Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's James here and I have an update
Speaker 2: on Primrose and her daughter Kim. Primrose, if you do
Speaker 2: not remember, was one of the people I met the
Speaker 2: Darien Gap, whose story we shared in our dairy En podcasts,
Speaker 2: and we later updated people that she has arrived in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 1: Have an update.
Speaker 2: From her lawyer here. I'm going to read that out now.
Speaker 2: Primrose and Kim were detained by Ice approximately two weeks
Speaker 2: ago and sent to a quote family detention center in Texas. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's right. It's country put single mothers and children seeking
Speaker 2: refuge in prisons due to a settlement agreement that's still
Speaker 2: in place involving miners only being able to be detained
Speaker 2: for twenty days. Primrose and Kim may have an opportunity
Speaker 2: to be released. They are, however, in need of housing funds.
Speaker 2: The lawyer has been raising funds for their legal fees,
Speaker 2: but we'll gladly allocate some of these funds so that
Speaker 2: she can at least have a place to stay for
Speaker 2: the rest of July. The rest we will figure out later,
Speaker 2: one day at a time. Thank you for your general Ross,
Speaker 2: and Primose and Kim thank you as well. Obviously, I
Speaker 2: would add that I thank you. It means so well
Speaker 2: to me when people support these things, and you know,
Speaker 2: we use our little podcast to help people. The address
Speaker 2: to donate is gofund dot me slash d d A
Speaker 2: zero to CC seven. That will of course also be
Speaker 2: in the notes for this podcast. You can just click
Speaker 2: it on your phone. Give a few bucks. It's vital
Speaker 2: that she gets some money to make rents so she
Speaker 2: can stay in the same place as the address that
Speaker 2: she's given to the court. If you'd like to contribute,
Speaker 2: that would mean a lot to all of us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome to it could appen hear a podcast
Speaker 1: about organizing. I am your host, Mia Wong, and in
Speaker 1: a moment we'll be continuing our episode about how to
Speaker 1: run a meeting, which is one of the fundamental tools
Speaker 1: of building democracy and free societies. Here we go, okay,
Speaker 1: so other roles. So we talked about that. That that
Speaker 1: was a long digression about the concept of stack taker,
Speaker 1: which is at a very simple level, you write the
Speaker 1: names down, you call the names in order. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna move on to some of the other ones.
Speaker 1: Those are like the two I don't know if most
Speaker 1: important is the right word Funnily enough, stack takers, not
Speaker 1: the one. I thought that digression was going to happen
Speaker 1: on that was. I thought that was gonna be the
Speaker 1: last one we're gonna get to.
Speaker 3: But oh no, taker, Oh.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is vibes checkers.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, the vibes checker. Okay, but okay, okay, please continue.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do timekeeper. Timekeeper extremely important person you want
Speaker 1: someone with like a watch or something, and the timekeeper's
Speaker 1: job is to give people reminders of like how much
Speaker 1: time things are taking. So you know, a thing you
Speaker 1: can do is like, okay, so we know we have
Speaker 1: this much time allocated for something, right, so we have
Speaker 1: twenty minutes to talk about this, Okay, so like ten
Speaker 1: minutes and you go, we have ten minutes left, we
Speaker 1: have five minutes left, we have like fifteen minutes left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really important. And at the end of it,
Speaker 1: the time keeper's job is to go like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is our allotted time. Do we want to keep talking
Speaker 1: about this and use more time or do we want
Speaker 1: to move on? Yeah, And that's a really important role.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of why you want to generally have
Speaker 1: like an idea of how long you want to talk
Speaker 1: about something in the agenda. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: like this is all guidelines, right, Like these are all.
Speaker 3: MIA's guidelines of order. Is that what you're calling this?
Speaker 1: Oh god, no, we'll take it. We'll take you on
Speaker 1: more digression. Digression, which is that the anarchy symbol, the
Speaker 1: A with the circle around it is from a per
Speaker 1: Dawn phrase that's the circle is actually an o because
Speaker 1: the original thing was anarchy. The original saying is anarchy
Speaker 1: is the mother of order. Yeah, and that's that's where
Speaker 1: that comes from. So I was gonna make it like
Speaker 1: MEA's VIA's like procedure disorder whatever joke, but it's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is actually like anarchy is order, baby.
Speaker 3: I believe in an organized society. I just believe in
Speaker 3: an organically organized society. That is from the to use
Speaker 3: the Zapatista phrase from the bottom and the left yep okay.
