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Speaker 1: What's not sending Sophie the script my Robert. This is

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards a podcast about anti authoritarianism, and as

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Speaker 1: an anti authoritarian, I reject the the hierarchy of Sophie

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Speaker 1: demanding my scripts before the end. Here's my question, hower

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Speaker 1: to the people, schools out for summer? Motherfuckers.

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Speaker 2: Okay, but here's my question. Here's my question. Would you

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Speaker 2: have survived the last five years without me?

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Speaker 1: No, that's not what it's about. This is about principle, Sophie.

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Speaker 1: This is about you know, a higher ethics, Daniel, I

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Speaker 1: would appreciate it if you would put in a clip

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Speaker 1: from the song schools Out.

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Speaker 2: No No, as the authority on this soe no, no,

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Speaker 2: what's summer? Okay, all right, we can have we can

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Speaker 2: have one SoundBite?

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Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Sophie.

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Speaker 3: Uh did you all listen to that song every summer?

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Speaker 3: Like on the bus home?

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Speaker 1: I think I listened to it every year because there

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Speaker 1: was always like some sort of TV special or whatever

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Speaker 1: that was summer themed that always had it it important.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, back to back to Can I have the script? Please?

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Speaker 1: No, Sophie, but yes, because I sent it? So Uh

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Speaker 1: Margaret kill Joy, how how how are we doing today. Good,

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Speaker 1: I'm doing great. How do you, uh, how do you

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Speaker 1: how do you feel about our nations escalating war on

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Speaker 1: the existence of people who don't have uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the money to stay indoors?

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Speaker 3: Uh, well, someone's got it. I think I'm going to

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Speaker 3: join that war.

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Speaker 1: But on the other side, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's pretty like dark times right now in terms

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Speaker 1: of like right now we're kind of living through this

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Speaker 1: this intense scapegoating because the right has kind of gotten

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Speaker 1: there their ducks in a row and in terms of

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Speaker 1: how to like push insurgent camp like moral panic hatred campaigns,

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Speaker 1: and they've launched a few in a row, and one

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Speaker 1: of the ones that's really taken off in the last

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Speaker 1: really the last two years, has been this kind of

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Speaker 1: escalating war against the houseless. And kind of on one side,

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Speaker 1: you've got this huge right wing media ecosystem that like

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Speaker 1: anytime there's like a homeless person who's set up near

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Speaker 1: a fancy building somewhere in the West Coast, or anytime

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Speaker 1: like some right winger sees poop on the street, or

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Speaker 1: anytime there's there's like a broken window anywhere, you get

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Speaker 1: these like like this whole fucking ecosystem of shitty websites

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Speaker 1: and sites like The Post being kind of the bigger

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Speaker 1: ones putting up these articles about how San Francisco's in chaos,

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Speaker 1: or you know, Portland is in chaos, or New York

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Speaker 1: City's in chaos, and kind of as a result.

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Speaker 3: And it's never because people have been kicked out of

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Speaker 3: their houses. It's always because there's people who haven't.

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Speaker 1: It's not so like rent has doubled in like the

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Speaker 1: last three or four years or anything like that, or

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Speaker 1: that like a bunch of the companies that are responsible

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Speaker 1: for making our food have seen record profits because they

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Speaker 1: used stories about inflation as an excuse to jack up

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Speaker 1: the cost of basic food stuffs. That made it untenable

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people to like continue surviving in

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Speaker 1: the same way that they had. No, we don't blame

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Speaker 1: any of that. We blame you know, the folks who

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Speaker 1: need to live in a tent because that's the only

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Speaker 1: thing they can afford. And kind of a surge of

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Speaker 1: fun new laws has come down the pipeline in the

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Speaker 1: very recent past. This kind of like moral panic has

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Speaker 1: sort of metastasized this year into a sweeping wave of

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Speaker 1: new laws to criminalize houselessness. In Missouri, a state law

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Speaker 1: recently took effect January of this year that makes it

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Speaker 1: a crime for any person to sleep on state property.

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Speaker 1: This doesn't just mean like you can't crash on the

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Speaker 1: steps of the Capitol building or whatever. It means like

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Speaker 1: if you're sleeping in a public park or under a highway,

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Speaker 1: you can face up to seven hundred and fifty dollars

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Speaker 1: in fines and get up to fifteen days in prison.

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Speaker 1: The law went into effect right as Missouri cut funding

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Speaker 1: for homeless services, making incarceration the best funded option for

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Speaker 1: a lot of people living on the streets right now.

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Speaker 1: Last August, Los Angeles' city council banned homeless encampments within

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Speaker 1: five hundred feet of schools and daycares. This mirrored comments

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Speaker 1: made two days before we recorded this episode by San

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Speaker 1: Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, alongside a video that was just

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Speaker 1: like these dramatic shots of homeless camps and like parents

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Speaker 1: walking their kids to school and looking frightened. He made

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Speaker 1: this post quote, the encampments make it hard for kids

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Speaker 1: walking to school. They are forced into the street to

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Speaker 1: get around them. Plus they're seeing things kids should never

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Speaker 1: see now. Yeah, definitely, it's bad for kids to realize that,

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Speaker 1: like our addiction to capitalism has human consequences. We should

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Speaker 1: be we should be putting those people in fucking camps

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Speaker 1: where where children won't have to realize that perhaps there

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Speaker 1: are injustices in the system they live under.

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Speaker 3: And none of those people in those camps are children,

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Speaker 3: so it's not a problem.

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Speaker 1: It is. James actually, just before we started recording this,

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Speaker 1: sent me a link to an article by Or sent

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Speaker 1: me a link to a post from the from Alliance

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Speaker 1: San Diego, which is a community organization organized around kind

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Speaker 1: of building collective power in San Diego and is trying

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Speaker 1: to fight back against this criminalization of homelessness that the

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Speaker 1: mayor is pushing for. And they had an interview with

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Speaker 1: a woman named Zuleima who is homeless alongside her six

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Speaker 1: year old son, and she's like, this means that my

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Speaker 1: six year old son won't be able to, like, we

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Speaker 1: won't be able to sleep near the school that he

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Speaker 1: goes to. It's cool stuff, anyway, this is all very

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Speaker 1: anti human and fucked up, and there's a shipload of

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Speaker 1: bastardry in all of this.

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Speaker 2: I mean Todd, Todd Gloria is a motherfucker.

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Speaker 1: But there's Todd Gloria is a piece of ship.

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Speaker 2: There's many Todd Gloria. Is that that Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Todd's Gloria.

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Speaker 2: I think the yeah Todd Gloria.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: Also there's that wonderful thing where the thirteenth Amendment that abolished.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that says in case we're we're heading Margaret.

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Speaker 3: That's uh, what this episode is actually about. Because I'm

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Speaker 3: not just complaining, yeah, mostly be me fetching about these

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Speaker 3: modern laws. This is kind of explaining the surprisingly deep

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Speaker 3: and surprising origins of our of our war on on

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Speaker 3: what have been most commonly called vagrants, and we will

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Speaker 3: be using that term because that's the legal term that's

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Speaker 3: all used. I don't think being a vagrant is a

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Speaker 3: bad thing, very pro vagrant, but you know, it's it

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Speaker 3: is the legal term that for most of our nation's history,

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Speaker 3: and for most of like Western modern Western history, has

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Speaker 3: been used for people who like don't have a home

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Speaker 3: in the traditional sense of the word. I've been a

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Speaker 3: vagrant a little bit when I was younger, and then

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Speaker 3: my grandfather was a hobo in World War two or

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Speaker 3: not World War two, in the Great Depression, you know,

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Speaker 3: road freight trains around looking for work. Oh that's the

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Speaker 3: oid line of yeah, yeah, no, I mean I think

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Speaker 3: it's interesting when you kind of bring up the Great

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Speaker 3: Depression generation because like that that generation gets lionized so much,

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Speaker 3: particularly by conservatives, and like a most many, if not most,

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Speaker 3: of like those people.

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Speaker 1: Had a hobo period. My grandpa when he was seventeen,

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Speaker 1: his dad was like, we can't feed you anymore, Garland,

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Speaker 1: and gave him like a pocket full of cornbread, and

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Speaker 1: he just like hiked two or three states down to Oklahoma,

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Speaker 1: where he found work. But like, how is that not

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Speaker 1: being a hobo? Like right, like he figured his shit

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Speaker 1: out and good for him, but like it's it's I

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Speaker 1: don't see a big difference between that and people who

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Speaker 1: are like, yeah, I couldn't make rent. You know, I

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Speaker 1: work a job. Most homeless people work a job. Like

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Speaker 1: this is just what's the open meaning? You know?

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Speaker 3: My granddad was my granddad was like greatest generation. He

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Speaker 3: went from being a hobo to being a torpedo in

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Speaker 3: the South Pacific and fighting in the one war that

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Speaker 3: the US can say, well that was good that we

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Speaker 3: did that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's a it's this is because I didn't

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Speaker 1: include as much of the Australia context, but like Australia

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Speaker 1: has a long history of anti vagrancy laws, but also

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Speaker 1: like one of their proudest songs about like World War One,

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Speaker 1: Waltzing Matilda, is about a guy who was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I used to just kind of wander around without like

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Speaker 1: like you know, a backpack and a shit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Then I went and got my legs blown off by

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Speaker 1: the Turks at Gallipoli. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, homelessness. The

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Speaker 1: this is this is a story kind of about our

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Speaker 1: Western civilizations war on people who, yeah, don't fall through

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Speaker 1: the cracks really, And it didn't start that way. This

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Speaker 1: episode started because there's a band that I listened to

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Speaker 1: a lot when I was younger called State Radio, and

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Speaker 1: they've got a song called The Story of Benjamin Darling

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Speaker 1: Part one, and it's based on the story of the

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Speaker 1: It's based on the largely apocryphal details about the life

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Speaker 1: of a very real guy. He's a was a freed

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Speaker 1: slave who established an island community for mixed race people

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Speaker 1: off the coast of Maine. And I wanted to tell

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Speaker 1: that story because there's a lot of bastardury and like

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Speaker 1: why the community stopped existing, And so I thought, just

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Speaker 1: kind of based on my surface level knowledge of the

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Speaker 1: story before I started digging in, I thought, Okay, this

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Speaker 1: is going to be like a story about like a

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Speaker 1: bunch of racists from cities and towns in Maine, you know,

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Speaker 1: just going after these these people who were kind of

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Speaker 1: like living off grid, doing their own thing. But the

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Speaker 1: more I dug into the story, the more I found

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Speaker 1: out that the evil in the story of like what

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Speaker 1: Happened to Benjamin Darling's Descendants is a story about vagrancy

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Speaker 1: and a story about the way our culture prosecutes these people.

