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Speaker 1: All media. Hi everyone, It's me James, and I'm coming

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Speaker 1: at you today with one of these little requests that

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Speaker 1: I make sometimes when there's something that we would likely

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Speaker 1: to do when it's very important to do so today

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Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about Syria, and specifically

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Speaker 1: Northeast Syria. So with the world's eyes fixed on Syria,

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Speaker 1: many are rightly celebrating as a brutal dictatorship of Bashara

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Speaker 1: Lasad comes to an end. But for Kurdish and other

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Speaker 1: minority communities, recent days have bought violent attacks, ethnic cleansing,

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Speaker 1: and occupation by Turkish back Jahaddis groups in an attempt

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Speaker 1: to take advantage of the chaos by crushing the Rajava Revolution.

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Speaker 1: Turkey and its mercenaries are openly committing war crimes against

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Speaker 1: the region's autonomous communities. Many thousands have already been forced

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Speaker 1: to be displaced, and thousands of borrowing danger to make

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Speaker 1: matters worth this remains largely absent from the mainstream media

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Speaker 1: reporting on Syria. If you'd like to share your solidarity

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Speaker 1: with the people of northern and Eastern Syria, please call

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Speaker 1: on Congress to take urgent action by passing the Emergency

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Speaker 1: legislation to stop the violentce, hold Turkey accountable, and commit

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Speaker 1: US support to the Syrian democratic forces and the diverse

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Speaker 1: communities under their protection. If you want to take action today,

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Speaker 1: you can go to Defendrojaba dot org. That's d E

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Speaker 1: F E N d R o ja va dot org.

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Speaker 1: If you are able to the most effective action we

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Speaker 1: can take right now is to call a couple of representatives.

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Speaker 1: One representative and one senator. Representative would be Gregory Meeks.

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Speaker 1: He's from New York. He's a Democrat. He is a

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Speaker 1: ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His phone

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Speaker 1: number is two zero two two two five three four

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Speaker 1: six one. Leathon will be Senator James Rish He's an

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Speaker 1: Idaho Republican. He is a ranking member's Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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Speaker 1: His phone number would be two zero two two two

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Speaker 1: four two seven five two. If you'd like to have

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Speaker 1: some talking points, you can find those on Defendrojaba dot org.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to donate financially instead, especially to this

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Speaker 1: humanitarian aid effort for the tens of thousands of people

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Speaker 1: who have been displaced by the SNA's advances, you can

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Speaker 1: donate to two organizations that I would suggest to. First,

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Speaker 1: we be heavier store, the Curtis Red Crescent. That's h

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Speaker 1: E Yva s O R dot com and you want

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Speaker 1: to go slash e n if you want to see

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Speaker 1: their website in English, you can donate there. The other

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Speaker 1: one will be the free Burmer Rangers who are currently

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Speaker 1: working in Raka. I was talking to my friend Habat

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Speaker 1: who works with them. You can donate to them at

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Speaker 1: www dot free fr e E Burma b U r

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Speaker 1: m A rangers dot com. We will put all of

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Speaker 1: this in the show notes or the URL, so if

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Speaker 1: you're driving, you do have to write them down. Those

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Speaker 1: are the concrete ways that we can help right now

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Speaker 1: and what is unfolding as a very terrible situation in

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Speaker 1: nor Syria. Thanks. I hope you do the episode.

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Speaker 2: It's it could happen here the podcast that's hafftic right now.

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Speaker 2: This is maybe the foremost of the Putting Things Back

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Speaker 2: Together episodes of I'm Your Host Mia Wong with me.

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Speaker 1: As James Stout, a guy who likes it to put

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Speaker 1: things together.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, on the subject of putting things

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Speaker 2: together over the last I don't even know three four weeks,

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Speaker 2: the question I have been asked the most by everyone

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Speaker 2: is how do I start organizing? And you know, the

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Speaker 2: problem with how does we're organizing is that it's not

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Speaker 2: a question that has cleaner simple answers. Now, the most

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Speaker 2: common answer you get is just join an org. And

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Speaker 2: the problem is that most of the people who you

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Speaker 2: were hearing this from are already in an org and

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Speaker 2: want you to join their org.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, the problem is a lot of the orgs

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Speaker 1: that are currently dominating left to spaces in the in

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Speaker 1: the United States are trash, yeah, and bad for people.

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Speaker 1: Bad people in them, bad people who are not in them. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Here's a little test you can you can do, is

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Speaker 1: your org currently sad that Basha a Lasad is no

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Speaker 1: longer governing Syria? Because if that's the case, leave yep.

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Speaker 2: And that's that's a lot of orgs that that's a lot, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: take the most of them right now. We'll come back

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Speaker 2: to orgs in a bit. But what I'll say about

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Speaker 2: orgs is that, Okay, if you know an organization in

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Speaker 2: your area that you like and you think does good

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Speaker 2: work and most importantly spends their time actually doing work

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Speaker 2: instead of either in fighting or talking about doing work,

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Speaker 2: you join them.

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Speaker 1: It'll be good.

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Speaker 2: But the important thing about organizations is something we'll come

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Speaker 2: back to you later. The important thing about organizations is

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Speaker 2: they have a lot of people. And the thing that

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Speaker 2: makes organizing work is people. It's not organizations. It's not

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Speaker 2: even necessarily ideological labels. It's there being a bunch of

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Speaker 2: people who you can use and who want to do things. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but something I realized that the more I had these conversations, right,

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Speaker 2: you know, I'm having them with friends, I'm having them

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Speaker 2: with strangers, I'm having them with other organizers. And the

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Speaker 2: more I had these conversations, the more I realize something

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Speaker 2: sort of startling you. The person listening to this almost

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Speaker 2: certainly already knows how to organize, but you don't know

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Speaker 2: that that's called organizing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very good point.

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Speaker 2: I have encountered some of the most stunning or I

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Speaker 2: mean organizing that like I can't discuss the specifics of,

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Speaker 2: but like, some of the best organizing I've ever encountered.

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Speaker 2: I have ran into in the last three weeks from

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Speaker 2: people who don't think that they're organizers and started talking

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Speaker 2: to me about their stuff. I was like, what, like,

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Speaker 2: people are winning victories that like the like hardcore committed

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Speaker 2: organizers haven't been able to do in like thirty years. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and it's just by random people who don't think they

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Speaker 2: know how to do anything.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, can I tell a little organizing story? We do

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Speaker 1: have time, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. So

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Speaker 1: I remember, in like twenty eighteen, I am on a

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Speaker 1: trip with a friend with coming back and we see

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Speaker 1: the arrival of the migrant caravan. One of the migrant

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Speaker 1: caravan is the one that everyone decided to have a

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Speaker 1: fucking cow about right before the twenty eighteen mid terms.

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Speaker 1: And at that time, they were corraling the people of

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Speaker 1: the migrant caravan in a baseball stadium in Tijuana, and

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Speaker 1: like it was raining every day. So the baseball stadium

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Speaker 1: ends up looking like the Battle of the Psalm after

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Speaker 1: like a couple of days, right, you know, kids in needy,

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Speaker 1: mud and shit, and I particularly know what to do,

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Speaker 1: but evidently there were people there who were hungry and thirsty,

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Speaker 1: and so I get three of my friends. At this time,

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Speaker 1: I was still making about half my money riding bicycles

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Speaker 1: and the other half riding so my friends and I

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Speaker 1: was supposed to do a long bike ride. All of

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Speaker 1: us are people who make a living riding bikes. Right,

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Speaker 1: We're not like expert organizers. And I was like, hey, guys,

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Speaker 1: this is fucked. Which we do. We called a friend

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Speaker 1: who has a company who makes waffles, where we obtained

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Speaker 1: like as many waffles as we could physically carry across

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Speaker 1: the border. At that time, we weren't able to get in.

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Speaker 1: We found a way to get in. We began distributing

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Speaker 1: the waffles. After that, we put something online, people sent

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Speaker 1: us money, and we continued feeding people for months. None

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Speaker 1: of us, I think, had a particular plan or a scheduled. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a bit chaotic at times, but we were

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Speaker 1: able to do that and with a lot of other people.