Speaker 1: So that that's timekeeper the note taker. Sometimes you need
Speaker 1: to decide whether you want notes of your meeting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on how crime you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hear this all the time from people making
Speaker 1: jokes about the scene for the wire that I've never
Speaker 1: seen the Wire, but everyone's making jokes as the scene
Speaker 1: for the Wire, Right, guy, guys, are you taking notes
Speaker 1: of their criminal continracy? So okay, are you going to
Speaker 1: have a note taker? And then secondly like, okay, the
Speaker 1: note taker takes notes on what's being talked about. I
Speaker 1: actually this is also mea going into a little bit
Speaker 1: more advanced stuff. I actually like the practice of kind
Speaker 1: of rotating this throughout the meeting because the problem with
Speaker 1: being the note taker. So if you're the timekeeper, right,
Speaker 1: you can be involved in the conversation. Stack taker is
Speaker 1: also hard to But the thing about the note taker
Speaker 1: and it's you know, if you get good enough at this,
Speaker 1: you can rotate all of these roles during the meeting
Speaker 1: so that everyone has a chance to participate. So you
Speaker 1: don't just have a group of people who perpetually can't
Speaker 1: be in the meeting. And so note taker is a
Speaker 1: thing that you can pretty easily just like pass to
Speaker 1: someone else and be like, hey, you're not the note taker,
Speaker 1: so the person who's being the note taker can like say.
Speaker 3: Things yeah, although okay, so there's two weird funny things
Speaker 3: about this one. Sometimes people who tend not to want
Speaker 3: to talk much in a meeting, but also maybe have
Speaker 3: an attention span where they would prefer to be doing
Speaker 3: something at all times, prefer to be note taker.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But famously, the International Workingmen's Association or whatever, the the
Speaker 3: First International was a organization of a lot of different
Speaker 3: stripes of leftists. And someone went to someone's friend's apartment.
Speaker 3: This anarchists went to this anarchist friend's apartment and was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I want to invite my friend to this meeting. And
Speaker 3: this guy answers the door and his name's Carl Marx
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh, well so and says not here,
Speaker 3: and he's like, all right, well you can come too.
Speaker 3: So an anarchist invites Marx to the International. I don't
Speaker 3: have my notes in front of me, don't at me.
Speaker 3: But then Marx goes and he becomes the note taker,
Speaker 3: and by means of that takes a minority position which
Speaker 3: within the group and makes it the major already position
Speaker 3: by controlling the way that a lot of the media
Speaker 3: and expression and stuff around this was because Marx was
Speaker 3: a good writer. Yeah, and for better or worse, I
Speaker 3: have my opinion about whether it's for better or worse,
Speaker 3: and so there's a power within note taker that actually
Speaker 3: is a reason to rotate this task.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, if you're like not worried about that,
Speaker 3: you can just have a person who's like, I just
Speaker 3: really want to be the one who takes notes. It
Speaker 3: really depends on everything's going to be contextual. I just
Speaker 3: wanted to tell that story about Marx.
Speaker 1: No, like this is this is the story of how
Speaker 1: Marx became Marx by taking a note taking job and
Speaker 1: then becoming the person who would write the declarations for
Speaker 1: the organization. Yeah, we should note like this is also
Speaker 1: kind of how Stalin took power was by being the
Speaker 1: person in the back of the room. He didn't say
Speaker 1: anything and keeping track of what everyone was doing and saying,
Speaker 1: and you being able to manipulate like the inner workings
Speaker 1: of these sort of parliamentary procedures that the Bolsheviks were using.
Speaker 3: That's what the Robert not of the rules of order,
Speaker 3: but of the behind the bassards was saying about, Oh,
Speaker 3: the Cambodia man, the horror Bolga man and killed everyone
Speaker 3: pullpop pot. It was that he he was the quiet
Speaker 3: guy at the back.
Speaker 1: Yep, same kind of guy can be extremely dangerous. The
Speaker 1: guy who says everything all the time can be dangerous.
Speaker 1: Quiet person also can be very dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just never trust anyone, that's the answer.
Speaker 1: Wait, no, hold on, hopefully we're not producing pulepot in
Speaker 1: these meetings. Okay. So the last like official role that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, and there's a lot, there's
Speaker 1: like a million other roles that people use. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the vibes checker. So this is the
Speaker 1: one that's kind of not obvious from like the name,
Speaker 1: but the vibes checker is someone who actually has a
Speaker 1: really really important role, and your role is to figure
Speaker 1: out like, is everyone in the group okay, does this
Speaker 1: meeting feel okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And is just something we need to do about it?