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Speaker 1: So let's get into it, because I think this is

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Speaker 1: going to go some places you may not anticipate. The

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Speaker 1: concept of vagrancy was established in the West in the

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Speaker 1: early modern period, kind of the end of the medieval

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Speaker 1: early modern period. During most of the medieval era, most

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Speaker 1: poor people in kind of Western European countries were some

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Speaker 1: kind of like peasant or surf and in England, like

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Speaker 1: surfdom is kind of more of an Eastern thing, but

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Speaker 1: in England and a lot of Western Europe there was

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Speaker 1: this status called villainage. And it's not villains spelled the

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Speaker 1: way we spell it, it's v I L L E

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Speaker 1: I N. I don't know, maybe there's I should have

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Speaker 1: checked to see if that was the root of our

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Speaker 1: term villain. But I'm a hack and a fraud. But

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Speaker 1: a villain, like in the medieval context, was a kind

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Speaker 1: of surf. Basically, they're a person who's bound to a

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Speaker 1: parcel of life and got to occupy it and farm

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Speaker 1: it in return for laboring for his liege lord, usually

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Speaker 1: working in the lord's fields, although I'm sure there were

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Speaker 1: other options and thus in the countryside. For most of

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Speaker 1: kind of this medieval period, anything approaching homelessness on a

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Speaker 1: large scale was usually uncommon. You would have some people

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Speaker 1: who were, you know, kind of roving between. Some of

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Speaker 1: them would be like entertainers, some of them would be

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, merchants, some of them would be

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Speaker 1: kind of folks in a more desperate state. But there

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Speaker 1: usually weren't like huge numbers of folks like that because

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Speaker 1: it was kind of part of the system. Was like

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Speaker 1: people generally had like a place they were supposed to be,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, it was kind of when you sort of

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Speaker 1: got large numbers of people who were, you know, didn't

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Speaker 1: have a set place to occupy to live. It was

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Speaker 1: generally because like a war or something had swept through

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Speaker 1: their land, right and you'd have had like a bunch

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Speaker 1: of villages burnt down and people uprooted. But the growth

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Speaker 1: of cities kind of as the medieval period sort of

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Speaker 1: leads to early modernity, the sort of growth of cities

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Speaker 1: leads to larger and larger numbers of people who have

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Speaker 1: no real means of support. A lot of this was

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Speaker 1: the result of the increase increasing enclosure of common lands,

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Speaker 1: which forced people out of their rural lifestyles. That's where

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Speaker 1: there used to just kind of be land that was everyone,

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Speaker 1: so you could graze your sheep on it, you could

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Speaker 1: grow stuff on it, you know. And over time, like

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Speaker 1: that started becoming the property of like generally members of

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Speaker 1: the nobility, and so it was fenced off and separated

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Speaker 1: from the people who had been using it, which made

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Speaker 1: them unable to live the way that they had lived

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Speaker 1: and force them generally into cities. Cities are rancid pits

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Speaker 1: of disease in this period, So a lot of times

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Speaker 1: people would die and they'd leave their kids orphaned, or

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Speaker 1: like you know, a woman who'd had like you know,

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Speaker 1: a husband who was supporting her would suddenly have no

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Speaker 1: method of support, and this led to a growing vagrant class,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of vagrants, by the way, were former soldiers, right,

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Speaker 1: because in this period, you go to war for the king,

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Speaker 1: your duke or whatever, and you lose an arm, good

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Speaker 1: luck to you. You're not getting like you're not getting

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Speaker 1: like a fucking disability payment, right, Like, there's not a

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Speaker 1: va Yeah, you know, there are some things that kind

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Speaker 1: of fill that gap, but not well, yeah, generally. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I looked up the etymology of a villain and village

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Speaker 3: and they are the same, excellent hot and it comes

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Speaker 3: from and villain basically came from like a rustic.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, cool satcha yeah, yeah, because that's that's kind

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Speaker 1: of the way people lived out, you know, in the countryside.

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Speaker 1: So there was always kind of a degree of sympathy

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Speaker 1: and acceptance of the need for sort of charity for like,

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Speaker 1: you know, some guy who's lost his arms, or some

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Speaker 1: woman who's got like a family but no one to

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Speaker 1: help raise them because you know, the husband died or whatever.

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Speaker 1: There was some degree of sympathy for that, but there

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Speaker 1: was a great deal and it kind of becomes this

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Speaker 1: growing moral panic, particularly in England, and like the sixteen

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Speaker 1: late fifteen hundreds early sixteen hundreds, about people who were

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Speaker 1: in physically good shape but didn't have any means of support,

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Speaker 1: and the term that started being used for them was

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Speaker 1: sturdy beggars. This is a kind of slur, sturdy beggar.

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Speaker 1: It's meant to imply both that a person is like

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Speaker 1: healthy and can work and chooses not to. And the

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Speaker 1: common idea was that, like, these people are con men.

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Speaker 1: Right if like you're able to work and you don't

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Speaker 1: have some sort of job, you're a con man. In

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Speaker 1: townshend cities started keeping lists of sturdy beggars and their

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Speaker 1: supposed crimes. And if you are looking to make some

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Speaker 1: D and D characters this weekend, are these are pretty

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Speaker 1: good places. So I'm just gonna read one from the

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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. But the guy the guys like crime was

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Speaker 1: pretending to be insane and like following people until they

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Speaker 1: gave him money to go away. And his nickname, his

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Speaker 1: nickname was tom O Bedlam, which is fucking hell. I

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Speaker 1: do love tom O Bedlam. Fucking cool name, guys. So

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Speaker 1: in fifteen forty seven, furious British elites pushed through the

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Speaker 1: First Vagrancy Act, which declared that any able bodied person

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Speaker 1: who lacked employment should be branded with a V, so

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Speaker 1: should be like branded with a V and sold into

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Speaker 1: slavery for two years. It's pretty pretty bad. There were

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Speaker 1: no sort of like there was no like separation between

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Speaker 1: like if this happens like a dude in his thirties

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Speaker 1: or like a six year old, and in fact, child

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Speaker 1: vagabonds were regularly forced into labor. It was thought to

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Speaker 1: be good for them. Laws agin teach them some life

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Speaker 1: skill exactly. And these kind of these laws spread from

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Speaker 1: the UK to other parts of Western year or to

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Speaker 1: parts of Western Europe. Some of the laws are not

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Speaker 1: it's not always like you get branded and sold into slavery.

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Speaker 1: Laws in other places would demand that vagrants be whipped

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Speaker 1: and then returned to their birthplaces. The idea was like, well,

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Speaker 1: their people will like make them work, right, you know.

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Speaker 1: Throughout the sixteen hundreds, while kind of this this sort

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Speaker 1: of war on vagrancy, that's when it really starts. Kind

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Speaker 1: of the late fifteen hundreds you get these very first laws,

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Speaker 1: and then the sixteen hundreds it kind of it becomes

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Speaker 1: the norm that it will be criminalized to be out

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Speaker 1: and about in cities and towns without a visible means

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Speaker 1: of support. Right now, while this is going on throughout

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Speaker 1: the early sixteen hundreds, a couple of other big things

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Speaker 1: are happening. One of those big things is the Atlantic

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Speaker 1: slave trade, right, that's really starting to cook in the

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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. And another thing that's really starting to cook

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Speaker 1: in the sixteen hundreds is the British colonies in the

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Speaker 1: New World, right in the northeast coast of North America.

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Speaker 1: And kind of while both of these things are happening,

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Speaker 1: everyone has one of those like Reese's Pieces Peanut butter

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Speaker 1: Cup moments where they're like, well, if we mix slavery

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Speaker 1: and qualities to get a govna and you know, that's

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Speaker 1: a you know that story, right, Like everybody's aware of

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Speaker 1: kind of where that goes.

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Speaker 3: It didn't go well, I mean no, it does not

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Speaker 3: go well. Morally, No, morally, it did not go well. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: morally it's a fucking nightmare. But yeah, to the economic

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Speaker 3: power of empire, it did good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. For the Yeah, they make a lot of money

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Speaker 1: off of it. So this that starts cooking, and you know,

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Speaker 1: fast forward like one hundred and sixty hundred and seventy

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Speaker 1: years something like that, and you know, you start to

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Speaker 1: get I mean, I'm flattening out a lot of things.

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Speaker 1: But it takes, you know, one hundred and sixty hundred

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Speaker 1: seventy years before kind of the crusade for abolition which

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Speaker 1: had always existed from as soon as like people were

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Speaker 1: doing the African slave trade, people were like, that's bad.

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Speaker 1: But it really abolitionism starts to really pick up legal

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Speaker 1: momentum kind of one hundred and sixty hundred and seventy

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Speaker 1: years later, in the late seventeen hundreds. Popular summaries of

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Speaker 1: the battle to abolish slavery tend to focus on the

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Speaker 1: first electoral successes of state abolitionist movements, which started when

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Speaker 1: slavery was made illegal by Massachusetts in seventeen eighty three.

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Speaker 1: By the early eighteen hundreds, the legal Atlantic slave trade

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Speaker 1: had been ended, although that did not mean that people

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Speaker 1: stopped doing that sort of shit. It just meant that,

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Speaker 1: like they could get in trouble for it. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to me that like kind of when we

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Speaker 1: talk about, at least when I think about my education

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Speaker 1: on sort of the history of slavery and abolitionism, it's

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Speaker 1: sort of portrayed fairly quickly in this period sweeping over

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Speaker 1: the North. And so there's this very quickly we have

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Speaker 1: our good guys and our bad guys. Right, you've got

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Speaker 1: the free States and the slave States, and that all

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Speaker 1: builds up to the Civil War. That cuts out the

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Speaker 1: fairly long period in which slavery was real popular in

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Speaker 1: New England. And yeah, I think that's probably a mistake.

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Speaker 1: And since our story involved slavery in New England today,

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Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about that. So

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Speaker 1: here's a quote from an article on slavery in Maine

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Speaker 1: in the Portland Press Herald. Quote, slavery in New England

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Speaker 1: look much different than those large southern plantations. In New England,

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Speaker 1: enslaved men, women and children were owned by prominent and

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Speaker 1: wealthy merchants, but also by families of less prominence who

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Speaker 1: used slaves to do the manual labor they had once

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Speaker 1: done themselves. Northern slave owners were more likely to own

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Speaker 1: one or two slaves than hundreds. The enslaved people became

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Speaker 1: the foundation that moves those early household economies to a

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Speaker 1: market economy because of the labor that the slave owner

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Speaker 1: was previously was responsible for. Once he has the enslaved person,

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Speaker 1: it frees him up to begin to build his own

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Speaker 1: economic base, said author Patricia Wall, who researches and writes

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Speaker 1: about slavery and Maine. Well, there weren't hundreds and thousands

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Speaker 1: the way there were in the South. You can see

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Speaker 1: that the enslaved people were at the base of the

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Speaker 1: economy and these small communities in Maine and throughout New England.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of what becomes kind of the upper

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Speaker 1: class in these in these colonies, particularly these more rural areas,

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Speaker 1: are families who start out with a couple of slaves

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Speaker 1: to help them with, like you know, they're cooking food,

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Speaker 1: they're cleaning, doing the laundry and stuff, and that frees

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Speaker 1: up the free people to like make money which generate

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Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of cases, when you're looking

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Speaker 1: at a place like mad and the people who have

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Speaker 1: like nice houses and money now two hundred years later,

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Speaker 1: it's because you know, their ancestors enslaved somebody and it

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Speaker 1: let him get a leg up.

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Speaker 3: No, and that's so important for people to realize. I

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Speaker 3: hadn't known as much about New England slavery, but that

378
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:27,359
Speaker 3: makes so much sense that basically, like all of the

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Speaker 3: aristocracy of the United States comes from this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool to look into the people who are

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Speaker 1: doing stuff like funding the Daily Wire now and see

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Speaker 1: where they're their ancestors, what they were getting up to. Ah, Margaret,

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Speaker 1: this is an awkward thing we recorded later for me

384
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Speaker 1: to throw to ads because I forgot to do it

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Speaker 1: when I was supposed to.

