Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. It's sports. We're doing touchdown
Speaker 1: five yard penalty that the Angels have become the Mariners,
Speaker 1: a body checking. Uh yep, this is the sports episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to It could happen here your favorite sportscast. I'm
Speaker 1: not the host of this episode, but I'm talking for
Speaker 1: some reason. Uh, James and Chris, why are we talking
Speaker 1: about sports? To distract us from the crumbling of society
Speaker 1: around us, but more specifically to talk about how sports
Speaker 1: I used to laund other reputations of dictatorial regimes. And
Speaker 1: I know Chris has got some interesting stuff on Balsonaro's
Speaker 1: Brazil and sports. This is this is this has before that? Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should measure this. This is okay, like this is
Speaker 1: this is this is this is some wonderful pt era
Speaker 1: of vintage crimes. Oh good stuff. Okay, I love a
Speaker 1: Brazilian crime, no matter what the vintage. So I'm excited
Speaker 1: to learn about how the NFL legitimizes the military police
Speaker 1: state anyway. Um ye. And it's not even football, is it.
Speaker 1: So multiple things they're doing wrong. I want to talk
Speaker 1: first about like the original incidence of what we're going
Speaker 1: to call sports washing, because everyone else calls it sports
Speaker 1: washing too, So it's like using these big global mega
Speaker 1: events to launder the reputation of a pretty reste of
Speaker 1: all regime. So the o g instance of this is
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty six Olympics, which were held in Berlin.
Speaker 1: You'll probably familiar with who was in charge in Berlin.
Speaker 1: It was the Nazis. That's a spoiler, and the Anazis
Speaker 1: were actually given the Olympics. The Olympics were given to
Speaker 1: Biby Germany, which was considerably less ship than the Nazis,
Speaker 1: but the Nazis took them on and they're really round
Speaker 1: with them. And lots of the symbology that we associate
Speaker 1: with the Olympics today, that the raising of flags during
Speaker 1: the medal ceremony, the playing of national anthems. The parade
Speaker 1: of flags are, the opening ceremony, the torch relay. The
Speaker 1: torch relay goes from o g Olympia in Greece to
Speaker 1: wherever the Olympics are being held. It's it's this big
Speaker 1: ceremonial thing, right, that all of these things were created
Speaker 1: by its guy called Carl D. M who was a Nazi,
Speaker 1: to draw stronger links between the Nazi Party and the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks and position the Nazis the inheritors of this
Speaker 1: classical legacy, right, and the civilized people in the barbaric world,
Speaker 1: like the Greeks saw themselves. And obviously the Olympics, if
Speaker 1: you aren't familiar, draws its legacy from a largely mythical
Speaker 1: construct of a games that did actually happen in ancient Greek. Right,
Speaker 1: so they claimed to be like a reconstruction of this
Speaker 1: Greek tradition, except in the Greek truition everyone was naked,
Speaker 1: which I think would make the Olympics much more watchable.
Speaker 1: We could, yeah, it's that is. I would watch the
Speaker 1: male gymnastics way more, not just naked but oiled. Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 1: men's men's swimming would be a lot more interesting yes,
Speaker 1: it would yep, naked Olympics, we can get behind. But
Speaker 1: they didn't bring that back. Nazi didn't bring that back.
Speaker 1: They didn't have some naked statues, but they weren't big
Speaker 1: into nudity. But they fused a whole lot of fashy
Speaker 1: eugenic shit. Right, So the reason that they started having
Speaker 1: these medal tables was very much to reinforce their idea
Speaker 1: of the superiority of one race over other races. Right.
Speaker 1: Didn't really work out for them in the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six because Jesse Owens turned up and owned them lots
Speaker 1: of different events and c into being of course of
Speaker 1: black American sprinter and long jumper, and it didn't well.
Speaker 1: The Natietics Olympics did exist to did help significantly in
Speaker 1: laundering the Nazi image. They hit away a lot of
Speaker 1: their bullshit, like they for instance, like all the Nazi
Speaker 1: Party newspapers like weren't distributed for the time that foreigners
Speaker 1: were in the country. Right, they hit away anti Semitic slogans.