Speaker 1: And some of this is like okay, everyone is clearly
Speaker 1: really tired, let's go get lunch. And that's like a
Speaker 1: pretty easy sort of vibes checker thing. But then also
Speaker 1: like I don't know, this is partially a facilitation job,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, if someone says something racist in
Speaker 1: me in a bunch of people are uncomfortable, it's like
Speaker 1: now you're suddenly glad you have the person whose job
Speaker 1: it is to be like, hey, what the fuck? Like
Speaker 1: and that's also that's like obviously, like that's a blatant
Speaker 1: enough thing that everyone can be like hold on, hold on,
Speaker 1: like don't like say a slur or whatever. But like,
Speaker 1: you know, the vibe checker's job is if there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are uncomfortable with something, or if
Speaker 1: something like they're kind of there or something is going wrong,
Speaker 1: or if people are checked out, or if like stuff's happening.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this is behind the scene things. Sometimes this is
Speaker 1: like explicit, like you make it, you bring it to
Speaker 1: the group to be like, hey, this is okay, we
Speaker 1: need to address this. Yeah kind of thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a hard role to sort of like explain it's fuzzy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but it's it's in the name. How
Speaker 3: are the vibes? And vibe is a fuzzy word, and
Speaker 3: you know it's a the word that people are going
Speaker 3: to interpret in different ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I as a very sort of materialist,
Speaker 1: godless atheist, I it's like, okay, this is how people
Speaker 1: are feeling.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: People also take this in sort of when new agy directions.
Speaker 1: People take it and like but like you know, like
Speaker 1: the important thing about this is right you can feel
Speaker 1: in a meeting when it's really tense or when things
Speaker 1: are like just weird. Everything feels off. Everyone is like
Speaker 1: pissed off or tired or like just grossed out or
Speaker 1: like you know, and that's this person's job. This is
Speaker 1: why I'm putting it in here because it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these roles that like, idally, I guess this person
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything for a whole meeting, but they're just
Speaker 1: they're sort of watching it. I mean, like it's it
Speaker 1: can't be good at the interviewing, but it's especially important
Speaker 1: if something is going wrong in ways the group isn't addressing.
Speaker 3: Totally this, it is good to have someone who's ready
Speaker 3: to step up and say, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 3: what's going on. Can I make a pitch for another role?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: Have a name for this role. The very first activist
Speaker 3: meeting I went to when the world was young, during
Speaker 3: the alt globalization movement. I went into a meeting for
Speaker 3: New York City indie media and I had no idea
Speaker 3: what was happening, but it was a public, open meeting,
Speaker 3: and I was a young activist anarchist or whatever, and
Speaker 3: I went to this thing and someone sat next to me,
Speaker 3: knew that I was new, and sat next to me
Speaker 3: and explained what the fuck was happening.
Speaker 1: That's a good role.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if I would have become an
Speaker 3: activist if that person hadn't done that, because I went
Speaker 3: in and it was the middle of a contentious meeting
Speaker 3: about people talking about some stuff that was pretty important,
Speaker 3: and I had no idea what was happening, and someone
Speaker 3: explained it to me. I think it is very important
Speaker 3: to have someone know who is new and help them
Speaker 3: feel comfortable. You could call it like an usher if
Speaker 3: I was going to have a word, But it's like,
Speaker 3: because I'm really into this idea that our movements don't
Speaker 3: need gatekeepers, we need ushers. We need people to help
Speaker 3: people figure out find their seats and figure out how
Speaker 3: to plug in onboarding. But then the other thing I
Speaker 3: want to say is that with roles, the larger and
Speaker 3: more normal a meeting, the more likely you need these
Speaker 3: to be formalized roles. But I also think that these
Speaker 3: as generalized skills can be dispersed through Like I think
Speaker 3: that a lot of groups, especially if they're kind of
Speaker 3: comfortable with each other, you maybe have a rotating facilitator.
Speaker 3: You maybe have a stack taker and you maybe are like,
Speaker 3: who's taking notes right now? But stuff like timekeeper and
Speaker 3: vibes check might be a thing that everyone feels empowered
Speaker 3: to do. I think that understanding these as roles is
Speaker 3: different than saying at the top of the meeting, this
Speaker 3: is the way it is done. You must assign these things.
Speaker 3: It is always contextual based on the meeting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the range inside of the meeting structure of like
Speaker 1: how formal and informal it is changes a lot. And
Speaker 1: that yeah, that changes you know, that changes the roles,
Speaker 1: That changes how all of this stuff works totally. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the most important things about this is
Speaker 1: like being flexible, because the point of a meeting is
Speaker 1: not everyone followed the exact parliamentary procedures. The point of
Speaker 1: a meeting is we did the thing we came there
Speaker 1: to do, or sometimes we did we did a different thing, right,
Speaker 1: But it's like we all did something together and that
Speaker 1: thing happened, but we figured out how to make that
Speaker 1: thing happen. And that's the actual important part. The content
Speaker 1: of the meeting is what's important. Not all of the
Speaker 1: structure is to enable the content. It's not the other
Speaker 1: way around it totally, right, totally and like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like if you have a timekeeper and someone
Speaker 1: else they're doing time stuff too, right, Like that's a
Speaker 1: significantly better result. Then. Yeah, we just kept talking, So.