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Speaker 3: Yay.

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Speaker 1: I love being good at my job.

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Speaker 2: If only somebody was messaging you to do them.

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Speaker 1: I never read messages, Sophie, I just just vibes. We're back.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, since Maine had no giant plantations, most enslaved

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Speaker 1: people are used as personal servants or laborers, and industries

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Speaker 1: often like shipbuilding and fishing. So the state you know

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Speaker 1: this because Maine is part of the Massachusetts colony, right,

394
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Speaker 1: So in Massachusetts, the new state makes slavery illegal in

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighty three or whatever like that applies to Maine

396
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Speaker 1: as well. You're not supposed to be, you know, buying

397
00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:36,400
Speaker 1: those slaves or bringing them in and stuff. But that

398
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 1: does not mean that, like after that point, Maine stops

399
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Speaker 1: playing a role in the spread of slavery. For one thing,

400
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Speaker 1: Maine has the second highest percentage of registered seamen in

401
00:21:45,600 --> 00:21:49,280
Speaker 1: the United States and is a shipbuilding hub. And there's

402
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Speaker 1: a lot of stories in this period of like seamen

403
00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:56,520
Speaker 1: from Maine taking slaves and like selling them in places

404
00:21:56,560 --> 00:21:59,400
Speaker 1: like the Caribbean, and like illegally doing like slave runs

405
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Speaker 1: and stuff. I'm proud of me for not laughing when

406
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:04,440
Speaker 1: I said seaman twice. You know, I feel like we

407
00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 1: should have known I laughed.

408
00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:11,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry, I know, I'm not sorry, deeply disrespectful, Robert.

409
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Speaker 1: All of this brings us to the life of a single.

410
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Speaker 3: See people is the current.

411
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's real new one.

412
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Speaker 2: But it's funny when Magni says it. It's not funny

413
00:22:25,119 --> 00:22:26,080
Speaker 2: when you make that.

414
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Speaker 1: It's all about delivery. It's all about delivery. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

415
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:35,119
Speaker 1: All of this brings us to the life of a

416
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Speaker 1: single enslaved black American in Maine in the late seventeen hundreds.

417
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Speaker 1: His name was Benjamin Darling, and we have no idea

418
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 1: where or when he was born. He was probably somewhere

419
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 1: in like his twenties, maybe thirties by the start of

420
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Speaker 1: the seventeen nineties, but he might have been older. It

421
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:56,320
Speaker 1: is unlikely that he himself knew precisely when he was born.

422
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Speaker 1: There's a good chance he was born somewhere and after

423
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Speaker 1: Africa and was taken over to North America kind of

424
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: during the latter stages of the Atlantic slave trade. He

425
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 1: may have been born here and then separated from his

426
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:11,000
Speaker 1: family when he was sold as an adult, or as

427
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:14,879
Speaker 1: at least like a teenager. We simply don't know. But

428
00:23:14,960 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: while we lack details about his life, we do have

429
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 1: archives of history of slavery in Massachusetts in Maine which

430
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:24,600
Speaker 1: are filled with letters from slave traders that provide some

431
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:27,600
Speaker 1: grim context as to the kind of experience he might

432
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Speaker 1: have had, especially if he was brought over from Africa.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote from one of these letters now, Sir,

434
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: I received yours by Captain Morris with bills of lading

435
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,440
Speaker 1: for five negroes and one hogshead of rum. One negro

436
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:43,639
Speaker 1: woman marked why on the left breast, died in about

437
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:46,600
Speaker 1: three weeks after her arrival, in spite of medical aid

438
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: which I procured. All the rest died at sea. I

439
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 1: am sorry for your loss. It may have resulted in

440
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 1: deficient clothing so early in the spring. Benjamin Bullard to

441
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:59,359
Speaker 1: Sir William Pepperrell, June twenty fifth, seventeen nineteen. She is

442
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:02,359
Speaker 1: maybe a deck or two before this guy was born. Yeah,

443
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 1: I hope they died pooping themselves to death pretty badly.

444
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:09,200
Speaker 1: But you see, like it's like it was pretty there's

445
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: a decent chance, like almost to guarantee one where the other.

446
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: This guy's got some pretty intense trauma in his childhood

447
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:20,360
Speaker 1: or early life. Now, there's two kind of broad versions

448
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:23,359
Speaker 1: of the story of Benjamin Darling. One was that his

449
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 1: mother smuggled him out of slavery and into freedom and

450
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: he just kind of entered life in Maine as a freeman.

451
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,440
Speaker 1: That is not the most common version of the story.

452
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 1: The most you know, there are a couple little like

453
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:39,879
Speaker 1: he escaped on his own too, you get that. But

454
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: the most widely told and enduring myth of Benjamin Darling,

455
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:45,479
Speaker 1: who was a real dude, is the one I'm going

456
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 1: to relate to you right now. So whatever went on

457
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:50,439
Speaker 1: with this guy when he's you know, a kid and

458
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:53,160
Speaker 1: a young man. By the start of the seventeen nineties,

459
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:55,480
Speaker 1: he had been purchased by the captain of a small

460
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:58,479
Speaker 1: merchant vessel that ran the coast of New England up

461
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: at least as far as Port and probably hauling Timber.

462
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: The exact story of what happened is apocryphal, but the

463
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: most common version of it is that one day, you know,

464
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: this captain basically is this kind of he's a small

465
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: business owner. He's somebody who has like a boat, probably

466
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: not a huge one, doesn't really have the money for

467
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: a large crew, and in order to kind of like

468
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:20,880
Speaker 1: make his business more efficient, and as we've talked about,

469
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:24,440
Speaker 1: build his economic base up, this guy buys Benjamin, right,

470
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 1: and you know, they're they're running the coast of New

471
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: England together, doing kind of like cargo loads. And one day,

472
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: you know, they judge things wrong. A storm comes in

473
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: stronger and bigger than kind of they had anticipated, and

474
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:39,959
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of caught with their pants down. This

475
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 1: fierce gale overtakes the small ship. Buffeted by winds and waves,

476
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: the boat crashes into a brace of jagged rocks off

477
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 1: the North Main coast, and the captain has flung into

478
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: the frigid, churning waters. Now ben in this situation is

479
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: a dude who has been like probably ripped away from

480
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,199
Speaker 1: his family one way or the other to work for

481
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: this guy. Ye like incredibly difficult backbreaking labor by on

482
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: the sea. No reasonable person could have judged him for

483
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 1: leaving that man to drown, especially given the fact that, like,

484
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 1: I don't know, most people don't know how to swim,

485
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: even if you're on a boat in this period, like

486
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 1: it's not common to be good at swim, and even

487
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 1: if you are, like fuck, it doesn't matter how good

488
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: you are at swimming. Diving in to try to save

489
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: someone who's drowning is a terribly dangerous thing for the

490
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:29,679
Speaker 1: best swimmers in the world. Like, it's incredibly anyway, So

491
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons, no one could have blamed

492
00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: ben for just kind of like trying to get his

493
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: own ass out of here. But he dives into the

494
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: water after this man who like bought and like uses

495
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: him as chattel, pulls him out of the water and

496
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: to Shuore saves his life. The captain, so the legend goes,

497
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 1: was basically just overcome with shame. Once she regained consciousness

498
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: realizes like, oh my god, I was like treating this

499
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: person as like a fucking can opener, and they just

500
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 1: saved my life like for no reason other than the

501
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:10,479
Speaker 1: goodness in their heart. So he immediately frees Benjamin and

502
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: making Benjamin a freedman and disappears hereafter from the pages

503
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 1: of history. Benjamin Darling does not disappear. He takes a

504
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: job at a salt mill near Phippsburg, which is a

505
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: ridiculously named town in Maine. I do not like it

506
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: Phipps b U r G. I want to say Phillipsburg.

507
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 1: Every time I look at it. I'm livid. Fuck you people,

508
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: Fuck Phipsburg. Anyway, Benjamin lives in Phipsburg, and he takes

509
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: a job at a salt mill, and he develops a

510
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 1: reputation very quickly as a reliable worker and a good citizen.

511
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: And this may seem hard to believe, given where the

512
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: story goes, but from what I've read, it seems fair

513
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: to say, actually that like a free black man in

514
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,879
Speaker 1: rural Maine in this period was one of the better

515
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: situations you could be as like a free black guy.

516
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:02,440
Speaker 1: For one thing, fear and hatred of Indigenous Americans by

517
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 1: white settlers was much more like the thing that white

518
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 1: people were flipped out about in Maine in this period.

519
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: So like a free black dude was seen as like, well,

520
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: if he's like one of us, then it's it's us

521
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: against these these dangerous you know natives, Right, yeah, there

522
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: was there was. This is like the historians ever would

523
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,440
Speaker 1: be like he might have faced kind of less discrimination

524
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: in this particular period in main than you might expect. Yeah,

525
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: and what we have, the actual like official documents from

526
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: like that that kind of got recorded in the local

527
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: government about Ben are all really positive. He's described as

528
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: a sturdy and industrious individual. He marries a white woman

529
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: named Sarah Proverbs, and one of the very few details

530
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: we get about his life after this point is that

531
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: he is mauled by a bear defending his neighbor's corn patch,

532
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: which probably yeah, yeah, which probably describes why local records

533
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: call him a man with many staunch friends, right, Like

534
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: he's he's like, he's like a solid just saves people.

535
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 1: You can rely on Ben, He's got your back. Yeah.

536
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: So you know he lives up to his last name. Yeah, yeah,

537
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: he's a darling. And so he marries Sarah Proverbs, giving

538
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: her a much better last name. Like I cannot overstate

539
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: what a glow up darling is over Proverbs.

540
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 3: I feel you, but Proverbs is weird. It is weird

541
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 3: in a nice way. I mean that anyone listening to

542
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 3: this his last name is Proverbs. Congratulations, you seem like

543
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 3: you are a character who exists to make everything more interesting.

544
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: If I if I get a time machine, Margaret, I'm

545
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: going back to these people and I'm gonna explain to

546
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: them our modern concept of hyphenating names, because Darling Proverbs

547
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 1: would be a pretty cool last name, right, Yeah.

548
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.

549
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: So he's a he's he develops a lot of respect

550
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: in his local community. He seems to be like having

551
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: a pretty good life. He gets married, he has kids.

552
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: You know, this is at the time a crime called missagenation.

553
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 1: But also he's kind of in rural Maine, so it

554
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: may just have been a thing where like people aren't

555
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: really like flipping out about it right now so much,

556
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: although they could have, and they were in most of

557
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 1: the United States. That said, that may have been something

558
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: that did cause him problems because in about seventeen ninety four,

559
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: when he and Sarah have two sons, he buys an

560
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: island off the coast of Maine. So he's like, now,

561
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: islands aren't that expensive back then, right, Like, now having

562
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: an island means like island of money. Yeah, it's a

563
00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: big thing. Back then, it's like, oh, you want like

564
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: a rock to die on. Like yeah, it's like, do

565
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: you have any idea how are these islands are to

566
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 1: live on? But you know, that does probably also insinuate

567
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 1: that he was pretty thrifty and resourceful. I'm gonna guess

568
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: it wasn't like nothing. But anyway, he buys this island,

569
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: Horse Island, probably saved the life of the person who

570
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: is selling. Just keeps saving people, getting till he's given

571
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: an island. So he gets this.