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Speaker 1: Clearly it wasn't just us, right, but we were able

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Speaker 1: to process tenth of thousands of dollars and feed thousands

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Speaker 1: of people. Be everyone there. And I've seen this countless times,

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Speaker 1: especially working and organizing with well with refugees. For the

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Speaker 1: most part, people are so good at organizing each other

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Speaker 1: in themselves. Like when we got there with bottles of

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Speaker 1: water and food. There are a thousand people there who

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Speaker 1: have not had sometimes a drink for days, let alone

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Speaker 1: more than a thousand, I think, let alone something hot

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Speaker 1: to eat, right, everybody made sure that the children and

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Speaker 1: the sick people got what they needed first. Organizing is

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Speaker 1: something that is very inherent in us as people. It

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Speaker 1: just we don't call it that. Yeah, And that's part

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Speaker 1: of what I want to try to the myth.

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Speaker 2: I want to try to puncture with this because I

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Speaker 2: think particularly in the US, but this is true in

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Speaker 2: a lot of places. There's this way in which the

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Speaker 2: organizers sort of TM capital T capital O. The organizer

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Speaker 2: gets held up as this sort of I guess even

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Speaker 2: a particularly masculinist thing, which is it's this guy with

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Speaker 2: specialized knowledge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's just not true.

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Speaker 2: This brings us something that I think is actually really important,

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Speaker 2: which is what what even is organizing?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: And the answer is that most organizing is you get

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Speaker 2: you get a group of people together, you get them

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Speaker 2: to show up to something, and then you do something right.

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Speaker 2: And the thing about this, right, that's something all of

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Speaker 2: you know how to do. If if you can organize

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Speaker 2: a dinner party, right, if you can get eight people

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Speaker 2: to show up to a place to eat dinner, you

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Speaker 2: can do this. It is it is largely the same

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Speaker 2: skill sets, and all of the skill sets that make

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Speaker 2: people good organizers are skill sets that you have to

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Speaker 2: develop to you know, work a job, right. You know,

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Speaker 2: like one of the things that comes up a lot

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Speaker 2: in this which is less discussed and also kind of annoying,

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Speaker 2: but you know you have to manage it is that

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Speaker 2: organizing is about people and sometimes you have to you know,

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Speaker 2: you have to do things like you have to manage

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Speaker 2: people's egos. But like, I don't know, almost all of

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Speaker 2: you work jobs or have work jobs, right, you have

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Speaker 2: had to like deal with your boss being on one right,

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Speaker 2: you have the skills to do this. You know how

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Speaker 2: to do the interpersonal relationship stuff. It's just that you

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Speaker 2: don't think about that as organizing, even though that's that's

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Speaker 2: just what it is.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the core of it is getting people to

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Speaker 1: do stuff like you do it every day.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And the way you do this is by building

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Speaker 2: relationships with people, right. And this isn't necessarily friendships, although

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Speaker 2: that works. And like one of the easiest ways to

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Speaker 2: start organizing is by getting all of your friends together

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Speaker 2: because you are already friends, you have pre existing relationships

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Speaker 2: and being like, okay, motherfuckers, we gotta go do something.

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Speaker 1: And actually I love that.

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Speaker 2: The first thing that you brought up was an admittedly

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Speaker 2: sort of medium ish scale lift version of this. But

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Speaker 2: one of the very easiest things that you can do

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Speaker 2: is you can just get food of some kind. You

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Speaker 2: can either buy it or you can make it yourself,

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Speaker 2: and you and a group of like eight people, not

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Speaker 2: even eight people, you can do it with lower I

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Speaker 2: know people who've done this just solo.

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Speaker 1: Is that you can just go give food to people. Yeah. Literally,

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Speaker 1: it was this morning yesterday morning. I have some man

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Speaker 1: house neighbors right and it was cold, and so I

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Speaker 1: went out and gave them some hot breakfast or hot coffee.

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Speaker 1: It's super easy to do. If you are struggling socially

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Speaker 1: wherever you are, maybe you're finding it hard to make friends.

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Speaker 1: I know that's the thing that people often struggle, especially

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Speaker 1: if you've moved to a new place or post pandemic,

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Speaker 1: or you're still concerned with cloud gatherings or any of

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Speaker 1: those things. Like, if you start doing that, you will

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Speaker 1: find other people who want to do it too. Like

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Speaker 1: so many of my friends I organize with are people

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Speaker 1: like when we had the end of Title forty two

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Speaker 1: and people were in between the fences that a lot

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Speaker 1: of the people who I organize with now or who

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Speaker 1: helped people with Now I didn't know. I just showed

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Speaker 1: up with a giant siler generator that I happened to

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Speaker 1: have and some stuff that we had a whip around

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Speaker 1: a call zone for and like, people who care about

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Speaker 1: the same things as you are generally cool and it's

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Speaker 1: a good way to make friends. And then you can

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Speaker 1: go on from there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a second compounding thing here too, which

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Speaker 2: is that you know, feeding people it's a way to

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Speaker 2: build relationships with people, and also it's a really good

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Speaker 2: way for people to get to know you in general

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Speaker 2: and know that you are someone who will help them

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Speaker 2: with things. Yeah, and from there, and this is a

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Speaker 2: very common exception. I mean this is I literally had

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Speaker 2: this conversation with one of my friends who's like an

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Speaker 2: old school food not Bombs organizer. Food nut Bombs is

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Speaker 2: a very very it's a cool organization. You can just

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Speaker 2: like found a food nut Bobs chapter. They have like

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Speaker 2: a couple of principles, or you can just do your

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Speaker 2: own thing. And I'm pretty sure it's still like the

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Speaker 2: largest anarchist project in the world because all it takes

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Speaker 2: is you and like three other people and you just

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Speaker 2: go feed people. But the thing is from doing that, right.

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Speaker 2: If there's other things that you're concerned about, people will

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Speaker 2: bring you their problems and you can help them doing it.

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Speaker 2: And this is a very good way to get into

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Speaker 2: other kinds of organizing because suddenly, once you start building

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Speaker 2: these relationships, everything sort of cycles and cycles, and you know,

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Speaker 2: you get involved in more and more things. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: that's kind of a that's kind of a late stage

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Speaker 2: thing that we're sort of jumping to a bit. But

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Speaker 2: I want to go back to the beginnings of how so,

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Speaker 2: how do you get a group of people together to

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Speaker 2: do a thing? And the answer is you kind of

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Speaker 2: already know how to because you you presumably at some

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Speaker 2: point in your life, have like organized a group of

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Speaker 2: friends to go do something right, Like you've gotten a

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Speaker 2: group of people together to go accomplish a task.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it could literally be anything, right, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you've got some people to go to a bar,

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Speaker 1: you have the skills.

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Speaker 2: One way I've been thinking about it recently and in

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Speaker 2: my project is putting is thinking about it as like

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Speaker 2: putting together a heist crew. And so, okay, I could

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Speaker 2: vouch for this, right, the feeling of walking up to

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Speaker 2: eight people and telling them individually, I'm putting together a team, and.

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Speaker 1: I want you it is.

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Speaker 2: It feels you could just do it. There is nothing

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Speaker 2: stopping you. Nothing in the world can stop you from

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Speaker 2: just walking up to your friend and going, I'm putting

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Speaker 2: together a team. And it feels exactly as good as

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Speaker 2: you think it put from the Ice movie.