Speaker 3: Okay, can I make one more pitch about the thing
Speaker 3: that's important at a meeting?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Food. I think that it's not always going to be
Speaker 3: appropriate in every specific situation, and there's a lot of
Speaker 3: things around dietary restrictions and all of these things, but
Speaker 3: making the meeting feel like a place that is worth
Speaker 3: going to and the thing that like, I think food
Speaker 3: is basically like hosting and good hospitality and these sort
Speaker 3: of again invisibilized. Yeah, feminine labor things goes a really
Speaker 3: long way towards making everyone feel comfortable. It also helps
Speaker 3: people's attention spans and blood sugar, like whether every meeting's
Speaker 3: a pot luck or whether everyone just brings snacks, or
Speaker 3: whether it's at someone's house and they're like, fucking I'm hosting,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make a bunch of food and you know
Speaker 3: whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been theorizing this for a while that like
Speaker 1: we need because like obviously a lot of this technology
Speaker 1: has been worked out already, but also we have so
Speaker 1: much further to go in order to like be able
Speaker 1: to make decisions together in a free society, And like,
Speaker 1: I think we need to just have an initiative of,
Speaker 1: like how do we make meetings fucking rip. One of
Speaker 1: my ideas has always been, like, you have a meeting
Speaker 1: that's just like the standing barbecue meeting that happens like
Speaker 1: every like it's like the endless meeting, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you have it at like yeah, this time, and there's
Speaker 1: just like a barbecue and everyone one does barbecue stuff.
Speaker 3: And yes, a standing thing where if you want to
Speaker 3: come and like and then okay, just to keep talking
Speaker 3: about some of the stuff childcare. Childcare, you think when
Speaker 3: you mentioned at the beginning being like making sure that
Speaker 3: the space is accessible to everyone. And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff that gets forgotten about. In particular, I would
Speaker 3: say that single parents are often forgotten about. And I
Speaker 3: think that having or parents in general, or children in
Speaker 3: general are often forgotten about. And I think that having
Speaker 3: a plan in place for accessibility of all kinds of
Speaker 3: different people often includes childcare.
Speaker 1: I used to do this. Oh that's cool, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like one of the things that I did for some meetings,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, there are like meetings that happened. They're
Speaker 1: like tens meetings that happened because like people stayed and
Speaker 1: played with everyone's kids. It was a good time.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there's also this idea where sometimes meetings people
Speaker 3: can come in and out of the society that I
Speaker 3: want to live in has neighborhood assemblies that then move
Speaker 3: up to larger structures and make decisions right and in
Speaker 3: those there's also this thing where it's like you don't
Speaker 3: always have to go to meetings. There's a thing that
Speaker 3: about democracy that people don't quite always get, which is
Speaker 3: that sometimes the most beautiful thing we can do for
Speaker 3: each other is give our agency freely to other people
Speaker 3: to make decisions for us that we trust. Working groups
Speaker 3: are actually a good, big part of this where I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't actually want to have a say in every
Speaker 3: single decision that affects me. I want to be able
Speaker 3: to have a say in every single decision that affects me. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I'm again going kind of meta on this.
Speaker 1: Sorry, no, no, well this is important, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And also like doing the childcare was part of that
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, it meant like, you know, I was
Speaker 1: kind of I was like trusting my people in the
Speaker 1: group to like do the meeting without me while I
Speaker 1: was just sort of like taking care of like just
Speaker 1: taking care of kids. And that was a really beautiful
Speaker 1: thing and it worked really well. It fucking ripped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can build multi generational movements, which are
Speaker 3: the only movements that accomplish That's not true. Sudden movements
Speaker 3: also accomplish things. But when I look at some of
Speaker 3: the real high water marks from the bottom and the
Speaker 3: left organizing around the world, you're talking about people who
Speaker 3: are drawn from hundreds of years of radical legacies, or
Speaker 3: at least a couple of generations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of generations, I don't know. I don't have
Speaker 1: a good pivot into this, but okay, so we've been
Speaker 1: talking a lot of about a lot of the technology
Speaker 1: that's been used for meetings. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of other kinds of meetings that you can have.
Speaker 1: When I originally was writing this, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I could fit this whole, this whole section how to
Speaker 1: run a meeting. This will be like this will be
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes. Then I can have twenty minutes about
Speaker 1: like the spokes councils of twenty minutes about general assemblies,
Speaker 1: and we're not like an hour, we're not this is
Speaker 1: like this episode, Margret, and we have not even started talking.
Speaker 1: So okay, that's going to be another the general assembly
Speaker 1: episode is going to be another episode completely in and
Speaker 1: of itself. But I do want to talk about spokes
Speaker 1: councils because this is the thing that I've been finding
Speaker 1: really really useful that I think people just don't know
Speaker 1: about anymore. And because people have lost the knowledge of this,
Speaker 1: a really valuable organizational tactic has been lost. So Okay,
Speaker 1: the thing that a meeting is there to do is
Speaker 1: so a group of people can come together and make decisions.