572
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 3: Mountain lion just jumps out of nowhere, fucking cold cox it.

573
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 3: Here's the deed to my lion or island. I don't

574
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 3: know why I said lion. Oh you said mountain lion. Anyway, whatever,

575
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 3: So he and Sarah and their sons moved to this island,

576
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 3: Horse Island, and kind of, you know, they have some

577
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 3: more kids, their kids get married to other people, and

578
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 3: they this community starts to build on Horse Island, mostly

579
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 3: of mixed race people, right, And it's it's kind of

580
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 3: like you do kind of get the feeling that like, well,

581
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 3: maybe once they started to have kids, the white people

582
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 3: in Pitpsburg and stuff were a little bit less welcoming

583
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 3: of Benjamin. Either that or he was just smart enough

584
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 3: to be like, you know, it's probably not going to

585
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 3: be safe forever to hang out around all of these

586
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 3: like white people who are not going to treat my kids. Well,

587
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 3: we should just kind of do our own thing out

588
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:54,719
Speaker 3: in the sticks.

589
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 2: You know.

590
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: Either way, he kind of establishes this. You might call

591
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: it like a mixed race commune kind of. You know,

592
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:02,880
Speaker 1: I don't think there's like a like a lot of

593
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like a political thing, but it's

594
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: like that's the way it works, right, Like, when you've

595
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: got people living off grid in a place like these

596
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: islands off the main coast, which are desperately hard places

597
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,479
Speaker 1: to survive. We are not talking fertile soil. We are

598
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:19,960
Speaker 1: not talking a shitload of stuff that you can like

599
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: you know, pick out of the ground or whatever to

600
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: live off of. You're you're pulling stuff out of the sea,

601
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 1: and you're you are you are working your ass off

602
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:32,719
Speaker 1: to like make that place habitable. That said, you know,

603
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:34,920
Speaker 1: when he moves to Horse Island, part of what drew

604
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: him there may have been the fact that he had,

605
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 1: you know, lived in the area for a while, and

606
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: he had heard plenty of stories about the folks who

607
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: lived out in those islands off the off the coast

608
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:47,720
Speaker 1: of Maine, and kind of in this period of time,

609
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: these islands, because there's there's hundreds of them, had come

610
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: to be inhabited by this kind of growing population of

611
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 1: people who were considered who were either considered undesirable by

612
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: mainstream society back on land, or who themselves considered settled

613
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: society back on land undesirable. A good number of them

614
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: were what you'd call were what was called maroons, and

615
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: these were formerly enslaved Africans who had freed themselves, right,

616
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: who had gotten away. But like that's not a safe

617
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: legal position to be in. And they figure, if I'm

618
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 1: hanging out in this fucking island off the coast of Maine,

619
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 1: people will anyone trying to come and get me is

620
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 1: probably got to die finding me, right, Like it's sorry

621
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: out here. Yeah. One source I found on the matter

622
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: notes quote, these early settlers maintain their ancestral languages and

623
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: lived in caves to avoid detection, which is pretty dope,

624
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: cool story. Yeah, it is unlikely. Well it's possible that

625
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: Been and his family kind of lived this way, but

626
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: you know, they had been pretty integrated to some extent

627
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: into kind of like mainstream American society for a while.

628
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: Kind of however, life, whatever life was like on Horse

629
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: Island for this community. They established the relationship that he

630
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: has with his wife, and the existence of their kids

631
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: is illegal in the state of Maine, as are the

632
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: marriages that all of their kids are going to have

633
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,640
Speaker 1: later on, because they're all mixed race. Heedless of this, though,

634
00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: the Darlings spread and multiply and start to kind of

635
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: like seed into little communities all throughout these islands through

636
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: the early to mid eighteen hundreds, from Horse Island and

637
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: some of the areas and the mainland around Pitpsburg down

638
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,399
Speaker 1: to Portland and his descendants, it seems like are as,

639
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: you know, thrifty and successful as their patter familias, and

640
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: right as the Civil War starts to or sorry not

641
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: right as the Civil War comes to an end, and

642
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: kind of like the period where shit's starting to build

643
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: in the US towards that I think it's eighteen forty seven,

644
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:44,280
Speaker 1: two of Darling's granddaughters sell the family interest in Horse

645
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 1: Island and use it to buy all forty one acres

646
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 1: of a nearby island, which they start calling Malaga for

647
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: reasons that aren't really known. We don't really know why

648
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 1: they called it that, but they start calling it Malaga Island.

649
00:34:57,440 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 3: I wonder if those are like one of the other

650
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 3: languages that people were speaking around there, you know, I

651
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 3: don't know, because you're saying that people were like speaking

652
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 3: African languages there.

653
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Malaga is also a place in Spain, so interesting.

654
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:11,799
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder if it's maybe like some you know,

655
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: some kids there, you know, as their kids. He's got

656
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: bought them some books or something, and they're like reading

657
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,520
Speaker 1: about other parts of the world, and they just like

658
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 1: when they buy this island. I've heard about this place

659
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: called Malaga. That's a pretty name. Let's call it that. Yeah,

660
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:26,759
Speaker 1: I don't really know, no one does it is It

661
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: is a mystery. Today. Malaga Island, population zero, lies just

662
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:35,080
Speaker 1: a short span of water away from the Krabby Lobster

663
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: Shack on the mainland and directly across from the Kennebec Kennel.

664
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 1: But back in the late so it's like today, if

665
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:43,760
Speaker 1: you look at it, it's not that far from stuff.

666
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: Like you know, you can kind of like take a

667
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: boat across in a few minutes and then you're back

668
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: on the mainland where there's like city or towns and stuff.

669
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,359
Speaker 1: But back in the late eighteen hundreds, antiques stores I've

670
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:55,799
Speaker 1: been to, I've been to the coast of Maine. It's

671
00:35:55,800 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: antique stores. It's nothing but antique stores back then. It

672
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: is I cannot exaggerate. This is like maybe the most

673
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:07,399
Speaker 1: isolated place in the United States, or these islands off

674
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 1: the coast of Maine. Like you are out off the

675
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: fucking grid, right, I mean there's not a grid, nobody

676
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:15,319
Speaker 1: has power, but like everyone's off grid, I guess. But

677
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 1: these guys are off off grid, right, like you are

678
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: really kind of out out in the wilds. And as

679
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: a result, the people who live in these islands are

680
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:29,720
Speaker 1: able to kind of develop communities separate from mainland culture

681
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 1: and the rest of the world in a way that

682
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,720
Speaker 1: does not exist anymore. These little islands around Maine central

683
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 1: coast then are kind of settled over the late eighteen hundreds,

684
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: you know that started out as a lot of these

685
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: maroon communities and people like Darling. They get added to

686
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,799
Speaker 1: by these sort of ragged bands of loaners, madmen, and

687
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: people whose existence had been criminalized by the state. Darling's granddaughters,

688
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 1: and this sounds like a rule it does, it's you're

689
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 1: not going to stop thinking that it sounds pretty fucking cool.

690
00:36:58,440 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

691
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: So Darling's granddaughters and their families establish an isolated free

692
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: community on Malaga Island, and over time they're joined by

693
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 1: a couple of dozen other refugees from mainstream You get

694
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: You get what I did there?

695
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I was trying to make this pun earlier,

696
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 3: but I didn't have a good space.

697
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 1: I wrote it into the script, Margaret, and I capitalized

698
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: them so people would know it wasn't just a misspelling.

699
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 1: If anyone caught a glimpse of my script, proud of me.

700
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: So the people who kind of join with the Darlings

701
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: descendants on this island are a mix of there's some

702
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: white folks in there, there's some a number obviously of

703
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: like free black people. There's Native Americans, and there's mixed

704
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 1: race residents and these kind of These folks all come

705
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: from very different backgrounds, but they're united primarily in their

706
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: desire to get away from the rest of the country

707
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: and raise their children in peace. This is not an

708
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,240
Speaker 1: easy life, as this rite up from Soulofamerica dot com

709
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: makes clear, Malaga Island was typical of many island communities

710
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: of the eastern Castbay, which were seldom occupied by legal owners.

711
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 1: Fishermen would store their gear in crudely constructed sheds or

712
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,239
Speaker 1: shacks and often remain on the islands as unchallenged squatters

713
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: for generations. Having little contact with the mainland. These individuals,

714
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: who are not counted in the census, seldom paid taxes

715
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:18,279
Speaker 1: and rarely voted. Illness and even death were taken care

716
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 1: of at home, as was education. Most of the inhabitants

717
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: of Malaga Island were direct descendants of Darling, including his

718
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: sons Isaac and Benjamin, both of whom married women of

719
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 1: the island and raised a total of fourteen children over time.

720
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:36,239
Speaker 1: Other groups also inhabited the island, including Irish, Scottish and Portuguese.

721
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: And again this is a tough place. The soil shit,

722
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:40,800
Speaker 1: so you're not going to grow a lot of food.

723
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: You can raise some livestock, but they've got to be

724
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 1: like goats and shit, really like hardy animals, and most

725
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: of what they live on period is going to be

726
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 1: taken from the sea. This includes huge quantities of like shellfish,

727
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: which is part of why we know what we do

728
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: about them, because when they would shell you know, the

729
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: stuff they were eating would toss the shells and these

730
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: large middens in the community, and they would toss other

731
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:06,960
Speaker 1: stuff there. And that's a really good way to preserve

732
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,759
Speaker 1: certain things. So actually, like a surprising amount gets preserved

733
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: because of the nature of their diet. One of the

734
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 1: things that's preserved this way are ledgers and papers from

735
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: a school that was established on the island. Linda Wyman

736
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 1: of the Pitpsburg Historical Society notes, the papers written by

737
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: the students show their penmanship was perfect and their spelling

738
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: was better than mine. It absolutely shows that kids were educated,

739
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 1: not illiterate or so called feeble minded or any of

740
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 1: those things. They're going to be accused of being that

741
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: quite later. But from everything we know, not only did

742
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: these people survive in this difficult place, but they put

743
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: a premium on making sure their kids were educated, which

744
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 1: is pretty fucking dope, I think. So something like fifty

745
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,319
Speaker 1: people live on Malaga at its height. Again, forty one

746
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 1: acres is not big, especially considering not all of the

747
00:39:57,200 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: land is the land that you could put a house on.

748
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:01,879
Speaker 1: They survived in a mix of Some people would build

749
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 1: these small houses. A lot of folks are basically like

750
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 1: taking boats and shoving them up on land and then

751
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: converting the boats into houses. Some of the houses like

752
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 1: float and they can float them to other islands if

753
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,239
Speaker 1: they like decide to move, which is pretty It's kind

754
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:17,399
Speaker 1: of it's kind of dope. It's kind of cool.

755
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like band's gonna be on goat back. I'm just

756
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 3: gonna get like six goats and a hell yeah house.

757
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah on the goats have a palanquin of goats. Absolutely. Yeah,

758
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 3: it's pretty cool.

759
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: Like if you're thinking about life in the eighteen fifties

760
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties rough for everybody, compared to modern standards, this

761
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,479
Speaker 1: seems like, yeah, one of the better places to live.