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Speaker 1: It rules. It's so fun amazing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and and and but this gets into also what

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Speaker 2: kinds of people you want to do right, because obviously

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Speaker 2: you know there's two vectors of this. There's on the

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Speaker 2: one hand, you have the aspect of okay, who do

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Speaker 2: you know? Right, And a lot of organizing is just

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Speaker 2: about here's a problem, and I know someone who has

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Speaker 2: some sort of skill or resource that can that can

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Speaker 2: help deal with it, and you put people in touch

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Speaker 2: with each other. And that's organizing. That's so much organizing

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Speaker 2: is literally just hey, like I have like a broken

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Speaker 2: part of my car. I know someone who's like a

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Speaker 2: car mechanic, right, and you put you put them in touch,

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Speaker 2: and you have successfully organized people, and you have built relationships,

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Speaker 2: and you have made all of the sort of social

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Speaker 2: web that creates organizing, You've made it stronger. Yeah, it

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Speaker 2: also just feels good because you know, and that that's

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Speaker 2: an auxiliary benefit to all of this is that it's

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Speaker 2: it's a great it's a great way to sort of

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Speaker 2: break break the isolation we're all under.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the best solution for despair is I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking of a quotation here something that the busy bee

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Speaker 1: have no time for despair. But the thing that makes

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Speaker 1: me feel better about the world is that I have

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Speaker 1: seen that people can fix massive problems with very few

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Speaker 1: resources by just showing up. And like, I think, organizing

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Speaker 1: is what gives me, what allows me to enter this

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Speaker 1: period of time that we're entering into with a great

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Speaker 1: deal more hope than I otherwise would have done. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And do you know what else will help you enter

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Speaker 1: your situation? Is it the products and services that support

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Speaker 1: this podcast.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but

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Speaker 2: we are not in control of the length of the ads.

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Speaker 1: They just do it. We're sorry, here's a really long

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Speaker 1: period of ads.

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Speaker 3: I'm so sorry we are back.

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Speaker 2: So I want to I want to return to my

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Speaker 2: my hight career. If I don't know if if you're

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Speaker 2: a D and D person, the other way you can

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Speaker 2: think about this is you're putting together like a Dungeons

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Speaker 2: and Dragons party or like an RPG party. And the

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Speaker 2: way you need to think about this is, Okay, so

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Speaker 2: you've picked a thing that you want to do, right.

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Speaker 2: You see, you've seen something in the world that is

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Speaker 2: bad and you you figure it. You go, okay, I

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Speaker 2: can do this thing to solve it. And maybe and

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Speaker 2: maybe that's you know, it's literally something as simple as

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Speaker 2: feeding people. Maybe that's you know, I want to start.

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Speaker 2: I want to start doing tenants organizing. I want to

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Speaker 2: start because my rent is too high, right, or people

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Speaker 2: are getting evicted. I want to start doing like immigration defense.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And from there you make a list and that list

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Speaker 2: is you know what you're interested in doing, and you

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Speaker 2: try to match what things need to be done with

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Speaker 2: people you know who have those skills. Yeah, and this

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Speaker 2: is you know, this, this is is where you release

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Speaker 2: get into the heist things, right, because everyone has their

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Speaker 2: sort of like hight role. Now, obvious part of this

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Speaker 2: that you want is you want to create sort of

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Speaker 2: balanced teams.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: You want people who have overlapping strengths so you don't

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Speaker 2: just have only one person who can do a thing.

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Speaker 2: And part of the way the successful organization works over time,

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Speaker 2: and I mean just how successful organizing works is that

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Speaker 2: eventually you are trying to organize yourself out of a job,

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Speaker 2: which is to say, you want your organization to function

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Speaker 2: such that if you're not able to do it, you know,

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Speaker 2: or just you're gone, or you cycle onto a next thing,

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Speaker 2: or you know, any any number of things that can happen.

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Speaker 2: You want the organization to still be able to keep

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Speaker 2: working without you, and you want you want your you're

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Speaker 2: trying to get people to be able to replace you

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Speaker 2: as the person who's like organizing the thing, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: And at this point we can start talking about the

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Speaker 2: kinds of skills that people need for organizing, and a

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Speaker 2: lot of people and this is unbelievably common when I

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Speaker 2: talk to people, and like especially women and especially like

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Speaker 2: a lot of binary people and trans people particularly have

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Speaker 2: this is that people don't believe that they have any skills.

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Speaker 2: And then you talk to them for five seconds and

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Speaker 2: they're like, well, I'm good at carrying heavy objects, right,

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Speaker 2: I'm good with kids, which is a huge one. We'll

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Speaker 2: get you in a second, right, Or like I don't know,

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Speaker 2: I have a car, that's a huge skill. There are

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Speaker 2: so many different skills that are so useful for so

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Speaker 2: many things, and I'm just gonna go over loss of

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Speaker 2: things that are actually really useful to get to get

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Speaker 2: people a sense of like the kinds of things that

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Speaker 2: there are. There are massive roles for so one of

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Speaker 2: the most important ones, and this is something you can

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Speaker 2: you deliberately look for. You know, this is this is

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Speaker 2: one of the things you do at the beginning of

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Speaker 2: any union organizing campaign. Someone who's good at talking to

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Speaker 2: other people and making friends. That is a staggeringly useful

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Speaker 2: person because again, most most organizing is just talking to

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Speaker 2: people and building relationships. And you know, one of the

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Speaker 2: things you do when you're when you're doing you're sort

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Speaker 2: of they call it power mapping. But when when you

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Speaker 2: when you're figuring out how you're going to organize a workplace,

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Speaker 2: is you find the person who everyone likes and talks

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Speaker 2: to and respects, and you talk to that person. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: because that person can you know, can sort of like

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Speaker 2: organize people down the chain because they have they have

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Speaker 2: their relationships already and also they're good they'll be good at,

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Speaker 2: you know, talking to new people and spreading your organization

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Speaker 2: that way. And so like you know if you're just

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Speaker 2: someone who's social or and this is also very useful

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Speaker 2: if you have a friend who is very social, because

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Speaker 2: I know a lot of us on operary social but

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Speaker 2: you probably have a friend that you're thinking of right

383
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Speaker 2: now who is very good at conversations that is charming

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Speaker 2: and is good at making friendships. That person unbelievably useful,

385
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Speaker 2: incredibly useful and compelling skill.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: There are also things like research people who are good

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Speaker 2: at and I think people are much better at research

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Speaker 2: than they think to take like a Tenet's organizing example. Right,

390
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Speaker 2: one of the common things you have to do is

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Speaker 2: find out stuff about a landlord, right, Yeah, And there's

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Speaker 2: the higher difficulty version of that, which isn't that hard.

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Speaker 2: Also want to I want to mention this, but like

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Speaker 2: going to a courthouse and finding records about who owns

395
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Speaker 2: property companies that it's not that hard. It's like you

396
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Speaker 2: could just do it, right, It's not as hard as

397
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Speaker 2: you think it is from someone saying it. But there's

398
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Speaker 2: also even just easy things in that, right that all

399
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Speaker 2: of you probably already know how to do, which is

400
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Speaker 2: just looking at someone's social media profiles and finding out

401
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Speaker 2: information about them. Yeah, and this is very useful. Yeah,

402
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Speaker 2: for like union campaigns, bosses.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever been a person who uses dating apps,

404
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Speaker 1: especially if you're a wo man, yeah, yeah, then you

405
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Speaker 1: know how to ocin. Actually maybe you don't credit yourself

406
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Speaker 1: with that skill, but one hundred percent that like you've

407
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Speaker 1: developed that skill to keep yourself safe and you can

408
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Speaker 1: use it for good.

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Speaker 2: Do you want to explain what ocenters and yes? How

410
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Speaker 2: that how that process works?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure? So open source intelligence is it's an acream

412
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Speaker 1: that doesn't really need to exist. It's gathering information of

413
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Speaker 1: open sources things sort of openly accessible, right, as opposed

414
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Speaker 1: to like humint, which is like being a spy, or singint,

415
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Speaker 1: which is capturing signals. Open source information is you're creeping

416
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Speaker 1: someone's Instagram, creeping their Facebook, looking at the weird fucking

417
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Speaker 1: shit that they put on good Reads. Right. All the

418
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Speaker 1: data that is out there, largely on the Internet, about us.