Speaker 1: They even had a Jewish woman on the German Olympic team,
Speaker 1: because there was lots of sort of fluster and and
Speaker 1: sort of they're like neoliberal liberal complaining I guess about like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you're being anti Semitic, or you shouldn't. Oh look there's
Speaker 1: a Jewish person on your team. It's fine. You guys
Speaker 1: are great. You guys aren't anti Semitic at all. It's good.
Speaker 1: We're sorted. And the US did nearly boycott the Olympics,
Speaker 1: but they decided not to, and that this guy called
Speaker 1: every brandage who went on to be a p of
Speaker 1: ship of some right now, So like this Olympics, I
Speaker 1: guess set the tone for the use of these massive
Speaker 1: events to put on a show to the world and
Speaker 1: bring the world's press and show them what you want
Speaker 1: them to see and hide the stuff that you don't
Speaker 1: want them to see, which I think is a nice
Speaker 1: transition to talking about Brazil. Yeah, so we'll talk sort
Speaker 1: of about that effective it. Their sports has a second
Speaker 1: sort of incredibly important internal political effect, which is that
Speaker 1: when when when you have a sports thing that's large enough,
Speaker 1: like when you have you know, like we have a
Speaker 1: World Cup, you have the Olympics, show up, you have
Speaker 1: even to something the super Bowl, like you what what
Speaker 1: What it basically creates is this like like it basically
Speaker 1: creates a temporary sort of state of state of exception
Speaker 1: where just like the sort of sort of normal function
Speaker 1: of society stops, right, and you know that this can
Speaker 1: going this and going a number of different ways, like
Speaker 1: I and anyone wh's ever lived in Philadelphia, like, okay,
Speaker 1: there there's a version of this in Philly where like
Speaker 1: after after the Eagles win, like for like fifteen hours,
Speaker 1: there are no laws like or like when they just
Speaker 1: killed like thirty people, yeah, well like a hundred, Yeah
Speaker 1: it was a ye, yes, yeah, I think yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got ahead of the sports for killing tons of people.
Speaker 1: I think that likely to blame where the cops were sports.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but that, but this, this is the
Speaker 1: thing about sports, right, is that in order to sort
Speaker 1: of like do security blah blah blah blah, blocks and etcetera,
Speaker 1: in order to make sure the game's worked, you can
Speaker 1: do fucking anything. Yes, right, justified. Its nasty as ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know what, one of one of the things,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of like examples that I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about about this happening is one that is
Speaker 1: really not talked about that much, which is the two
Speaker 1: fourteen World Cup in Brazil, which wound up I think
Speaker 1: actually having a pretty big impact on the way Brazilian
Speaker 1: politics went and also just destroying the lives of unfathomable
Speaker 1: numbers of people. So okay, so this whole thing, like
Speaker 1: I've been in like since it's happening to us fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's been in the works since like Lula was in
Speaker 1: office in like the late twenty like late late two
Speaker 1: thousand's right, Um, this is this is like this is
Speaker 1: like one of this is like one of the workers
Speaker 1: parties like big things is that they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: going to have this World Cup. Um, they've taken a
Speaker 1: ship ton of corporate money to do it. They've taken
Speaker 1: you know, they've they've they've spent they spent enormous amount
Speaker 1: of political capital making sure this is gonna happen, and
Speaker 1: the consequences of it are just like astronomic. Something like
Speaker 1: two d fifty thousand people like lost their homes in
Speaker 1: order to like make way for like the fucking stadiums
Speaker 1: and the fields and like all of the sort of
Speaker 1: like bullshit around like all the sort of security, theater stuff,
Speaker 1: all of like just like debate. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: something that happens with Olympics, is to more famously, but
Speaker 1: like when whenever you have a sports event like this,
Speaker 1: there's just this giant cleansing that happens of like anyone
Speaker 1: who's like onto the street, who's homeless, right, anyone who's
Speaker 1: just sort of like doesn't look right, particularly anyone who's
Speaker 1: black just sort of like suddenly is like disappeared by
Speaker 1: the police from this area. Um. But this, this this
Speaker 1: particular one in in in Brazil was interesting because this
Speaker 1: is happening to just in fourteen, so and she doesn't thirteen,
Speaker 1: they were like enormous protests in Brazil and actually there
Speaker 1: there's been another like set of soccer events there in thirteen,
Speaker 1: like something like eight hundred thousand people were in the
Speaker 1: streets across Brazil like protesting it. But yeah, there there's
Speaker 1: these like there's enormous street movements. Is like like six
Speaker 1: percent of the entire Brazilian population was in the streets. Um.