762
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 1: That's that's where That's kind of how I'm thinking about

763
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: it right now. The Portland Press Herald notes, quote Malaga's

764
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: people lived like so many others, eking out an existence,

765
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: trapping lobsters, hooking cod, digging clams, or laboring at boarding

766
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 1: houses and farms on the mainland. And so yeah, that's

767
00:40:57,320 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: also an important point is these people are not totally isolated.

768
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: A lot of them make money, at least a side income,

769
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,479
Speaker 1: sometimes seasonal, working for folks on the mainland. One woman

770
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: on the island. We know, was a laundress for a

771
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:10,839
Speaker 1: bunch of boarding houses in Pitpsburg. So she would take

772
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: their water, their laundry handle, you know, a large volume

773
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: of washing, and then return it once it was dried.

774
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 1: So for on the main land, Yeah, on the main

775
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,880
Speaker 1: very nice, very nice, getting away with a lot of that. Well,

776
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:31,799
Speaker 1: you know who else likes ads, Sophie, You the listeners.

777
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:38,879
Speaker 1: I was going to say, the same people who were

778
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 1: largely responsible for the worst parts of this story. Anyway,

779
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: here's ads. So yeah, you know, for a time, life

780
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: seems to have been is about as good for the

781
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 1: denizens of Mlaga as it could be, particular for people

782
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 1: who weren't white as hell in the United States. In

783
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: this period of time, they were isolated and in very

784
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: poor obviously, but they were pretty much completely free, right

785
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: in a way that very few people in all of

786
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: history have ever been. Yeah. Yeah, So back on the mainland.

787
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: Slavery reaches its peak in the United States and shortly

788
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: thereafter its calamitous end. Freedom comes to black men and

789
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: women in the United States, but it was not freedom

790
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: as the Malagites knew it. In the occupied South, white

791
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: men started even before the end of the war, scheming

792
00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 1: for a way to maintain what they saw as the

793
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: natural order. In eighteen sixty two, Union troops took the

794
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: city of Memphis. Quite understandably, freed black people started fleeing

795
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: there right There was a lot of areas where they

796
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 1: had been kept in bondage near Memphis. If you could

797
00:42:52,560 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: kind of escape and get through the Confederate lines, then

798
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: you get to be a free person in Memphis, which

799
00:42:57,560 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: sounds a lot better than not being a free person.

800
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: So it kind of was for a while. Memphis is

801
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: sort of this like Southern Canada almost. You might see

802
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: it that way, where it's like, if we can get

803
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: to fucking Memphis, then we're, you know, we're free. By

804
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: the wars end, the city's black population had gone from

805
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: three thousand to twenty thousand, So this is a pretty

806
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 1: dramatic change. But while that's great, you know who's not

807
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: going to be happy about a demographic change like that.

808
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 1: This isn't an advertiser based pro shop. Yeah, yeah, the

809
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 1: Beast pro shop pyramid owners, who I am blaming for

810
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: all of what we're about to talk to. So I'm

811
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: going to quote next from an article and a website

812
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 1: called Zocallo by Christopher Hager quote. The growth of Memphis

813
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 1: free black population meant that West Tennessee plantations were proportionally emptied.

814
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: To the dismay of cotton planters who needed laborers in

815
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: their fields, vagrancy laws provided a convenient solution to the

816
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: labor shortage. Memphis blacks who could not prove gainful employment

817
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 1: in the city were presumed guilty of vagrancy and subject

818
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 1: to arrest impressment into the agricultural labor force. They were

819
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: brought back onto the plantations and forced to sign labor contracts. Yeah,

820
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty fucked up and terrible. So vagrancy laws

821
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: had come to the United States from like our whole

822
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 1: legal system, right, We get it from England, you know,

823
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,319
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. And so during the colonial days, the

824
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:25,760
Speaker 1: British had kindly given us their anti vagrancy laws. Now

825
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: these had for the most part, these were not commonly

826
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,759
Speaker 1: enforced in most parts of the United States prior to

827
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, and when they were, it was

828
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: mostly in the South against freed black people who had

829
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 1: the bad luck to exist in slave states. These laws

830
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: were also enforced on the border between free and slave

831
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:47,839
Speaker 1: states and places like Pennsylvania, where such laws were used

832
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: to maintain a form of racial hierarchy, even in an

833
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 1: area in which black people were supposed to not be

834
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,160
Speaker 1: subject to slavery. But as the Civil War came to

835
00:44:56,200 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: an end, white people across the political spectrum were faced

836
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: with a tear rible specter large numbers of black people with,

837
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: as they saw it, nothing to do, and so the

838
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: enforcement of vagrancy laws against black Americans became one of

839
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: the first political issues to unite Northern abolitionists and Southern

840
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 1: plantation owners. Because when these laws are instituted and executed

841
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:21,840
Speaker 1: in the North, it's going to be abolitionists who pushed

842
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:25,879
Speaker 1: them right, and the South it's former Confederates who want

843
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 1: to get black people back on the plantation. In the

844
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: North it's abolitionists. They are a huge part of this.

845
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting they want people to work because

846
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:36,800
Speaker 1: they want people to work, right. That's that's the short

847
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: end of the story. So in the South, the use

848
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 1: of law enforcement to cement racial violence should not surprise anybody,

849
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,359
Speaker 1: But the North was host to a dedicated population of

850
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,960
Speaker 1: what were called charity reformers, and most of them, including

851
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: most of the kind of driving figures behind this movement

852
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:58,359
Speaker 1: were people who had been dedicated radical abolitionists prior to

853
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: the Civil War and kind of the become charity reformers afterwards.

854
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:04,479
Speaker 1: Part of why is that the eighteen seventies, right after

855
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: the Civil War, the US has its first really great depression,

856
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 1: right like the I think eighteen seventy five is when

857
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: it kind of hits its death. But this is like

858
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,440
Speaker 1: a calamitous economic collapse, and it's a partial consequence. One

859
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: of the things that contributes to this is that, like

860
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:22,359
Speaker 1: you've got all these soldiers who had been paid by

861
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 1: the government and now suddenly they're all demobilized, and that

862
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 1: causes some problems. So one of the things that happens

863
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,320
Speaker 1: is there's a huge increase in starving people begging for money,

864
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: and this really pisses off a large number of kind

865
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: of like upper class liberals who had been who were

866
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: staunch abolitionists, and many abolitionists. One of the reasons why

867
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: this is the case is that a significant chunk of

868
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: the abolitionist movement hated slavery, not because they weren't racist,

869
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: although they were generally less racist than you know, the

870
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 1: plantation owners, but because they saw slavery as violating the

871
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 1: sacred contract between labor and its employer. Right. That was

872
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 1: like a big part of their issue with it is

873
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 1: that they believed that workers had a sacred right to

874
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,800
Speaker 1: choose where they were going to labor, but they didn't

875
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: have a right to not choose to labor.

876
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 2: Right.

877
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:15,359
Speaker 1: That's a big part of this to them. And I'm

878
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: going to quote from a paper in the Journal of

879
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:21,680
Speaker 1: American History by ad Stanley. In the eyes of charity reformers,

880
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: there was a clearly etched line of distinction between laboring

881
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:28,720
Speaker 1: for wages and begging. The wage laborer was an independent person,

882
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 1: self supporting, one who participated in the vast social exchange

883
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:35,240
Speaker 1: of the marketplace and obeyed its rules. The polar opposite

884
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 1: of the slave, the beggar, was a dependent person who

885
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:40,959
Speaker 1: neither bought nor sold, but prayed on others. The wage

886
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,919
Speaker 1: journer abided by the obligations of contract, the beggar eluded them.

887
00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: Charity reformers derived their view of beggary from the best

888
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: thought of the day, the teachings of classical economists and

889
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 1: other liberal and scientific thinkers. Composing a constituency of state

890
00:47:55,440 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: and city officials prominent industrialists and businessmen, intellectuals and moral ways,

891
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:03,320
Speaker 1: most of whom had been abolitionists. They were air to

892
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: an intellectual tradition that dissociated relations of personal dependency from

893
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:11,839
Speaker 1: transactions based on voluntary contract. That indeed had been the

894
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: ideological lesson of the Civil War and emancipation the basis

895
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: for vindicating the free wage system. Now, I didn't know that.

896
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 3: I hate it.

897
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: I didn't know that at all. Yeah, and it's interesting.

898
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: Stanley points out that like two wage laborers, who none

899
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: of these wealthy liberals are talking to ever in their

900
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: entire lives. To wage laborers, this does not make sense

901
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:35,439
Speaker 1: because wage laborers know that like, yeah, man, sometimes there's

902
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,360
Speaker 1: no work right, Sometimes the you know, the factories closed.

903
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't make money, and you like have to

904
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:43,400
Speaker 1: beg or your family's going to starve. That's like begging.

905
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: Wage laborers don't see begging as separate from like them.

906
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:49,879
Speaker 1: They be like, yeah, sometimes you wind up like yeah,

907
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:54,760
Speaker 1: meeting charity because like shit's fucked, it's it's tough out there. Yeah,

908
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: but these liberals.

909
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 3: Have all the part communities take care of each other.

910
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:01,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that is not how these wealthy liberals think

911
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: these kind of intellectual leaders because they've been building in

912
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 1: their head this kind of uh at, this kind of

913
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,760
Speaker 1: like belief system that is kind of going to become

914
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 1: what we you know, a lot of it's going to

915
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 1: become like kind of the traditions of modern capitalism. But

916
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 1: they're sort of building this belief system based on how

917
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 1: they think the social order works between wage journers and

918
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: you know, the poor and the rich and all this stuff.

919
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 1: Like they've they've set up this kind of view of

920
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: the world that they've made without talking to any of

921
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 1: the people who like exist in the in the situations

922
00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: that they're trying to define. And it is one of

923
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: the things that it has kind of like laid out

924
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 1: in this belief system, which is also going to play

925
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 1: a lot into the eugenics beliefs that are just around

926
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 1: the corner, is that like beggars are fundamentally immoral, right,

927
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 1: it is it is an act of social evil to

928
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:57,320
Speaker 1: not have a means of visible support.

929
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:00,799
Speaker 3: We get the like we talked about a little bit

930
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,919
Speaker 3: of the medieval stuff, you know, like the deserving poor concept. Yes,

931
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 3: and so there's this like very Protestant idea of like

932
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 3: the deserving poor should get something, but most people are

933
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:11,720
Speaker 3: not deserving poor.

934
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's when this is starting to really get

935
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 1: cooked up, and there's this idea, Like the kind of

936
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 1: conclusion these people come to is that like giving money

937
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: to beggars or is going to disincline people to work.

938
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,160
Speaker 1: So when you have deserving poor, the social aid they

939
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: receive needs to be so painful to receive that no

940
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:35,280
Speaker 1: one but the deserving poor will seek it out right, totally.

941
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: One of the things I find interesting is that in

942
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: this period, when you've got these people talking about the

943
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: dangers of like charity or of social aid for folks

944
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: that like don't have work, you have kind of two

945
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: different boogeymen they cite. One is socialism, right, which makes sense,

946
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:53,319
Speaker 1: you know that they're that they're they're citing that. The

947
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,279
Speaker 1: other is monarchism, right, because a lot of Americans in

948
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: this period believe that monarchies inherently create this like huge

949
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,000
Speaker 1: class of dependent people who were utterly dependent on the state,

950
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 1: and that's seen as anti American. So it's both monarchism

951
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 1: and socialism usually by like slightly different chunks of this

952
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 1: movement that you see cited as like the nightmare scenario, right, Yeah,

953
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:19,840
Speaker 1: interesting to me. I didn't know that idea.