419
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Speaker 1: A lot of people put a lot of information on

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Speaker 1: the and it's very easy. And I would imagine if

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Speaker 1: you're under fifty and maybe if you're over fifty two,

422
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Speaker 1: like you just know how to do this because it's

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Speaker 1: what you do. Anyway you want to find out about

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Speaker 1: someone and especially if you are a person who goes

425
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Speaker 1: on dates with people who you haven't met before and

426
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Speaker 1: haven't been introduced to by a mutual friend, but you

427
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Speaker 1: meet on the internet, you probably already do this to

428
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Speaker 1: keep yourself safe.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is something that's very useful for I mean,

430
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Speaker 2: there's so many use cases for this, right there's you know,

431
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Speaker 2: there's the very obvious ones where you're dealing with the

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Speaker 2: local Nazi and you're trying to organize around like running

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Speaker 2: them out. People say from them and you can find

434
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Speaker 2: information about them. But I mean it's useful for cops

435
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Speaker 2: who are beating people. Is useful for like politicians particularly.

436
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Speaker 2: It can be very useful for it's useful for landlords.

437
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,120
Speaker 2: This happens all the time. It can be very very

438
00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:52,639
Speaker 2: useful for bosses in union campaigns. Unions have like teams

439
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:55,560
Speaker 2: of researchers usually to like do this kind of stuff.

440
00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:57,440
Speaker 2: But the thing is also and this is something I

441
00:20:57,440 --> 00:21:00,240
Speaker 2: don't think people understand. Those guys, like the people they're

442
00:21:00,320 --> 00:21:02,960
Speaker 2: hiring the researchers are just you, but they got a

443
00:21:03,040 --> 00:21:05,320
Speaker 2: job being a researcher for a union. Like they have

444
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:07,199
Speaker 2: the same skills as you. They know how to like

445
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:09,840
Speaker 2: Google stuff, and they know how to look through people's

446
00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:13,399
Speaker 2: like dating profiles and like look through their their facebooks

447
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:16,600
Speaker 2: and their Instagrams and like a big one, a big

448
00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:20,480
Speaker 2: one that that the rich people especially do not think about,

449
00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:25,840
Speaker 2: is like cash app and venmo oh Venmo, because yeah, yeah,

450
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:28,760
Speaker 2: because because people's people's people just leave public transactions out

451
00:21:28,760 --> 00:21:30,680
Speaker 2: there like that. That's how they got what's his name,

452
00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:34,000
Speaker 2: the congressional Gates. Can I legally call him.

453
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:38,720
Speaker 1: The congressional pedophile? I guess they call him the accused pedophile? Yeah, yeah,

454
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,800
Speaker 1: the man credibly accused of sleeping with an underage woman

455
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:43,280
Speaker 1: lots of times, you know.

456
00:21:43,359 --> 00:21:45,120
Speaker 2: And one of the ways they found that was that

457
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:48,560
Speaker 2: and also like paying paying for that, right, yes, which

458
00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:49,960
Speaker 2: is which is rape. By the way, I want to

459
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:52,560
Speaker 2: be very clear about that, Like, yeah, having sex with

460
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:54,000
Speaker 2: someone who is underage is rape.

461
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 1: It is always rape, you know.

462
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:57,199
Speaker 2: And the way people found that was that they just

463
00:21:57,280 --> 00:21:59,800
Speaker 2: looked through like his cash app history and they found

464
00:21:59,840 --> 00:22:03,280
Speaker 2: all of these money transfers to people. You know, This

465
00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:06,200
Speaker 2: is all very very simple stuff. That's that's very very

466
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,719
Speaker 2: useful organizing wise that you already know how to do.

467
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pinterest is another absolute ban to people. Yeah, that

468
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:17,040
Speaker 1: may be pinning.

469
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 2: You know if if if you're hearing some of these

470
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:22,520
Speaker 2: things and and you think that you can figure out

471
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 2: how to do this. That's also a huge skill. Finding

472
00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,000
Speaker 2: people who are willing to learn things and willing to

473
00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:32,600
Speaker 2: learn new skills is a huge benefit to to organizers

474
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:34,920
Speaker 2: because you know this, this gives you, like, this gives

475
00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:37,119
Speaker 2: you a flexible person, right, it gives it gives you

476
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:39,280
Speaker 2: someone you can like flex into into any of a

477
00:22:39,320 --> 00:22:41,199
Speaker 2: bunch of roles that you need. And also can you know,

478
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:45,640
Speaker 2: pick up skills to learn things. Having a car, being

479
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:47,159
Speaker 2: able to drive, and I know a lot of you

480
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:48,960
Speaker 2: don't do this, but if you do do this, this

481
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:52,119
Speaker 2: is you immediately, even if you literally cannot contribute anything

482
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,000
Speaker 2: else to a project, being able to just drive a

483
00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:58,840
Speaker 2: bunch of water to a place, Oh yeah, huge, staggeringly useful.

484
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:01,639
Speaker 1: The amount of things that people can't access because they

485
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 1: can't get there, it's vast, Especially when I talk to

486
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,520
Speaker 1: migrants right have recently arrived in the US. They don't

487
00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:12,680
Speaker 1: have a US cell phone, they can't uber Oftentimes, nowadays,

488
00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:15,000
Speaker 1: you can't even pay for mass transit with cash. You

489
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:17,320
Speaker 1: have to have a special card and then you have

490
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:18,960
Speaker 1: to get to the place to get the card right.

491
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:21,600
Speaker 1: The problems you can solve by being able to drive

492
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 1: someone five miles are enormous, especially in the US where

493
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:29,080
Speaker 1: everything is designed around everyone owning a motor car at

494
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:29,960
Speaker 1: all times. Yep.

495
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like transport based skills are also very useful.

496
00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:37,359
Speaker 2: I mean, if you hike a lot, that's a very

497
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 2: very useful skill. There's a lot of sort of mutual

498
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:41,959
Speaker 2: aid projects. There's a lot of you know, I mean

499
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,119
Speaker 2: even things like like setting up summer camps is the

500
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:46,960
Speaker 2: thing that like leftist groups do right, and being able

501
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:48,600
Speaker 2: to hike very good for that. It's good for things

502
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 2: like wilden just rescue. There's a lot of you know

503
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 2: the James like the work you do that has to

504
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 2: do with like going in helping migrants. Like being able

505
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 2: to hike is staggeringly useful skill.

506
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's very Like, it's useful. It's important. It's

507
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:05,280
Speaker 1: okay if that's not something you can physically do or

508
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: you know that that works for the way you like

509
00:24:07,040 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 1: to in your life. Like another thing I was thinking

510
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,400
Speaker 1: of which can be massively important and people don't realize,

511
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: is if you know how to take off a tail

512
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: light and replace the bulb in it. Yes, like we're

513
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:21,640
Speaker 1: entering a time when people with darker, people with TPS,

514
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: people who are undocumented, people are on temporary migration statuses,

515
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 1: are going to be definitely afraid of any interaction with

516
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: law enforcement. If you can change the bulb on someone's

517
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:35,240
Speaker 1: tail light or their turn signal indicators of US in

518
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:39,199
Speaker 1: the UK, then you can meaningfully protect that person in

519
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: a really important way. And it can literally take ten minutes.

520
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 2: And this is something that you know, can scale up

521
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 2: depending on how much skill you have. Right, there's even

522
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:51,359
Speaker 2: just very basic auto maintenance stuff is very useful for

523
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 2: stuff like this. But you know, like if you're a carpenter, right,

524
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: if you're an electrician, you do some kind of trade work, right,

525
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 2: you do plumbing, right, That is thing that is massively

526
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 2: useful to a lot of people. There's a lot of

527
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,200
Speaker 2: other kind of just skills that you have from your

528
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 2: job that can be very useful. I mean, having someone

529
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:14,359
Speaker 2: to manage a spreadsheet, oh yeah, yeah, is staggeringly useful.

530
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,199
Speaker 2: And another one that I think people don't understand that

531
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 2: they really have, but like being able to set up

532
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 2: a meeting and like having a thing that lets you

533
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, here's when everyone is free, Like you

534
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 2: probably have to do this for your job or just

535
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,880
Speaker 2: for you know, trying to get your friends to go

536
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,320
Speaker 2: even just like be on a call together or like

537
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:42,479
Speaker 2: go have food or like just do anything. That is

538
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 2: what literally, genuinely one of the most important skills you

539
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 2: can possibly have as an organizer is the ability to

540
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 2: just sort of like go talk to people and be like, hey,

541
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 2: can you show up to this thing here?