Speaker 1: They were like basically started as sort of like antiosterity
Speaker 1: protests because cities were sort of like we're increasing the
Speaker 1: price of like fairish first off, and it gets it
Speaker 1: gets the just get kind of weird very quickly because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, so like you have the workers
Speaker 1: party in power right and like that the Workers Party
Speaker 1: has been sort of sliding right by this point. But
Speaker 1: you have a sort of like you have like a
Speaker 1: really bilitant left that's industry. You have a bunch of anarchis,
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of autonomist or sort of like
Speaker 1: doing stuff. But then also right wingers start showing up
Speaker 1: because it's a protest against the governments and the government's
Speaker 1: like nominally a left government. And yeah, this leads to
Speaker 1: just a really confusing stative affairs. But but you know
Speaker 1: the next year, this like and the protest like keep
Speaker 1: going for like a long time, and there's still like
Speaker 1: even after like the largest ones are kind of pee
Speaker 1: doing out, there's still protests happening. But when the World
Speaker 1: Cup hits, like the World Cup, is that like is
Speaker 1: one of this sort of like like the arth, like
Speaker 1: the law suddenly doesn't work anymore. Like in orders to
Speaker 1: do this, you have to sign like there's something called
Speaker 1: the General Law of the World Cup, which is like
Speaker 1: a bunch of like laws that you have to sign
Speaker 1: it like physically change what you're calls are like in
Speaker 1: order to have this event magnificent. I mean that's actually
Speaker 1: that's actually great, you should do more of that. The
Speaker 1: great thing about FIFA is that they've sharing a commitment
Speaker 1: to human rights, to quality and democracy, and so I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's rules are good rules, and you know so
Speaker 1: so there are fun things like like it literally like
Speaker 1: parts of the Brazilian constitution are suspended parts like well
Speaker 1: so physically a bunch stuff about the right to strike,
Speaker 1: Like there's a special court that's set up that like
Speaker 1: it like that within forty eight hours, like like decide
Speaker 1: on whether it's strike is legal or not and what
Speaker 1: the thing is going to be. Like that's not very good.
Speaker 1: It's really they're all not real very bad. Like like
Speaker 1: there's there's the Brazilian governments like seventy million dollars buying
Speaker 1: basically police equipment and like from the U S. From
Speaker 1: Germany and from Israel, which is like the holy trinity
Speaker 1: of good normal countries where if you're buying shipped from them,
Speaker 1: you're doing a good thing. See I you were going
Speaker 1: to talk about how you know, there's moments in our
Speaker 1: society where the regular rules of engagement are suspended, and
Speaker 1: in such we can use this moment of extra opportunity
Speaker 1: to find new ways of liberatory of experiencing liberatory freedom.