954
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:20,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

955
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 3: One of the things that really it just really quickly

956
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 3: the one of the things that really Like, I read

957
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 3: this book called Russia through a shot Glass about a

958
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:33,240
Speaker 3: hobo in Soviet Russia, right, and I didn't know about

959
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 3: poverty in Soviet Russia. Right in USSR And there's this

960
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 3: conversation with a beggar who's like, oh, I do this.

961
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 3: I don't actually need to go beg. I mean he

962
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 3: kind of needs to rate doesn't have a job, but

963
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:45,839
Speaker 3: he's like, I go out and beg every day because

964
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:48,520
Speaker 3: I'm doing a social good because when people give me

965
00:51:48,560 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 3: twenty bucks or whatever, they feel better, like I am

966
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:56,680
Speaker 3: good for people. And I've thought about that ever since,

967
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,439
Speaker 3: like ever since now that I'm employed, when I give

968
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 3: money to directly to people who were asking for money,

969
00:52:02,440 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 3: it's like I feel good about myself. They are doing

970
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:10,279
Speaker 3: a social good by like helping people feel good about themselves.

971
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: Anyway, it's I think that there's a the like panhandling

972
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: is a complicated historical topic. I do think there's a

973
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 1: degree to which it's it's one of our one of

974
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:29,759
Speaker 1: our like dying communal art forms. But yeah, it's it's interesting.

975
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 1: I think a lot about the way homelessness works in

976
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:39,359
Speaker 1: the United States and how how not inevitable it is

977
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: that that be the way society like treats this sort

978
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: of thing. Like just one of the kind of memorable

979
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 1: conversations I had, you know, when I was in Mosul,

980
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,759
Speaker 1: I was kind of bunking up with this civil defense unit,

981
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:52,520
Speaker 1: which is like they're guys who pull people out of

982
00:52:52,560 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 1: like the wreckage of air strikes and shit. Like their

983
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: job every day was to like go and help people

984
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: who had been injured in the bombings and fight and

985
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 1: stuff from the previous day. And we're kind of like

986
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: just chatting about life. I was living in Los Angeles,

987
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 1: you know at the time, and like they're asking me

988
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: about LA because you know, everybody knows about Hollywood, even

989
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:13,879
Speaker 1: if they don't know much about the city, and I'm

990
00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:16,000
Speaker 1: talking about like, you know, the good things and about

991
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: the problems, and I'm like, you know, there's a lot

992
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:21,200
Speaker 1: of like homelessness, and they like kept questioning me about that,

993
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: and they were so upset with the idea of like

994
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:28,120
Speaker 1: people living on the street where they were like what

995
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:30,760
Speaker 1: about like their families, Like was it like doesn't anyone

996
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: take them in? Don't they have Like there was this

997
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:36,800
Speaker 1: like this is kind of like because Iraq's got plenty

998
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: of problems, but like the the idea that like there

999
00:53:40,239 --> 00:53:42,840
Speaker 1: would be large numbers of people just kind of completely

1000
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:46,360
Speaker 1: abandoned by their families and community was like so alien

1001
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 1: to these guys who were like dealing with some really

1002
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: nasty aspects of their own country, you know, on a

1003
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: daily basis. But like, yeah, that was it was really

1004
00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:59,239
Speaker 1: just like the kind of disbelief they had that like

1005
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: this could have, that could happen on any kind of

1006
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,240
Speaker 1: large scale, that people would just like let it occur

1007
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 1: was so interesting to me. Yeah, anyway, So we had

1008
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: talked about a little earlier that in the late or

1009
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: in the seventeen eighties. Massachusetts is the first US state

1010
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: to ban slavery, right, That's something Massachusetts can take great

1011
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: pride in. Massachusetts is also the first Northern state to

1012
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: criminalize begging. In eighteen sixty six, the Republican Legislature of

1013
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:32,640
Speaker 1: Massachusetts passes the Act Concerning Vagrants and Vagabonds. Ad Stanley

1014
00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: Wright's Massachusetts was the first of the Northern states to

1015
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:38,440
Speaker 1: enact new rules against beggars. In eighteen sixty six, the

1016
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: Republican dominated legislature passed an Act concerning vagrants and bat vagabonds.

1017
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: The eighteen sixty Criminal Code had punished beggars along with

1018
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:51,440
Speaker 1: a motley band of jugglers, tricksters, common pipers and fiddlers, pilferers, brawlers,

1019
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: and lude persons. Sounds like literally my friend the best people. Yeah,

1020
00:54:56,520 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: everyone I hang out with on a daily basis. Yeah, tricksters,

1021
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:06,640
Speaker 1: comic drivers, lewd persons, yeah, for sure. But the new

1022
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:09,279
Speaker 1: law dealt more specifically on the crime of begging. It

1023
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: was promoted by the Board of State Charities, which explicitly

1024
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: called for additional legislation sentencing sturdy beggars to enforced labor

1025
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 1: directed against idle persons without visible means of support. The

1026
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: Act punished at forced labor for not longer than six

1027
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:28,239
Speaker 1: months in a house of correction or workhouse. Quote, all

1028
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: persons wandering abroad and begging, or who go out from

1029
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: door to door or place themselves in the streets, highways

1030
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: or passages well from other public places to beg or

1031
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: receive alms. One month before the new law took effect,

1032
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,439
Speaker 1: Congress enacted a civil rights The Civil Rights Act which

1033
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:47,880
Speaker 1: ended the Black Codes in the South. These had been

1034
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:50,520
Speaker 1: the legal basis for a lot of the vagrancy arrests

1035
00:55:50,560 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 1: of freed black people. So Republicans both spent the post

1036
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: war years cutting down the legal apparatus for one means

1037
00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 1: of suppression and forced labor, and voting in a new

1038
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 1: one based around anti vagrancy laws. Because these spread rapidly

1039
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:07,880
Speaker 1: towards the Northern States, towards the Northern States, kind of

1040
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,760
Speaker 1: outside of Massachusetts, over the next twenty years, many states

1041
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,320
Speaker 1: followed mass The Tramp Acts, as they were often called,

1042
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 1: were passed in Pennsylvania in eighteen seventy one, in Illinois

1043
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:22,200
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, and in New York in eighteen

1044
00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:26,719
Speaker 1: eighty and eighteen eighty five. Massachusetts also regularly added new

1045
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:29,560
Speaker 1: laws to their vagrancy laws. Every time the economy takes

1046
00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: a dip, they'll make more laws to criminalize and force

1047
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 1: people who are like ruined by economic collapse into the

1048
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 1: forced labor system. Right, this is like a regular thing

1049
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 1: where they're constantly like as the economy keeps going up

1050
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:46,319
Speaker 1: and down, they're constantly like making new laws to put

1051
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: people in workhouses. You know, when they fall through the cracks.

1052
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:53,080
Speaker 1: Under the Illinois Vagabond Law, begging was punishable with six

1053
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,919
Speaker 1: months in the workhouse. In New York, beggars were given

1054
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: hard labor in prisons. States soon began extending the time

1055
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:02,239
Speaker 1: of sin from generally like six months or so at

1056
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:04,960
Speaker 1: the start to as long as two years. And again.

1057
00:57:05,239 --> 00:57:07,920
Speaker 1: The organizing impulse behind all of these laws is the

1058
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:12,400
Speaker 1: work of charity reformers eighty Stanley Wrights. Many of the

1059
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:15,840
Speaker 1: statutes were the direct accomplishment of charity reformers. Among the

1060
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:19,600
Speaker 1: central tasks the Conference of Charities assigned itself was showing

1061
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: how legislation ought to travel. As one member declared, suppression

1062
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,880
Speaker 1: of vagrancy in street begging was probably the most important

1063
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:30,160
Speaker 1: work of charity reform. Even before the Conference of Charities

1064
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:34,040
Speaker 1: organized the effort, both public and private philanthropic agencies vigorously

1065
00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 1: promoted laws against begging, all of which entailed forced labour.

1066
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:40,720
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty six, New York City charity officials had

1067
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,640
Speaker 1: concluded that the only way to prevent sloth was compulsory labor.

1068
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: A few years later, a commissioner of the New York

1069
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:49,720
Speaker 1: State Board of Charities recommended that the laws must be

1070
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: more stringent regarding vagabonds and professional beggars. In Illinois, charity,

1071
00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: police and prison officials all pressed in the mid eighteen

1072
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:01,720
Speaker 1: seventies for what one police chief cond a good vagrant law,

1073
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 1: and both the Industrial Aid Society in Boston and the

1074
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:07,800
Speaker 1: Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor in New

1075
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: York City, agencies with close ties to the Republican Party

1076
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:14,520
Speaker 1: promoted penal laws and involuntary labor as a cure for begging.

1077
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 1: And again, folks, I know, you know, we all hit

1078
00:58:19,240 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 1: Republicans around here. When we're talking about Republicans this period,

1079
00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:25,720
Speaker 1: we're talking about liberals. That's who is is Democrats, right,

1080
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:28,200
Speaker 1: Like that's like, let's be fair here. We are talking

1081
00:58:28,280 --> 00:58:32,920
Speaker 1: about like liberal intellectual and social elites who are pushing

1082
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:36,880
Speaker 1: these laws alongside the police who are always super supportive

1083
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: of criminalizing homelessness. Because these vagrant laws. Here's a fun thing.

1084
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: We'll talk about this more at the end. The way

1085
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: they're written means that cops can just decide someone's vagrant

1086
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:50,040
Speaker 1: and then they get to do anything they want to them.

1087
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 1: That's cool, yay, great, hey, great so much. Yeah, it's

1088
00:58:55,360 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 1: deeply infuriating. Margaret informersly states a good deal of the

1089
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: you get.

1090
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 3: Some Oh, I was just thinking about how okay, So,

1091
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 3: like in my current life, I don't get harassed by

1092
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 3: police very much. But when I lived out of a

1093
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,680
Speaker 3: backpack in hitchhiking, and to be clear, I chose that

1094
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 3: because of the way that I was choosing to do activism,

1095
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:17,600
Speaker 3: I chose that riding freight trains in hitchhiking was a

1096
00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 3: good way to do activism right, just to be clear

1097
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:24,560
Speaker 3: about that. But I interacted with police so so much

1098
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 3: that like, roughly daily I would have my ID run.

1099
00:59:30,040 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 3: I never understood how people did crime. Like when I

1100
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 3: meet people who just sort of do drugs or like

1101
00:59:35,600 --> 00:59:39,240
Speaker 3: have drugs or move drugs around, I'm like, I don't understand.

1102
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:44,000
Speaker 3: You get searched every day, and it's because of this

1103
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 3: vagrancy shit. It's because of this. Like everyone, if you

1104
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 3: have a backpack, you are the enemy of the police,

1105
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:59,440
Speaker 3: like and just you will be constantly harassed. And I

1106
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 3: don't think you will quite understand the degree to which

1107
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:06,200
Speaker 3: that harassment is just ever present even when you're not

1108
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:08,360
Speaker 3: And it annoys the shit out of me because you

1109
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 3: have this like ostensible freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

1110
01:00:11,160 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 1: But you don't.