542
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 1: Yeah?

543
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 2: And that is that is so much of just what

544
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 2: organizing is. Can you be here at this time? And

545
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 2: then trying to figure out a time.

546
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: Yeah.

547
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 2: So we're going to close out the sort of skill

548
00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:04,280
Speaker 2: section with some I think just sort of like domestic

549
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 2: These skills that I don't think people realize are super useful.

550
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:10,199
Speaker 2: If you have a button maker, you are instantly the

551
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,919
Speaker 2: single most useful person in any organization that. Yeah, well

552
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 2: you can obtain a button maker there. They're very easy

553
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 2: to use. But if you have one or you know

554
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,199
Speaker 2: the person who has the button maker, and suddenly you

555
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 2: can just crank out buttons for every single event they rule.

556
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:29,640
Speaker 2: Everyone loves them. It helps, it helps enormously. It's awesome.

557
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 1: That's a badge. For those in the Commonwealth. Also, if

558
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: you have a sewing machine. Yeah, I was about to

559
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,679
Speaker 1: mention that, yeah, yeah, you're a hero. Yeah. One of

560
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: my friends recently made me a little patch and it's

561
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,479
Speaker 1: really cool and I like it put not all my stuff,

562
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: but if you can sew, like, that's a skill that

563
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: I do not have. And it's so great when people

564
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 1: can fix stuff for someone or you know, make stuff

565
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:58,760
Speaker 1: fit someone. You know, if you're a person who finds

566
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: it hard to get closed that you like to wear

567
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: that make you feel good and someone one of my

568
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 1: friends could do that. And one of my friends was

569
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 1: making clothes for another friend for like a Renaissance fair,

570
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 1: and like it was the nicest thing I've seen someone

571
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: do for someone else in a very long time. And

572
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 1: it really made her, like, yeah, feel like nice and

573
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:23,879
Speaker 1: cared for. And like you might think that like this

574
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 1: is just a weird little thing that you like to

575
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:27,920
Speaker 1: do with your sewing machine, but you can meaningfully really

576
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: make someone feel cared for using that.

577
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's a huge part of what organizing is, right,

578
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:35,640
Speaker 2: and that that goes into one of the things that

579
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 2: is also an appreciable skill that's very useful, is I

580
00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 2: mean just like being nice to people, being kind to people,

581
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,679
Speaker 2: and having people around who are good at like keeping

582
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:49,639
Speaker 2: groups together. Yeah, that's its own distinct kind of person

583
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 2: is someone who can you know, keep all of the

584
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 2: people who are involved in a thing enjoying being around

585
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 2: each other. That's that's that's a kind of person who's

586
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 2: very valuable. And it's something that you can look for,

587
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:02,360
Speaker 2: you know. And if that's not you, like you can

588
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 2: there's something you can you know, find in your friends.

589
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 2: You can find in this sort of the people around you. Yeah, definitely,

590
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 2: there's also something that I think you can tell when

591
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 2: an organization is collapsing because this is like the first

592
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 2: thing with the quality drops drawing and graphic design are

593
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 2: very very useful because a big part of what you

594
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 2: do organizing is like you make a flyer and you

595
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 2: put a flyer on a bunch of telephone poles to

596
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:29,160
Speaker 2: tell people that there's a thing happening. Yeah, and yeah,

597
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 2: you know, and this is also something you know later

598
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 2: on you might be making a social media presence, but

599
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 2: just having good artists and having good graphic design people

600
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 2: is enormously useful for this kind of stuff. Yeah, and

601
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 2: along this line, these things like making music, and there's

602
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:46,479
Speaker 2: a bunch of different ways this can go. This can

603
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 2: be an immediate thing where you know, like you have

604
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 2: people on a picket line, right and everyone's singing songs

605
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 2: and this is great.

606
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:52,240
Speaker 1: We love this.

607
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, also, and this is another thing that you can

608
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 2: be thinking about in terms of what skills you have

609
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 2: and what things you can create. Benefit shows, yes, has

610
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 2: been a huge part of a lot of how some

611
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 2: of the unions off up here has been getting funded

612
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 2: is by just having like punk benefit shows. And if

613
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 2: that's the thing that you can do, or you know,

614
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 2: people in bands, you know people who make music, you

615
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 2: know people who just make stuff who are willing to

616
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 2: contribute it to the cause, that's great.

617
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: I remember one of we had one night last September,

618
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: so cold. We were in the desert and I'm like

619
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 1: a thousand people, right, and we were well at that point,

620
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: we were really struggling to feed everyone, even you know,

621
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: because there was so few of us. But my friend

622
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: bought out like their guitar and some bongo drums they had,

623
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 1: and I think I had my harmonica in my truck,

624
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: and like we were sitting around with these. We had

625
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: some Sikh guys had some Wiga folks come from China

626
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: and then some Kourdish people and they were all explaying

627
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: their different music and it was so nice like that,

628
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: taking people out of a shitty situation for a moment

629
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: with music. Again, like, don't underestimate how important that it.

630
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: Don't feel like if you have that skill, it's not

631
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:56,360
Speaker 1: a useful one.

632
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 2: No, And this is something I've I've been starting to

633
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:00,960
Speaker 2: say more and more. If if you need a theory

634
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:05,080
Speaker 2: brained way to say this to someone who like is

635
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:10,240
Speaker 2: is like a curmudgety Marxist who hates fun. Morale is

636
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 2: a terrain of struggle that this there's a reason why

637
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 2: morale is one of the most important factors of military campaigns.

638
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 2: You can't get people to do things if they're too

639
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 2: depressed to do it. Yeah, and being able to raise

640
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: people's morale, it's it's this massive if you want again,

641
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:28,280
Speaker 2: want to go into technical language, is a massive force multiplier, right.

642
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 2: It makes everyone you have enormously more effective. The better

643
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 2: they feel about themselves and the better they feel about

644
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 2: the situation they're in, and things like music, things like art,

645
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 2: I mean, things like pulling pranks. This is a yeah,

646
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 2: if you were if you were in good practical jokester.

647
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 2: This is a staggeringly useful skill both like in terms

648
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 2: of you know, you need to be careful about whether

649
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 2: you're you're playing your pranks on like other people in

650
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 2: the org, but like you know, if you know how

651
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 2: to just like pull pranks, this is a really really

652
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: useful thing. In like union camp Tenant's organizing. There are

653
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 2: a lot of people who you can pray and it's

654
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 2: very funny and it lowers their morale and it raises

655
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 2: your morale.

656
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I going back to your music as all like,

657
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 1: like morale is a terrain of struggle. Like the other

658
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: memory I have last year of playing guitars is in Rajava,

659
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: being inside at night because everyone was getting drone struck

660
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: all the time and it was dangerous to be driving

661
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: around sitting around with some ZD friends, and like we

662
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: spent all night playing the ood, which is like a

663
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: it's like a guitar with a gord on the bottom,

664
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: and to describe it like it's a string instrument. It's

665
00:31:36,440 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: a string instrument, is what it is. And like that

666
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: made everyone so happy. We had such a nice evening.

667
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 1: Everyone was able to like get through this relatively difficult thing, Like,

668
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: you know, it sucks that people are being killed and

669
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: just for driving around are existing and they're bombing all

670
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 1: this cuitly and infrastructure and the power keeps going out

671
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: and all these things, right, like, but there's a reason

672
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: that those people have ooed around after fifteen thirteen years

673
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: of war, and it's because it is important, and so

674
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: don't overlook that.

675
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 2: And you know, and resisting fear is another huge aspect

676
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:13,719
Speaker 2: of this, right. A lot of the ways that people

677
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 2: like a lot of the ways that you demobilize people.