Speaker 1: But how do you make decisions between groups or And
Speaker 1: this is also often more important less than having like
Speaker 1: cause you know, a lot of spos counsuls aren't usually
Speaker 1: supposed to be like we're all making like we're all
Speaker 1: sort of like this is like a binding decision handed
Speaker 1: down by like spost council, right. This is also a
Speaker 1: really useful coordinating tool. Yeah, and this is what it's
Speaker 1: you know, what it's like actually designed for is how
Speaker 1: do you get groups to sort of talk to each
Speaker 1: other and work with each other in a way that
Speaker 1: also lets them continue to be like their own groups
Speaker 1: and not you know, a sort of.
Speaker 3: Like subservient to the larger coalition. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, the answer to this turns out
Speaker 1: as a technology that was developed. Actually don't know the
Speaker 1: history of the post council. I mean it's been around
Speaker 1: for like a long time.
Speaker 3: I've done either like at.
Speaker 1: Least like thirty forty years in anarchist circles, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't really made it out of them. And so spokes
Speaker 1: council is a meeting of groups. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: a meeting of spokespeople. Right, So your group sends like
Speaker 1: one or two people to a thing. You send like
Speaker 1: a couple of people, and all of the other groups
Speaker 1: send some people and you come talk about a thing.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And this is really useful for a number of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: it's a way for different kinds of groups to interface
Speaker 1: with each other in ways that they usually don't. So
Speaker 1: this can be anything from like an affinity group to
Speaker 1: like an NGO, to like a union. It can scale
Speaker 1: between different kinds of things. It can theoretically you can
Speaker 1: do this with like you you're like fucking spokes council
Speaker 1: could theoretically send a person to another spokes council totally, right,
Speaker 1: And this is you know, we'll get more to this
Speaker 1: a second, right, but like, like like this is a
Speaker 1: way for a bunch of different types of organizations to
Speaker 1: come together and do something. And it's a way for
Speaker 1: them to coordinate with each other. It's a way from
Speaker 1: other share information, it's a way for them to and
Speaker 1: this is like one of the sort of secrets of
Speaker 1: organizing is that like actual organizing is built through personal
Speaker 1: relationships with people knowing each other. Yeah, and so this
Speaker 1: is a way for like people to like meet each
Speaker 1: other and get to do things. There are different kinds
Speaker 1: of these. A traditional one is like, Okay, there's like
Speaker 1: a thing happening right, Like there was a there was
Speaker 1: a giant protest, and like a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are going to be a bunch of the different groups
Speaker 1: and organizations, infinity groups and whatever we're going to be
Speaker 1: at this thing come together and they're like, Okay, how
Speaker 1: what are we doing? How are we going to sort
Speaker 1: of do this and how do we coordinate this with
Speaker 1: each other?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And yeah, Mark I assume you've been in like a
Speaker 1: million of these, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I have been in a lot of spokes council meetings.
Speaker 3: I've been in a fewer of them, and I think
Speaker 3: you're right, there's been a bit of a drop off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's funny. When you were talking earlier, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I haven't done this in a while. I actually do go
Speaker 3: to meetings every week, but I like, but I used
Speaker 3: to go to meetings specifically for direct action protests, and
Speaker 3: that is a thing that I used to have more
Speaker 3: direct experience with. Yeah, and so I don't want to
Speaker 3: be like, all people stop doing it because I don't
Speaker 3: totally know, because I'm not totally plugged in. But I
Speaker 3: do think the altigl mobilization movement of like nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: nine to two thousand and three or so is where
Speaker 3: a lot of modern protest tactics and stuff were developed,
Speaker 3: or rather it came to a head. The tactics had
Speaker 3: been developed for decades by various different groups, and actually
Speaker 3: a lot of the technologies around spokes councils and stuff
Speaker 3: they come from a lot of different sources, including I
Speaker 3: think anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. But I'm not
Speaker 3: one hundred percent certain about that. But a lot of
Speaker 3: the alter globalization movement stuff comes from the Zapatisas in Chiapas.
Speaker 3: I know you didn't ask for history lesson, and I'll
Speaker 3: speed run it.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, this is good though.
Speaker 3: You know, the folks in Chiapas and the Zapatisas have
Speaker 3: developed a lot of different ideas about how to have
Speaker 3: bottom up democracy, and they've been moving through different ones.
Speaker 3: They actually moved to a more decentralized model than they
Speaker 3: were doing about two years ago, in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: But they went around the world and built organizations by
Speaker 3: saying everyone, send your people. Were getting together, the People's
Speaker 3: Global Alliance, like all of these like you know, Global South.
Speaker 3: I'm putting air quotes here. We're getting together and we're
Speaker 3: building direct action movements together. And that is where the
Speaker 3: ultra globalization movement comes from, at least as much as
Speaker 3: anything else. And some of that is that technology of saying,
Speaker 3: send your representatives and do this thing. But it's interesting
Speaker 3: because in some ways it's actually just an upside down
Speaker 3: version of parliamentary democracy, where theoretically we elect a politician
Speaker 3: and they go speak for us. They don't that is
Speaker 3: the concept behind a democracy. And so theoretically you can
Speaker 3: send a delegate, and there's two ways of doing it.