1111
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 3: And then also capitalism presents itself as the system that

1112
01:00:15,040 --> 01:00:16,439
Speaker 3: you're like, well, if you don't like it, just don't

1113
01:00:16,440 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 3: do it. Right, Capitalism is all about choice and the

1114
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 3: freedom of the individual. It is not like if you

1115
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 3: don't work, if you choose not to work, if you

1116
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 3: ask other people for money or just choose to just

1117
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,880
Speaker 3: eat trash instead of asking people for money, you are

1118
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 3: breaking the law. I hate this stuff so much.

1119
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: And it's no, it's like, yeah, I you know, I

1120
01:00:42,120 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: lived out of a car again by choice with two

1121
01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:48,800
Speaker 1: other people, you know, and it was kind of like

1122
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: an adventure. We were going up and down all throughout

1123
01:00:51,080 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: the US and Canada. I had like three notable interactions

1124
01:00:56,000 --> 01:00:57,840
Speaker 1: with police and all of them were really negative and

1125
01:00:57,880 --> 01:01:00,240
Speaker 1: took like an hour or two to get through. They've

1126
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:02,720
Speaker 1: tried to bring out dogs and shit, but that was all.

1127
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:04,840
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a daily thing. It was because like

1128
01:01:04,880 --> 01:01:07,320
Speaker 1: we were in a car, right, and like, while if

1129
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:09,640
Speaker 1: they see that you're sleeping in a car, you get

1130
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:12,440
Speaker 1: shipped from the cops. If cops just see people in

1131
01:01:12,440 --> 01:01:14,600
Speaker 1: a car, they think like that is that is the

1132
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:17,440
Speaker 1: world happening? Is it's supposed to happen a person in

1133
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:20,280
Speaker 1: a backpack is not supposed to exist outside of a

1134
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 1: car or a school campus, you know, like it's it

1135
01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: is interesting the way that that works, because we were

1136
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:28,320
Speaker 1: like just as vagrant a city, but like we were

1137
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:31,040
Speaker 1: ye letting out of the back of a Toyota Prius.

1138
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 1: But you know, if you don't look like they expect

1139
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: you know, then you're you're generally okay, yep, cool stuff.

1140
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 1: So in former slave states, a great deal of the

1141
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: actual punishment work of the vagrant law system was done

1142
01:01:50,520 --> 01:01:53,960
Speaker 1: by employees of the Freedman's Bureau, which had been created

1143
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:56,840
Speaker 1: in March eighteen sixty five with the stated goal of

1144
01:01:56,880 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: helping freedmen adapt to their newfound liberty. The first superintendent

1145
01:02:01,240 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: of the Bureau, though, made it clear that his organization

1146
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 1: was about control as much as support. He stated his

1147
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,840
Speaker 1: determination that quote freed people shall not become a worthless,

1148
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 1: lazy set of vagrants living in vice and idleness. His

1149
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: successor added that Memphis had six thousand black people who

1150
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 1: were lazy, worthless vagrants, and so in Memphis, the Freedman's

1151
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:27,640
Speaker 1: Bureau started organizing patrols to arrest black people at random

1152
01:02:27,680 --> 01:02:30,600
Speaker 1: and send them to work for white employers, often the

1153
01:02:30,640 --> 01:02:33,720
Speaker 1: same plantations that had owned them or their relatives. Patrolmen

1154
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:36,600
Speaker 1: were given bounties of one to five dollars per head, right,

1155
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: and then just told like, get us people. You know,

1156
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 1: they recreate slave patrols. They but the freedman's bureaus running them,

1157
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:47,400
Speaker 1: and they're doing it to provide cheap labor for you know, plantations,

1158
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:51,440
Speaker 1: and shit, oh god, h this piss is off a

1159
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:54,640
Speaker 1: lot of freed people. You know, they don't take this

1160
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,959
Speaker 1: lying down. And those who could, for one thing, wrote

1161
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 1: letters to the Bureau commissioner. Obvious in this period, literacy

1162
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 1: is not super widespread among the community of freed people,

1163
01:03:05,560 --> 01:03:08,240
Speaker 1: yet for very obvious reasons, it had been illegal for

1164
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 1: them to learn to read and write in most of

1165
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 1: the places they came from. But there were always people

1166
01:03:12,840 --> 01:03:15,040
Speaker 1: in the community who had either who had taught themselves

1167
01:03:15,080 --> 01:03:17,560
Speaker 1: to read, who had benefited from some sort of education,

1168
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:20,080
Speaker 1: And so they would organize in groups where like everyone

1169
01:03:20,120 --> 01:03:22,040
Speaker 1: would come and bring their complaints, and like the people

1170
01:03:22,040 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 1: who could write would would write letters for everybody and

1171
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: then send them in right in order to kind of

1172
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:29,880
Speaker 1: do like they were organizing, you know, like in order

1173
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 1: to like exert a kind of political power, right, the

1174
01:03:33,240 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 1: way that people do so for whatever reason, And I

1175
01:03:37,560 --> 01:03:41,040
Speaker 1: guess it does make sense. Most often, like the most

1176
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:43,160
Speaker 1: common job for the people who would be like the

1177
01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:46,480
Speaker 1: letter writers in their community were barbers, right, this was

1178
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: a lot of the people doing this are barbers. And

1179
01:03:49,520 --> 01:03:52,480
Speaker 1: one of these barbers is a guy named Warner Madison

1180
01:03:52,520 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: who had taught himself to read. Now his pros is,

1181
01:03:55,400 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: obviously it's not like as polished as the writing, and

1182
01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: say the government notices organizing vagrant patrols. But he got

1183
01:04:01,400 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: his point across. And even with this kind of distance,

1184
01:04:04,480 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 1: you can you can feel the rage that radiates off

1185
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:11,640
Speaker 1: of his words, burning like a fucking cinder. And I'm

1186
01:04:11,640 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: going to quote again from that article in Zocalo. In

1187
01:04:15,560 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 1: a letter to Friedman's Bureau Commissioner Fisk, he began by

1188
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:21,160
Speaker 1: describing what was going on. They go around and arrest

1189
01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: all they can find, regardless of whether they are employed

1190
01:04:23,800 --> 01:04:25,800
Speaker 1: or not. Just ask if you don't want to go

1191
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:27,880
Speaker 1: with mister whoever. It may be that they don't find

1192
01:04:27,880 --> 01:04:29,640
Speaker 1: out whether you want to go or not at all,

1193
01:04:29,680 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: They make out the agreement to sell you for the

1194
01:04:31,520 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 1: price that the man gives them. Then Madison narrated in

1195
01:04:35,040 --> 01:04:37,880
Speaker 1: an instance of a young African American man being taken

1196
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 1: away by the point of the bayonet at the direction

1197
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: of a Friedman's Bureau agent. As his letter rose to

1198
01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,880
Speaker 1: a pitched fury, Madison began to punctuate almost every word

1199
01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:49,840
Speaker 1: as if stabbing at the paper with his pen. I

1200
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 1: think it is one of the most obnoxious and foul

1201
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:58,120
Speaker 1: and mean things that exists on any part of this bureau.

1202
01:04:58,640 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 1: Why do my children have to get passes now to

1203
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 1: go to school? Nathan Dudley of the Freedman's Bureau was

1204
01:05:05,280 --> 01:05:08,600
Speaker 1: sent to investigate these claims. He looks into whether or

1205
01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:11,640
Speaker 1: not children are getting like arrested for vagrancy while they're

1206
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:15,960
Speaker 1: heading to school, and here's here's what he writes. I

1207
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:19,200
Speaker 1: can find no evidence whatever that school children with books

1208
01:05:19,240 --> 01:05:21,440
Speaker 1: in their hands have been arrested except in two or

1209
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:26,800
Speaker 1: three cases. First off, I can't find evidence that they

1210
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 1: got arrested if they had books. And second, I can't

1211
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 1: find any evidence except for this evidence other than these people,

1212
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:33,880
Speaker 1: these kids who got arrested, I can't find any evidence

1213
01:05:33,920 --> 01:05:39,480
Speaker 1: of this is happening. Very funny, not funny, infuriating, but

1214
01:05:39,680 --> 01:05:49,400
Speaker 1: you know it happened. So, yeah, that's frustrating, you know, yeah,

1215
01:05:49,960 --> 01:05:54,920
Speaker 1: fair to say irritating Malaga. We're thinking back to our

1216
01:05:54,920 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: friends on Malaga living free of all of this bullshit

1217
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:01,440
Speaker 1: because they're very isolated, have a lot of protection from

1218
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:04,640
Speaker 1: this wave of vagrancy laws sweeping the country. So, you know,

1219
01:06:04,680 --> 01:06:07,440
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, the stuff, they were not

1220
01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:10,280
Speaker 1: really dealing with consequences of this because of how far

1221
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:13,200
Speaker 1: off the grid they are. But by the start of

1222
01:06:13,240 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, the

1223
01:06:16,520 --> 01:06:19,320
Speaker 1: unique communities that had formed both on Malaga and these

1224
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:24,080
Speaker 1: surrounding islands were starting to gain the attention of mainland culture,

1225
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:26,320
Speaker 1: in a mainland culture that had been influenced by this

1226
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:30,120
Speaker 1: anti vagrant hysteria. We can illustrate this well with the

1227
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:33,720
Speaker 1: story of John Darling, a third generation descendant of our

1228
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 1: buddy Benjamin. He was born in eighteen fifty to Isaac

1229
01:06:37,200 --> 01:06:41,160
Speaker 1: and Rebecca Wallace Darling in Phippsburg. His brother remained in

1230
01:06:41,200 --> 01:06:44,560
Speaker 1: the area, marrying and having children. At twenty one, John

1231
01:06:44,600 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 1: got married to his first cousin, Aurelia Darling, and she

1232
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 1: gave birth first to a set of stillborn twins and

1233
01:06:49,760 --> 01:06:53,160
Speaker 1: then a son, dying soon after. At twenty nine, John

1234
01:06:53,200 --> 01:06:57,000
Speaker 1: married again to a woman named Albertina Gilliam from Orr's Island,

1235
01:06:57,240 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 1: and the family moved to Or's Island to live with

1236
01:06:59,520 --> 01:07:02,320
Speaker 1: her parents. This was a good life for some years,

1237
01:07:02,320 --> 01:07:04,560
Speaker 1: but then in eighteen ninety seven, the land that his

1238
01:07:04,680 --> 01:07:07,480
Speaker 1: wife's family lived on was sold to a syndicate of

1239
01:07:07,560 --> 01:07:11,120
Speaker 1: Philadelphia businessmen who sold the land off for summer cottages.