678
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 2: This is why regimes like this spend a lot of

679
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 2: effort trying to make people afraid, is that it makes

680
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 2: it harder for you to act. And things that you know,

681
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:27,840
Speaker 2: the things that make you less afraid, even if they

682
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 2: sort of seem silly, are very very important. And you know,

683
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 2: on sort of this note, one of the things that

684
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 2: you know, as you've assembled your group of people, right,

685
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 2: one of the things that that's important to be able

686
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 2: to sort of have a grasp on is that you

687
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 2: can't just do organizing by having it only be the capital,

688
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 2: the serious thing, the captialty organizing thing all the time.

689
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 2: Your organization will not hold together. There has to be

690
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 2: actual like bonds formed between you and the people you're

691
00:32:58,240 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 2: organizing with and the people you're trying to help.

692
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: Hm hmmm. I don't want to call out any organization

693
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 1: in particular, there is an organization that perceives organizing to

694
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: exist solely in the realm of wearing a high vis

695
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: vest and carrying a clipboard and getting people to write

696
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: their email addresses down and then telling them to attend things.

697
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: And like maybe there are several organizations like that. I

698
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: don't know, I've just I've perceived one locally. If you

699
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: don't have those bonds that, like, those interpersonal relationships, like

700
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 1: these things won't hang together. Like yeah, So many of

701
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,200
Speaker 1: my happiest organizing memories, like again going down Jen's memory lane,

702
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 1: I guess I have a memory of like Christmas Eve

703
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: last year twenty twenty three, me and my friends have

704
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 1: been out. I know some of them listen because some

705
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: of them have come across from different states to help us,

706
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: or at Christmas Holidays, which is nice, and it was

707
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 1: cold and we had been feeding people all day and

708
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: then we'd heard some people in another location that we'd

709
00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: gone to find, and then we got to the end

710
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: of the day, and like, rather than just going home,

711
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: I had a bunch of we had some MRIs left.

712
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: Refugemri is sort of vegan. Lots of us are vegan, so

713
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: we were like, we're not going to find any other

714
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: vegan food in the middle of nowhere out here, so

715
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:10,239
Speaker 1: we'll set around eating the vegan MRIs and like just

716
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 1: talking and like sharing some thoughts and things we experience

717
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: over the last months of doing this, And like, it's

718
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 1: those moments that make you're organizing groups so much stronger.

719
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 1: No one's telling anyone to do anything. You know, there's

720
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: genuine bonds and that the love and friendship we build

721
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:29,640
Speaker 1: up between each other doing things that are very important.

722
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: Don't overlook the value of those because it's extremely valuable.

723
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 2: And this is something that I think you can understand

724
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 2: in your own life pretty easily, where Okay, if a

725
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,320
Speaker 2: random person on the street walks up to you and

726
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 2: tells you to go do something, are you going to

727
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 2: do it?

728
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: It's like no, why? No? Probably not, Like I don't.

729
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,399
Speaker 2: Know, maybe it's something like really sort of hey, there's

730
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 2: children in a burning building. We're going to run in

731
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 2: and grab them. But like the odds are no you're

732
00:34:59,120 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 2: going to ignore them. But if your friend goes and

733
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 2: tells you to do the same thing, and you know

734
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 2: you've been friends with them for a long time and

735
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 2: you really care about them, the odds of you doing

736
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 2: it are much much higher. And that's that's all organizing is.

737
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 2: It's finding ways to You have a thing to do,

738
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 2: and you go talk to people and you ask if

739
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 2: they want to help you do it. And the stronger

740
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 2: your relationships are, the more lucky that is to happen.

741
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 2: And that's why it's very important to do things like

742
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 2: you know, just like having potlucks, like bringing snacks to meetings.

743
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and like you know, even if you're doing

744
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:32,839
Speaker 2: a potluck, it's it's good to you know, you do

745
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 2: like one capital capital T organizing thing, right, You get

746
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 2: like a little bit of work done, but mostly everyone's

747
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 2: just sort of relaxing and eating chili or whatever.

748
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:45,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're a baker, you know you can base people.

749
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:47,959
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful thing to shut god. Yes.

750
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just knowing how to cook. I realized I

751
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 2: forgot to mention this one. Knowing how to cook is

752
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 2: a staggeringly useful skill, and it's useful in literally every

753
00:35:57,080 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 2: literally any kind of organizing you could possibly be, and

754
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 2: it is a thing. It is a skill that is

755
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 2: useful in like it's useful in war zones. It's useful

756
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 2: like literally no matter what organization you are in, if

757
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 2: you can cook for people, oh yeah, and you don't

758
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 2: even and you don't have to be like a good cook.

759
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 2: It's just like you can show up with food that

760
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 2: you have made. You have instantly made this whole thing

761
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 2: more successful.

762
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, Like I've had some wonderful meals in war zones,

763
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: so I deeply appreciated those people. More broadly though, those

764
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: ties like the way we organize without the state. The

765
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: reason I believe that that is the way we should organize,

766
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 1: the way we will continue to organize in a way

767
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: that we can make the state irrelevant is because we

768
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: understand each other as people and care about each other

769
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 1: as people, and then we approach our organizing holistically, right

770
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: with everyone in it, knowing this person is good at this,

771
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:50,359
Speaker 1: but they're struggling with this right now, and I care

772
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 1: about them, so I'm not going to make them do

773
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: that right now. That is how we can build sustainable

774
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: communities in a way that state cannot and in a

775
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: way that capitalism cannot right because fucking hurts rent a

776
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: car doesn't care or know about its employees in a

777
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 1: way that we who organize with people and care and

778
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: love one another do, And like that's why our organizations

779
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: will always be stronger than those created by capitalism on

780
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: the state.

781
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, speaking of capitalism of the state, we're taking

782
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 2: our last ad break.

783
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: We're doing it. Yeah, hopefully it's hurts Rentica. We are back.

784
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 2: So I want to wrap things up by doing a

785
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:42,879
Speaker 2: couple of doing a few things. I want to talk

786
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 2: about some kind of basic organizing things that you're going

787
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 2: to have to do that are not very difficult but

788
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 2: are extremely important. And second, I want to talk a

789
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 2: bit about how we did the first organizing project that

790
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 2: I ever was involved in, which was tenants organizing, Because

791
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:01,279
Speaker 2: it's really not that hard, right, you just go do

792
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:04,760
Speaker 2: the thing, it will happen. Yeah, and suddenly it ceases

793
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,720
Speaker 2: to be this like, oh, this domain of expert knowledge,

794
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 2: and there's like, oh, this is a really difficult thing.

795
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:11,280
Speaker 2: If you just I don't know, you go give food

796
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 2: to someone and suddenly you've done that and it's happened.

797
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,360
Speaker 2: So there are things that are important to like basic

798
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,800
Speaker 2: organizing stuff. Knowing how to book rooms from like churches,

799
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 2: from libraries, from whatever, meeting spaces, and also knowing how

800
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 2: to book rooms in places that like accommodate disabilities is

801
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 2: a huge thing because a lot of people book meetings

802
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 2: and places are a wheelchair accessible and it's a fucking fiasco.

803
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 2: And you can avoid that very easily, but you have

804
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 2: to put a little tiny bit of work into it.

805
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. Literally, I reached out to a friend to book

806
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: a room last night because I knew the would get

807
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: at that stuff.

808
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's arranging people's schedules, getting people show

809
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 2: up for stuff, things you can do to prepare if

810
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 2: what you're doing is basically all the things we've been describing,

811
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 2: right getting to the other a bunch of people to

812
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 2: do a thing that is technically forming an organization.

813
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: Yea.

814
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 2: Now, how formal informat you want it to be or

815
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 2: just you know, maybe it's just your organizing project or whatever.

816
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 2: There's things you usually want. You want some kind of

817
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,240
Speaker 2: email so people can contact you in tandem with the email.

818
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:17,799
Speaker 2: Something that's very helpful that I think younger people tend

819
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 2: not to think about is getting Google Voice yes, when

820
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 2: Google Voice lets you set up a voicemail account so

821
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 2: people can call you and leave phone messages. I mean,

822
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 2: everyone should just do this because this is the way

823
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:30,360
Speaker 2: that a lot of older people communicate.

