changed and been adapted, and how people have been building
Speaker 4: on the ideas therein in the sphere of philosophy and politics,
Speaker 4: education and technology and more food for thought. I hope
Speaker 4: you appreciated this briefly exploration, as I like to say
Speaker 4: at the end of my videos, and I consider it
Speaker 4: particularly aptaining the context of conviviality and convivial technology. Is
Speaker 4: all power to all the people. Once again, you could
Speaker 4: find me Andrew on YouTube dot com slash andeurism and
Speaker 4: support me on feature dot com slash saying true and
Speaker 4: as usual this has been It could happen here, where
Speaker 4: things happen, we talk about stuff. Peace.
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
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Speaker 5: Thanks for listening,