1240
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 1: The Darlings were evicted, so they fled to Pond Island,

1241
01:07:14,600 --> 01:07:17,120
Speaker 1: a half miles to the south and squatted on it,

1242
01:07:17,160 --> 01:07:20,200
Speaker 1: building a two room house that John Darling insulated with

1243
01:07:20,280 --> 01:07:22,480
Speaker 1: newspaper rags and dirt, which is just kind of like

1244
01:07:22,520 --> 01:07:24,080
Speaker 1: what you did at the time, right You can't just

1245
01:07:24,120 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: pop down to the home depot. His wife eventually took

1246
01:07:27,080 --> 01:07:29,240
Speaker 1: sick and had to return to the mainland for treatment,

1247
01:07:29,440 --> 01:07:32,440
Speaker 1: while John passed into local legend, living alone as the

1248
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:35,400
Speaker 1: Hermit of Pond Island. From a write up by the

1249
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:39,520
Speaker 1: Harpswell Historical Society, the hermit was featured on postcards and

1250
01:07:39,560 --> 01:07:41,800
Speaker 1: histories and as an example of what might happen to

1251
01:07:41,840 --> 01:07:44,200
Speaker 1: a child if they didn't work hard and learn those

1252
01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:47,840
Speaker 1: ABC's The story of finding John frozen solid in his

1253
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:50,440
Speaker 1: bed of rags and eaten by everything from rats to

1254
01:07:50,480 --> 01:07:54,520
Speaker 1: seagulls has been told around media campfire, So he becomes

1255
01:07:54,600 --> 01:07:56,400
Speaker 1: kind of this like people will like glimpse him or

1256
01:07:56,440 --> 01:07:58,200
Speaker 1: sail by to look at him, and he's like this

1257
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:02,160
Speaker 1: kind of figure of low like mockery, right, because he's

1258
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:06,160
Speaker 1: he's living alone out there now. Despite kind of this

1259
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:09,440
Speaker 1: public image of him, johnis by all accounts a resourceful

1260
01:08:09,520 --> 01:08:13,520
Speaker 1: and tough man who like lived alone in the most

1261
01:08:13,600 --> 01:08:15,920
Speaker 1: like and and made a life for himself, built a

1262
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:19,960
Speaker 1: fucking house out there and survived to an advance. Doesn't

1263
01:08:19,960 --> 01:08:24,479
Speaker 1: sound lazy, no, he's he sounds like today, a man

1264
01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:26,200
Speaker 1: with the kind of skills that he have would go

1265
01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:28,200
Speaker 1: on one of those game shows like Alone where you

1266
01:08:28,200 --> 01:08:29,880
Speaker 1: have to like live alone in the middle of nowhere

1267
01:08:29,880 --> 01:08:32,280
Speaker 1: with like a knife and win. He would like win

1268
01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:35,840
Speaker 1: every time. Like no, no modern man could compete with

1269
01:08:35,960 --> 01:08:39,800
Speaker 1: John Darling on one of those shows like yeah, oh

1270
01:08:39,800 --> 01:08:41,720
Speaker 1: I gotta be I gotta not talk to anyone for

1271
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five I do that without trying,

1272
01:08:45,320 --> 01:08:50,240
Speaker 1: like fuck it. Yeah, So again, he's by all accounts

1273
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:53,080
Speaker 1: a pretty resourceful guy. And he minds his own fucking business.

1274
01:08:53,360 --> 01:08:56,160
Speaker 1: But as the nineteen hundreds were alife, he represented to

1275
01:08:56,320 --> 01:08:59,479
Speaker 1: people on Maine, in places like Pipsburg and Portland, a

1276
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:03,160
Speaker 1: provention backwards past that they wanted to jettison because it

1277
01:09:03,200 --> 01:09:06,680
Speaker 1: made them feel embarrassed about themselves. Photos were taken of

1278
01:09:06,760 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 1: John and published in breathless news and magazine articles to

1279
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 1: crying his primitive state and the fact that he was

1280
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:17,240
Speaker 1: a squatterner. John's physicality was particularly well suited to this

1281
01:09:17,320 --> 01:09:20,439
Speaker 1: sort of thing. He was over six feet tall and

1282
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:23,560
Speaker 1: at least two hundred and fifty pounds, which again suggests

1283
01:09:23,760 --> 01:09:27,599
Speaker 1: he's pretty good at surviving out there if he's that big.

1284
01:09:28,640 --> 01:09:31,720
Speaker 1: But they're like, look's they basically treat him like an ogre, right,

1285
01:09:31,880 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 1: like he's this, like this, like dangerous, like almost inhuman

1286
01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:40,680
Speaker 1: hobo living you know, alone on this island. There were

1287
01:09:40,800 --> 01:09:43,920
Speaker 1: rumors in local reporting that he was illiterate and uncultured,

1288
01:09:43,920 --> 01:09:47,160
Speaker 1: although there's no actual evidence of this. The Harpswell Historical

1289
01:09:47,200 --> 01:09:50,120
Speaker 1: Society notes his signature has not been found on any

1290
01:09:50,120 --> 01:09:52,640
Speaker 1: town records or petitions, and it is quite likely that

1291
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:54,679
Speaker 1: he did not read or write, but it may also

1292
01:09:54,760 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: be that he was just not a very sociable person

1293
01:09:57,000 --> 01:09:59,679
Speaker 1: and did not concern himself with the affairs of others

1294
01:09:59,760 --> 01:10:02,280
Speaker 1: or the town, preferring to keep to himself, and therefore

1295
01:10:02,360 --> 01:10:04,960
Speaker 1: did not sign or make his mark on the public record.

1296
01:10:06,640 --> 01:10:09,400
Speaker 1: The treatment of John Darling would be mirrored with greatly

1297
01:10:09,439 --> 01:10:13,519
Speaker 1: enhanced brutality against other descendants of Benjamin Darling on their

1298
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:17,280
Speaker 1: kin and their kin on Malaga Island. And that is

1299
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:19,639
Speaker 1: the story we are going to talk about when we

1300
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:23,519
Speaker 1: come back in part two. But Margaret, you know what

1301
01:10:23,600 --> 01:10:24,519
Speaker 1: time it is right now?

1302
01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:26,320
Speaker 2: Uh?

1303
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:32,599
Speaker 3: No more, ads, I don't know. It's time to advertise myself.

1304
01:10:32,680 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's time to plug plug plug plug your bluggables.

1305
01:10:37,040 --> 01:10:41,760
Speaker 3: Well, if you like the opposite of this show, where

1306
01:10:41,800 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 3: we talk about people who fought these things, you might

1307
01:10:45,520 --> 01:10:47,880
Speaker 3: like my show, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. Available

1308
01:10:48,400 --> 01:10:53,960
Speaker 3: wherever podcasts are found, specifically from cools on Media, also excellent.

1309
01:10:54,080 --> 01:10:57,320
Speaker 1: I am I don't know whether on comes out.

1310
01:10:57,320 --> 01:11:00,240
Speaker 3: I'm either kickstarting or have kick started a tabletop role

1311
01:11:00,240 --> 01:11:02,760
Speaker 3: playing game called p Number City that I'm making with

1312
01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:04,160
Speaker 3: a bunch of people have been working on for a

1313
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 3: very long time. The kickstarter is doing amazingly. We're at

1314
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:11,320
Speaker 3: like three hundred percent or something of our goal, and

1315
01:11:11,400 --> 01:11:14,640
Speaker 3: so you should check out p Number City and or

1316
01:11:14,680 --> 01:11:16,160
Speaker 3: Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

1317
01:11:17,320 --> 01:11:25,240
Speaker 1: Excellent, and you can check out me anyway. You can

1318
01:11:25,280 --> 01:11:29,480
Speaker 1: also get this podcast and you know, presumably other podcasts,

1319
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:31,800
Speaker 1: but I hate all other podcasts except for the one

1320
01:11:31,800 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 1: that we're recording right now and the other ones that

1321
01:11:34,800 --> 01:11:38,840
Speaker 1: we've recorded. If you go to Apple and Sophie, how

1322
01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:40,360
Speaker 1: do we what am I supposed to? How do I

1323
01:11:40,400 --> 01:11:42,439
Speaker 1: say this? How do we do this? Go to Apple

1324
01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:45,519
Speaker 1: and buy Cooler Zone Media, give them money, and then

1325
01:11:45,560 --> 01:11:48,280
Speaker 1: you won't have ads on any of our shows, including

1326
01:11:48,439 --> 01:11:53,120
Speaker 1: Margaret's show, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, including Hood

1327
01:11:53,200 --> 01:11:57,080
Speaker 1: Politics with our good friend prop including It Could Happen Here,

1328
01:11:57,280 --> 01:12:00,160
Speaker 1: the daily news show that is slowly destroying all of

1329
01:12:00,200 --> 01:12:03,559
Speaker 1: our sanities. You know you can, you can. You can

1330
01:12:03,600 --> 01:12:07,439
Speaker 1: get no more ads, not a single ad, motherfuckers. And hey,

1331
01:12:07,479 --> 01:12:09,840
Speaker 1: here's what makes it better. If you go on and

1332
01:12:10,120 --> 01:12:12,559
Speaker 1: get an account with Cooler Zone Media right now and

1333
01:12:12,600 --> 01:12:15,559
Speaker 1: get that fucking give us, give us, you know, sign

1334
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:17,680
Speaker 1: up for that, then we'll go up the charts and

1335
01:12:17,720 --> 01:12:21,200
Speaker 1: we can. We are we are right underneath Radio Lab

1336
01:12:21,360 --> 01:12:24,880
Speaker 1: and most subscribers on Apple and I have hated the

1337
01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:28,879
Speaker 1: Radio Lab people for years now, no real.

1338
01:12:28,720 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 2: Reason that seems logical to me.

1339
01:12:31,240 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 1: You have to pick an enemy and then destroy them

1340
01:12:34,400 --> 01:12:38,800
Speaker 1: with with almost unthinkable violence. And that's that's what I

1341
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:41,840
Speaker 1: want to do to those Radio Lab motherfuckers.

1342
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:44,320
Speaker 2: You know what else people can listen to now, and

1343
01:12:44,360 --> 01:12:46,719
Speaker 2: they could listen to them the AD free or the

1344
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:48,320
Speaker 2: free version with ads.

1345
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:49,519
Speaker 1: No, I don't know.

1346
01:12:50,080 --> 01:12:52,840
Speaker 2: Our dear friend Jake Hanrahan's newest podcast that is part

1347
01:12:52,880 --> 01:12:54,120
Speaker 2: of cool Media.

1348
01:12:54,760 --> 01:12:57,760
Speaker 1: Jake Canrahan or Jan Rahan as he has never been

1349
01:12:57,800 --> 01:13:01,680
Speaker 1: called by anyone. Don't call him that and we'll make

1350
01:13:01,720 --> 01:13:02,200
Speaker 1: him angry.

1351
01:13:02,360 --> 01:13:03,880
Speaker 2: But you should. You should check out his new show.

1352
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:06,280
Speaker 2: It's called Sad Oligarch. It's a modern truth, cold style

1353
01:13:06,360 --> 01:13:11,599
Speaker 2: investigative series that looks into why these Russian oligarchs keep

1354
01:13:11,880 --> 01:13:13,200
Speaker 2: just dying.

1355
01:13:14,080 --> 01:13:18,960
Speaker 1: These Russian oligarchs keep like falling out of windows and

1356
01:13:19,040 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 1: hotels surprisingly just downstairs. Clumsy yeah, clumsy ola Arks the classic.

1357
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:31,000
Speaker 1: So check that out, you know, and you know, check

1358
01:13:31,040 --> 01:13:35,200
Speaker 1: it out AD free and help us destroy Radio Lab, you.

1359
01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:40,200
Speaker 2: Know, please, and we'll be back for two.

1360
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:41,360
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1361
01:13:41,880 --> 01:13:44,599
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1362
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:47,559
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1363
01:13:47,640 --> 01:13:51,639
Speaker 2: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1364
01:13:51,680 --> 01:13:54,120
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.