824
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 3: Right.

825
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 2: They won't send you an email, but they will leave

826
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 2: you a voice message. And it's very, very useful for this.

827
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 2: Childcare is something that's important. I did, I mean a

828
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 2: lot is probably too strong of a word, but like

829
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 2: I did childcare what I was organizing, and it wound

830
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 2: up being really helpful because there's a lot of people

831
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 2: with kids, and so you know, there's a couple of

832
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 2: ways that this could work.

833
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 1: One is that you know, you have everyone bring their kids.

834
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:52,840
Speaker 2: You have like a little space, you bring them like

835
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 2: coloring stuff, you bring them toys, you bring them games,

836
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 2: and you just sort of watch everyone for a while.

837
00:39:57,719 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 2: And as an organizing thing. Again, if you're good with

838
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:03,919
Speaker 2: kid that's very useful staggering or useful organizing skill.

839
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

840
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:07,720
Speaker 2: Another way this stuff happens is you know, everyone pulls

841
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 2: together ten bucks and you hire a babysitter, yeah, for

842
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:13,719
Speaker 2: a bunch of kids. And that's a very useful organizing

843
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 2: a thing.

844
00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I organize with people who have kids I remember

845
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 1: four years ago, fuck me twenty twenty a long time ago,

846
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 1: and also yesterday, but like we were organizing to feed

847
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: and house people and we were having a big Thanksgiving dinner,

848
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 1: and like, some of my friends have very young children

849
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 1: and they bought them, and I think it's actually really

850
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: cool to do that, a like for those kids, it

851
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 1: is normal that, like we look after people in our community.

852
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: This is what we do, and ever since I've been little,

853
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: this is what we did. And like it's also very

854
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 1: nice for people. Like a lot of my friends also

855
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,839
Speaker 1: bought their children down to the border, especially last year

856
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 1: when we had because there were children there anyway, right, Yeah,

857
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: some of my friends who bring their children down and

858
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 1: their kids would play the other kids, and like it

859
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that some of the kids are Kurdition and

860
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: some of the kids are from China and some of

861
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:07,759
Speaker 1: them are from Columbia or whatever. They'll get along just fine.

862
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 1: When they're four or five years old. They don't care.

863
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 1: They just want to kick a ball or see a

864
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: Teddy Bear or something. And I think it's really good

865
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 1: for your children to you know, you're bringing them into

866
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 1: a world which is cruel and at times unequal and

867
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: like your kids seeing that, like we can make a

868
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: difference and we can do this. I think it's one

869
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,240
Speaker 1: of the best educations you can give your children.

870
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's something that's good for everyone involved.

871
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And it's also very I think one of

872
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: the things I see a lot and people are organized

873
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: thing with refugees of the un housed is like they're

874
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: just people, Like you don't need to be afraid of them,

875
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:47,360
Speaker 1: Like they don't want to hurt your children, And having

876
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:50,280
Speaker 1: your children around shows that, like you have grasped they're

877
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: just people, and that you feel safe and your children

878
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: are safe around them. And I think that that's valuable too.

879
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: You're giving both parties some dignity in that moment. Yeah.

880
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 2: There are some other fair basic things that I think

881
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 2: are very important. If you've never done this before, I'm

882
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 2: going to talk a little bit about how you run

883
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: a meeting. Yeah, And you would think that this doesn't matter,

884
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 2: and until you watch a group of one hundred people

885
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 2: who don't know how to do this attempt to get

886
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 2: anything done and they it just is a fiasco. And

887
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 2: this is even true of sort of smaller groups.

888
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 1: Yeah.

889
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 2: So I'm going to give you how to run a

890
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 2: meeting one oh one, Okay. A very common way to

891
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 2: organize meetings that people use all over the world and

892
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 2: it's very effective is you have two things. You have

893
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:31,839
Speaker 2: an agenda and you have a stack, and those are

894
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:34,359
Speaker 2: like the technical terms for them. The agenda, I mean,

895
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,319
Speaker 2: is an agenda, right? You know what an agenda is.

896
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 2: You put the things that you need to do on it.

897
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 2: And another thing that's very helpful with these is you

898
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:43,240
Speaker 2: know you're going to be operating at our time constraints

899
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:45,239
Speaker 2: because people don't have forty five hours to.

900
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 1: Be in meetings, and my god, you don't want to

901
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:47,839
Speaker 1: be in a meeting.

902
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 2: For that long. Yeah, you know. Knowing how long roughly

903
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,600
Speaker 2: you want to talk about these things is very very

904
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 2: useful and making sure that you're moving the conversation through

905
00:42:57,640 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 2: the stuff on the agenda because you have more stuff

906
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 2: you need to talk about. All of this again, like

907
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:04,920
Speaker 2: this all sounds very obvious, and again, you know how

908
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 2: to do it, but until you've been in a room

909
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:10,319
Speaker 2: where people have not realize they need to do this,

910
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 2: you don't understand how I.

911
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 1: Put on Yet it's the pain of it not happening. God,

912
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: I have watched rooms full of like science. These are

913
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: like professional scientists.

914
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 3: Right.

915
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 1: This is an entire room of one hundred.

916
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 2: Feet of people with physics PhDs who don't know how

917
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 2: to run a meeting, and it's a shit show. And

918
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 2: all of this stuff could have been avoided with with

919
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 2: some very very simple things. Yes, the other thing, and

920
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 2: this is genuinely a piece of social technology, right, it

921
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 2: is the stack. It is very simple, right. You have

922
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 2: one person who is the stack keeper, and whatsone wants

923
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:40,959
Speaker 2: to talk? You have one person talking at a time,

924
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 2: and what someone wants to talk, they raise their hand,

925
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:45,360
Speaker 2: they make some kind of signal to the stack keeper,

926
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 2: and that person writes their name down. And so you

927
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 2: now have a list of who gets to talk in

928
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,360
Speaker 2: what order. And so you go down the list and

929
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 2: people get the say things, and again you know how.

930
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 1: To do this.

931
00:43:57,120 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 2: This is not like a complicated thing. But again I

932
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 2: have one watch people who collectively have like more PhDs

933
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 2: than like I earn money in a week, Like who know,

934
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:08,839
Speaker 2: I could not.

935
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 1: Be able to pick this out, and you do. I

936
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 1: believe in you. I believe in you, dear listener, that

937
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: you could do this.

938
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a very common Sometimes this is one person

939
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:18,720
Speaker 2: and sometimes.

940
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: This is two people.

941
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:20,920
Speaker 2: A very common way to do it is to have

942
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 2: a stack taker and then have someone who's the facilitator.

943
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 2: And the facilitator's job is to like call on the

944
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,400
Speaker 2: people and to try to like move the conversation forwards

945
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 2: and get and make sure make sure everyone's involved. And

946
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 2: also another important part of this, and this is again

947
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 2: something you'll you'll know from your stupid work meetings, is

948
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 2: you have to get people like me to shut up.

949
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 2: Your meetings can't just be one person giving a speech.

950
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,160
Speaker 2: You have to cut them the fuck off, and you

951
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 2: have to get to the next person.

952
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and doing that courteously is a skill. Yeah. Yeah.

953
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:52,759
Speaker 2: And finally, on this note, there's a lot of if

954
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 2: you want to go into the like more technical stuff.