Speaker 3: There's a decision making larger body and there's a coordinating
Speaker 3: larger body. And if you want to maintain every group's autonomy,
Speaker 3: it is a coordinating body. You get together and at
Speaker 3: the spokes council you say, the ten people I represent
Speaker 3: who will remain nameless, are all willing to get arrested tomorrow,
Speaker 3: and we're all willing to lock ourselves down. And someone
Speaker 3: else will say, we don't want to get arrested. The
Speaker 3: fourteen people that I'm representing kind of want to break
Speaker 3: And then other people will be like, the fifteen people
Speaker 3: that I represent kind of which y'all wouldn't break shit.
Speaker 3: And you can get together and coordinate, and then the
Speaker 3: breakshit people can be like, oh, okay, well we'll make
Speaker 3: sure we break shit somewhere else than where you are,
Speaker 3: and all of this stuff. And whereas a decision making
Speaker 3: body would get together and your spoke would have a
Speaker 3: mandate from your group, they would be empowered to make
Speaker 3: decisions for everyone, knowing that the decision has to be
Speaker 3: within a certain framework. And then basically when they're done,
Speaker 3: you'd be like, Okay, you did or didn't succeed at
Speaker 3: your mandate, We're gonna send someone else next time, or whatever.
Speaker 3: So there's two different ways of doing spokes Council meetings.
Speaker 3: I think one of the reasons that they fell out
Speaker 3: of favor is that by and large, open organizing of
Speaker 3: direct action has diminished in the movement because it may
Speaker 3: or may not be legal to show up somewhere and say, well,
Speaker 3: the fifteen people I represent want to break shit, or
Speaker 3: even the fifteen people that I represent want to lock
Speaker 3: ourselves down into big puppets with lock boxes, right and
Speaker 3: disrupt global trade. Because of the ramping up of repression,
Speaker 3: people have backed off of certain types of open organizing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have opinions about that, but that's kind of I'm
Speaker 3: actually not trying to tell anyone what to do about it.
Speaker 3: But so I think that that's part of why the
Speaker 3: spokes Council has a little bit diminished. And I actually
Speaker 3: think that we just need to adapt the spokes Council
Speaker 3: to the modern context. And I'm sure people do still
Speaker 3: do them.
Speaker 1: So this is where we're getting this is this is
Speaker 1: what I'm calling them bea technology which is there have
Speaker 1: been spokes councils recently that are not like that are
Speaker 1: not this, that are using the idea of the spokes
Speaker 1: council but are kind of a different thing. Okay, because
Speaker 1: there's another thing that you can do with this organizational form,
Speaker 1: right of everyone sends their delegates together or whatever, like
Speaker 1: everyone sends their like spokespeople. Yeah, but everyone meets each other.
Speaker 1: You can also do this for like not planning a
Speaker 1: direct action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And you can do this as a way to get
Speaker 1: all of the different organizations of like affinity groups and
Speaker 1: shit in a city talking to each other. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this turns out to be extremely useful.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen this a lot recently in sort of transorganizing,
Speaker 1: where like all the trans different groups of the city
Speaker 1: will be like, fuck it, we're showing up to a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a different thing that we will be talking
Speaker 1: hopefully to some people who run this soon. This was
Speaker 1: originally supposed to be part of this episode before I
Speaker 1: realized that it was impossible to fit this into this episode,
Speaker 1: which is that two episodes. But there's a really really
Speaker 1: cool thing in Portland that was called the trans General
Speaker 1: Assembly where they people were just like, fuck it, we're
Speaker 1: running a general assembly for like all of the trans
Speaker 1: people come. You can say things and everyone meets at
Speaker 1: the end, and that was awesome. But you can do
Speaker 1: this on a very, very on a targeted level with
Speaker 1: like Okay, I know a bunch of different orgs that like,
Speaker 1: for example, okay, we need to we need to coordinate
Speaker 1: a response to like the situation of trans people in
Speaker 1: the US. So you can go through all of your networks.
Speaker 1: You can be like, okay, I know this person who
Speaker 1: is in this org that does this thing right, and
Speaker 1: you can bring all of those resources together and then
Speaker 1: you can turn that into a spokes council. That's not
Speaker 1: quite the same thing exactly as as the kind of
Speaker 1: like direct action spokes councils that have been organized.
Speaker 3: Right, it is closer to a general assembly maybe, but
Speaker 3: maybe that's a pedantic difference or semantic difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of is, but it's well, so okay.
Speaker 1: So the way I've been conceiving of it is like,
Speaker 1: if you're specifically getting people together who are there as organizations,
Speaker 1: it's a spokes council.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: If they're there as themselves, it's a general assembly. Oh
Speaker 1: that makes sense even if they are sort of like
Speaker 1: representing a thing. But like, yeah, like like the scopes
Speaker 1: and who shows up to them were very different, I think.