955
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 2: Part of the things that facilitators use in part of

956
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 2: you know, the formal name for this is like the

957
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 2: progressive stack, but it's just a thing that's very useful

958
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 2: in organizing is you want to make sure everyone in

959
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,399
Speaker 2: a room is engaged and talking and that it's not

960
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 2: just three people who talk all the time. And you know,

961
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 2: and so the idea of the progressive stack, right is

962
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 2: you're trying to find the most marginalized people in degrees,

963
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 2: people who are least likely to speak, and you're trying

964
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 2: to get them in first. And sometimes this is literally

965
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:25,439
Speaker 2: just like, hey, someone hasn't been talking in a meeting

966
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 2: this whole time, and you can like ask them what

967
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 2: they think about something, or asked if they have anything

968
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 2: to say, and a lot of times they will, but

969
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 2: they just don't feel confident enough to say it. And

970
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 2: this is a very very important skill for a facilitator

971
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 2: or just even you could just do this in a

972
00:45:37,880 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 2: meeting too, right, Like you can be the person who

973
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 2: goes like, hey, do you have this this person have

974
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 2: anything to contribute? And that is an enormous thing. Sometimes

975
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 2: it can be you know, sometimes it can be a

976
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 2: little bit awkward, but it's a very important thing because

977
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 2: you're just losing out on people who have really really

978
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 2: valuable ideas and contributions and plans, and if you just

979
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 2: let the same three people give speeches, you can't get

980
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 2: to the stuff that's actually useful.

981
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, if you've been a teacher or in any

982
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: way what you know, you probably have had you have

983
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: this skill. You might not consider it as skill. But

984
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: even if you've been a TA in grad school something

985
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: like that. You probably know how to do this.

986
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm gonna put all of this together one briefly,

987
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 2: and I'm going to run through basically how we started

988
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 2: the first organizing project I ever day, which was a

989
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:30,360
Speaker 2: tenants union in Chicago. Okay, so this is based on

990
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 2: my memory. It's been a long time since I did this,

991
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 2: but my basic memory of what we did was. Okay,

992
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 2: So one of my friends is an experienced organizer. I

993
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 2: was like a tiny baby, right this this was my

994
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:42,919
Speaker 2: first offline organizing project ever.

995
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:44,400
Speaker 1: Right, I had no idea what was doing. I so

996
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: thought I was a guy.

997
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 2: Which like that, that's how much of a fiasco, Like

998
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 2: little tiny baby bea who doesn't know anything?

999
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: This was, you know.

1000
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:54,760
Speaker 2: And so my friend talked to some people that he knew,

1001
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:56,720
Speaker 2: and he knew that I, you know, I was interested

1002
00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 2: in getting involved in tennis organizing, and we we like

1003
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:02,440
Speaker 2: went to a cafe and we sat down and we

1004
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 2: ate and we just talked about what we wanted to do,

1005
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 2: what our plans were, what things we needed to do

1006
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 2: to get this organization set up. We talked about ideological

1007
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 2: stuff and that's actually is something that's important too, is

1008
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 2: part of organizing is getting people to think intentionally about

1009
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 2: their actions and think politically about their actions. Yeah, and

1010
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 2: that's something that's very useful. You also have to make

1011
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 2: sure that you're not forming a book club, Like book

1012
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 2: clubs are fine, but you need to make sure you're

1013
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 2: organizing group. If you're trying to do a thing, has

1014
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,239
Speaker 2: it just become a book club. But that that's you

1015
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,239
Speaker 2: know that that was something that was very useful to us.

1016
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 2: And you know, we started making a plan, and our

1017
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 2: plan was, okay, we made a bunch of flyers and

1018
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 2: then we went out and I did this and I

1019
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:42,239
Speaker 2: walked around through a bunch of streets and put them

1020
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 2: a light post or whatever, and then we put them

1021
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 2: like we hung them up in the buildings of tenants,

1022
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:48,279
Speaker 2: you know, because you can just like walk up the

1023
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 2: stairs right and you just put them on the walls.

1024
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:52,760
Speaker 2: And you know, we had this flyer, this firehead information.

1025
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 2: This flyer said, Okay, we're starting a tenant's union. If

1026
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 2: you have tenant, if you have issues with your landlord,

1027
00:47:57,600 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 2: or you want to talk about tenants stuff like, come here.

1028
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 2: At this time, we had an email you can send

1029
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 2: us stuff. We had a phone number that you could call,

1030
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:07,359
Speaker 2: you know, and so okay, and so parallel to this,

1031
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 2: we like, I forget if it was a church or

1032
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:14,320
Speaker 2: if it was some building, some center or something. We

1033
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 2: booked a room. We were kind of lucky and that

1034
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 2: we had like local press people nice who we sort

1035
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 2: of knew. And this is another useful like if knowing

1036
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 2: a journalist can be a very useful skill, because one

1037
00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 2: way to get a project off the ground, if you're

1038
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 2: trying to get to a bunch of people, is by

1039
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 2: finding a journalist who is willing to cover it. Because

1040
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 2: you know, we're we're finding founding like the first tenants

1041
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 2: union in this place, right yeah, and you know, so

1042
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:37,760
Speaker 2: we had media coverage and we got kind of screwed

1043
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 2: when this event eventually came together because there was like

1044
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 2: three feet of snow that night, but people still came,

1045
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,160
Speaker 2: like people still came in the blizzard, Like a lot

1046
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:46,359
Speaker 2: of people showed up for this.

1047
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: What are things that we do?

1048
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 2: We also, like, you know, we just we just started

1049
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:51,919
Speaker 2: talking to people, right, We started talking to tenants about

1050
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 2: their problems. We just you know, we talked to our friends,

1051
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 2: we talked to the people they knew. We ended up

1052
00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 2: talking to someone, you know, and this is the thing

1053
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:01,040
Speaker 2: that just happens as is spreads by word of mouth, right,

1054
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 2: people start contacting you. We ran into a really long

1055
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:06,879
Speaker 2: time tenants organizer in the city who had a bunch

1056
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 2: of incredible stories about how our corrupt politicians got their

1057
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 2: jobs by portraying the old tenants' organizers, right, And like

1058
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 2: that's the thing is you know, another thing that happens

1059
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 2: in projects is you'll you'll sometimes you'll just you'll just

1060
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 2: pick up someone who's you know, has been doing this

1061
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 2: since like the sixties. Yeah, and it rules because they

1062
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 2: have a wealth of experience and they want to do stuff.

1063
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 2: We plotted out what we were going to do at

1064
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:29,640
Speaker 2: our meeting, you know, we were going to do some

1065
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 2: political education. We were gonna have a bunch of time

1066
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 2: for people to talk about stuff, and we were gonna,

1067
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:36,399
Speaker 2: you know, get get people to understand what we were

1068
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 2: doing how they can start organizing.

1069
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:39,879
Speaker 1: And then we did it, and.

1070
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 2: I unfortunately don't remember much of what we talked about

1071
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 2: because I was often in another room taking care of

1072
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 2: a bunch of people's kids, which is very nice, but

1073
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 2: I don't I don't remember what we talked about. But

1074
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 2: like that, you know, but like all of those things, right,

1075
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 2: all of those steps from the start of you get

1076
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 2: five of your friends to go eat dinner and you

1077
00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 2: talk about what you want to do through someone makes

1078
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 2: a flyer in like Microsoft or whatever. You make it

1079
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 2: in like PowerPoint p M, that's publisher, what's what's what's

1080
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 2: the one I'm blinking, I haven't used it in so long?

1081
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 2: The one you make greeting cards in I really program

1082
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: and I've forgotten what it is you see this to

1083
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 2: make Christmas cards? But like, you know, okay, so we

1084
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 2: made a flyer and then we walked around and put

1085
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 2: the flyers up and we made it. We made an email,

1086
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 2: you know, we got a space together, we figured out

1087
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 2: what we wanted to do, and then we did it,

1088
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 2: and you know, and there's a bunch of organizing from there, right,

1089
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,839
Speaker 2: But like we had started a thing, and you can

1090
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 2: do every single one of those steps. And if you

1091
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 2: can't personally do one of those steps, you can think

1092
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 2: of a person who you know, who you can bring

1093
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:45,000
Speaker 2: in to help you do these things. Because organizing you

1094
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 2: already fucking know how to do it. Yeah, you just

1095
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 2: have to go out there.

1096
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:52,440
Speaker 1: And do it. Yep, you can have faith, Yeah, and

1097
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 1: this has been It can happen here?

1098
00:50:54,560 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 2: Go organize.

1099
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,240
Speaker 4: It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

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00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 4: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

1101
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 4: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1102
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

1103
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 1: You listen to podcasts.

1104
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 4: You can now find sources for it could Happen here

1105
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 4: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.