Speaker 3: Oh, and there's also fishbowls.
Speaker 1: Well, what's a fishbowl? I actually I've heard this one before.
Speaker 3: A fish ball is a spokes council where everyone can
Speaker 3: come and only the spoke can speak. Hmmm, so you
Speaker 3: can look in on the fish. Oh that's what that's called.
Speaker 1: Interesting?
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, anyway, which is a way to do it.
Speaker 3: It maintains transparency. It's a way to have a still
Speaker 3: open meeting, but only but if only one person from
Speaker 3: the group is empowered to speak, then it's not a
Speaker 3: nightmare of trying to have six thousand people in a
Speaker 3: room talk.
Speaker 1: The basic beating technology, all of these things can be
Speaker 1: used for a whole bunch of different things in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different ways that we haven't thought of yet.
Speaker 3: You could arrange trash pick up in a neighborhood. You
Speaker 3: can make the government obsolete. Yeah, with meetings and spokes
Speaker 3: councils and general assemblies and federations and all of these
Speaker 3: levels of bottom up organizing. And there are places in
Speaker 3: the world where people have done this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, if we want to close on
Speaker 1: sort of like this is the political angle of this, right,
Speaker 1: Like a free society is one that is structured like this,
Speaker 1: where a bunch of where things happen by people coming
Speaker 1: together to do them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: And you can take the sort of like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess you'd call it the workerrist angle of like
Speaker 1: I don't know, we need to run a waste treatment plant,
Speaker 1: yeah right. So the way the brace treatment plant is
Speaker 1: run is that the people who do waste treatment have
Speaker 1: their own like workers counselor or whatever, right, and they
Speaker 1: decide how they're going to do it, and they go
Speaker 1: do it. Right.
Speaker 3: Almost every I would say, every real revolution and revolutionary
Speaker 3: movement in history is doing a version of this. You
Speaker 3: can even look at the Soviet concept. The Soviet was
Speaker 3: the decision making body, it was the assembly yep, and
Speaker 3: all power to the Soviets with this slogan that literally
Speaker 3: was inverted by the Bolsheviks, where the entire idea was
Speaker 3: a democratic but revolutionary movement. And this happens constantly even
Speaker 3: when societies break down on some level naturally, and a
Speaker 3: ton not all, a ton of indigenous societies this is
Speaker 3: the default model. And so you know, in Chiapas with
Speaker 3: the Zapatistas, what happened was is that you had this
Speaker 3: like Marxist Leninist army and they were like, oh, we're
Speaker 3: going to do this, think this way. And the indigenous
Speaker 3: people who lived in Shapas were like, that's not how
Speaker 3: we do things. And they're like, this is how we
Speaker 3: do things. And then those Appatistas, who are good people,
Speaker 3: were like, you're right, that's how we do things, you know,
Speaker 3: and they like built up this model. And you have
Speaker 3: a similar thing happening with the area called Rojeva in
Speaker 3: north east Syria, where like basically people are like, actually,
Speaker 3: the indigenous Kurdish model of doing things is much more
Speaker 3: this egalitarian method and democratic method and then okay, and
Speaker 3: the other thing is you can do it in the
Speaker 3: worker's model, but there's also people who've messed around with
Speaker 3: it and done things like you know what, maybe the
Speaker 3: school isn't run by the teachers. Maybe the school is
Speaker 3: run by the teachers, the parents and the students, And
Speaker 3: maybe the food distribution center is a combination of the
Speaker 3: workers of the food distribution center and the people who
Speaker 3: make use of it. So maybe the trash pickup is
Speaker 3: both the workers and the people who need the services.
Speaker 3: But the specifics almost they do matter, and we can
Speaker 3: but we don't know, we don't know the actual formulation.
Speaker 3: But this is the core of bottom left organizing and
Speaker 3: it is a full thing. And it is funny how
Speaker 3: it all comes down to meetings and making sure that
Speaker 3: there's food and childcare and not one person taking up
Speaker 3: all the time, which is really hard when you podcast
Speaker 3: for a living.
Speaker 1: I will tell you that, yeah, but I mean this
Speaker 1: is like, you know, I have had to learn to
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up in meetings. Yeah, need to, and
Speaker 1: but doing it has made meetings better. It's great you
Speaker 1: can learn to shut the fuck up someone else says
Speaker 1: the thing and you don't have to say yeah. But
Speaker 1: then also, I do want to put this out right,
Speaker 1: the things that we're describing here, right, it's okay, Like
Speaker 1: how do you need a beach or you need food,
Speaker 1: you need child care, you need structure that make sure
Speaker 1: one person isn't running the thing. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: entire political situation of the modern United States. Right. We
Speaker 1: are trying to get food, we are trying to get childcare,
Speaker 1: we are trying to have a place to do our thing,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to have to not be ruled by
Speaker 1: like a fucking king Yeah, totally. Again, this all seems
Speaker 1: like very very basic like shit, right, But if you
Speaker 1: don't have this, and this is a problem that the
Speaker 1: US has constantly your purtuse movements, It's like most Americans
Speaker 1: don't have a democratic tradition, right, and so when sh
Speaker 1: happens and there's suddenly riots and they're suddenly like mass protests,
Speaker 1: we've just break out. Right, people don't know how to
Speaker 1: make democratic decisions, so they don't, right, and that means
Speaker 1: that nobody's talking to each other. That means that everyone
Speaker 1: is locked in these very small circles of extremely violent paranoia.
Speaker 1: And that sucks. And we can avoid that by knowing
Speaker 1: how to do democracy, because that's fundamentally what running and
Speaker 1: meeting is. This is what democracy looks like. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I also want to say one more thing. This is
Speaker 1: a podcast that would probably could I could have used
Speaker 1: the facilitator, especially on my end right now, because unmedicated
Speaker 1: mia is a fucking trip. But like you know, when
Speaker 1: we talk about sort of are how do you apply
Speaker 1: this to your sort of broad vision of society, right,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, anarchist, how do you run USAID? Right?
Speaker 1: Because like, yeah, like the destructure of USAID is going
Speaker 1: to kill an unbelievable number of people because people are
Speaker 1: getting ach of v vaccians right right. And the way
Speaker 1: you run that is the way that you run a meeting. Right.
Speaker 1: The workers who pre deuce yeah to act, who are
Speaker 1: the people who actually figure out how to make an
Speaker 1: HIV vaccine? Distribute it, distribute information about it. Those people
Speaker 1: form fucking form fucking councils, and they form fucking meeting groups.
Speaker 1: They and they work in collaboration with the people who
Speaker 1: need them, and that is how you build society, right.
Speaker 1: It's like David Graeber's thing was was like the ultimate
Speaker 1: hidden truth of this world is that it is something
Speaker 1: we make, and we could just as easily make differently.
Speaker 1: And when he says something we make, he was talking
Speaker 1: about in a more abstract sense, but like we do
Speaker 1: literally make it. Like all of this stuff is the
Speaker 1: product of stuff that we did, right, Like we all
Speaker 1: physically built every aspect of this world, right, Everything, everything
Speaker 1: that you see and touch and hear right now are
Speaker 1: things that we designed and engineered and built and we
Speaker 1: don't lose the capacity when we cease to be ruled.
Speaker 1: We can still do that. And as long as we
Speaker 1: have the ability to do democracy right and we have
Speaker 1: the ability to make decisions with each other, we can
Speaker 1: fucking do those things. And we can do them for
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, and not for a king. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like people ask how would you make a distribute
Speaker 3: insulin in anarchist society or an anti capitalist society or
Speaker 3: a bottom up society, and you're like, well, we know
Speaker 3: how to make and distribute insulin, and we just need
Speaker 3: to change some of the social technologies that are doing it.
Speaker 3: And I think we could probably do it better because
Speaker 3: it's currently not working great, you know. And my other
Speaker 3: like go to quote I love the graver quote is
Speaker 3: the Derudi quote, anarchist general in Spanish of war. Probably
Speaker 3: didn't actually say this, It was probably a journalist put
Speaker 3: these words in his mouth, but we're not actually certain.
Speaker 3: And he says, like the boot I'm paraphrasing, the bourgeoisie
Speaker 3: can blast and ruin the world on their way out
Speaker 3: of history. That's fine. Yeah, we the workers built all
Speaker 3: of these cities. We can build We know how to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 1: The part of that I always stuck with me is
Speaker 1: like I think the exact quote that I got was,
Speaker 1: we are not in the least afraid of ruins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: built this world and we'll do it again. Yeah and yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know these meding these episodes are gonna be called.
Speaker 3: But if they're called, the answer is meetings. Comma.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I think, Okay, I don't know who's gonna end
Speaker 1: up me. The provisional title right now is the most
Speaker 1: important organizing skill. You don't know, because unfortunately we do
Speaker 1: need people to click on this and they won't if
Speaker 1: it's a meeting.
Speaker 3: Things of the answer is into this, Well, then that's
Speaker 3: the monster at the end of the book.
Speaker 1: Is that.
Speaker 3: Uh, it's meetings all the way down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Margaret, thanks for thanks for talking with me about
Speaker 1: the actual fundamental building blocks and tools of democratic life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Thanks thanks for having me, Thanks for talking about that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this this has been it can happen here.
Speaker 1: You can go out in your community and you can
Speaker 1: do these things. You can force pokes, councils, you can
Speaker 1: form assemblies, you can go work with the people around
Speaker 1: you to do things, and you can use structures to
Speaker 1: do it and you can change the world.
Speaker 3: The secret is to really begin.
Speaker 1: Hell Yeah, it could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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Speaker 1: Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.