Speaker 1: People tried that, and and and and instead of a
Speaker 1: bunch of literally like they were driving tanks through the
Speaker 1: street like into like like blockading off like roads leading
Speaker 1: out of the favelas with tanks like it was. It
Speaker 1: was nuts, like some incredible videos of this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are like laws in Brazil about child labor, right, um,
Speaker 1: guess what doesn't apply to FIFA, so you can just
Speaker 1: so they can have fucking ball boys, they said, they
Speaker 1: also have they have these. There are twenty thousand people
Speaker 1: who are working for this event who are who are
Speaker 1: classified as volunteers. You can just use them as basically
Speaker 1: they started doing slave labor. Yeah, what's the what's the shocking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, are they forced into this or do they
Speaker 1: actually volunteer? Kind of Okay, so sometime the actual you
Speaker 1: know what it's actual slavery because it's it's not actual Okay,
Speaker 1: so the Brazilian government will do actual slavery, but like
Speaker 1: this is yeah, this is not quite that, but it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who are kind of its volunteering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, who have who have no labor rights, like
Speaker 1: and the everything happens is there's there there are enormous crackdowns,
Speaker 1: like they just start they start doing the thing that
Speaker 1: like the US does it too, but I think I
Speaker 1: think like Canada, this is more than the US where
Speaker 1: it's like when when when they know a protest is
Speaker 1: about to happen, they like go find the like six
Speaker 1: people who they think are protest leaders and just arrest
Speaker 1: them beforehand. They started doing that. They there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who get tortured. There's a bunch of like
Speaker 1: the police are basically just going ape shit. They like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they there are some like that. There's a point in
Speaker 1: this where like the garbage workers go on strike and
Speaker 1: they actually win because it turns out that if if
Speaker 1: in the middle of the World Cup there's fucking garbage
Speaker 1: piling up on the street, like it's really bad. But
Speaker 1: like yeah, like this has like this has a just
Speaker 1: like absolutely disastrous effect on like just just sort of
Speaker 1: what's like everything is going on president in politics like
Speaker 1: um one of the things that Lula does. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about this more in another Brazil episode, but Lula
Speaker 1: like sent a bunch of Brazilian troops to invade haiti Um,
Speaker 1: which fucking sucks, and then those troops came home and
Speaker 1: they were used to occupy the favelas in real well
Speaker 1: this was going on, and this kind of crushed like
Speaker 1: what was left of the sort of left that had
Speaker 1: been in the streets. Like they just got like they
Speaker 1: just got they just got stomped because the Brazilian police
Speaker 1: are on terrifying and like literally they're deploying colonial troops
Speaker 1: like in the streets, and yeah, and so so this
Speaker 1: this is a sort of second kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you can get with sports, which is like on the
Speaker 1: one hand they're used to sort of whitewasherzimes and on
Speaker 1: the other hand they're used as as basically a way
Speaker 1: to like do fascism inside of the state where you
Speaker 1: can you know, like you can you could do a
Speaker 1: state of exception, right like the law seas to exist,
Speaker 1: the state becomes like this entity that can just sort
Speaker 1: of like do whatever it wants in order to preserve itself.
Speaker 1: And it's a way that you can just you know,
Speaker 1: you can socially cleanse two people, and which is something
Speaker 1: that would be like you know, would genuinely be pretty
Speaker 1: difficult if you try to do this in any other circumstance,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's sports, so you can just
Speaker 1: basically do ethnic cleansings, and yeah, it sucks as sometimes
Speaker 1: you can do it with the support of the other side.
Speaker 1: Like the World Cup. It's coming to Qatar, right and
Speaker 1: and they one of the things is happening against it's
Speaker 1: quote unquote security consultants from the participating nations are coming.
Speaker 1: So you have this like incredible situation where like a
Speaker 1: the Qatari and like police chief I believe, has been like, hey,
Speaker 1: for your own safety, fans, if you do happen to
Speaker 1: be gay and it's illegal to be gay right in Qatar.
Speaker 1: Like just guys, just don't hold hands with your partner
Speaker 1: because it's not us who's going to come and beat
Speaker 1: you up. It's it's the regular qataris right like you,
Speaker 1: you won't be safe and we can't protect you from
Speaker 1: their violent homophobia. And then we've got like Britain's sending
Speaker 1: soldiers to be like, yeah, let us help you with
Speaker 1: your security consultations. Guys, you we need to keep this
Speaker 1: country safe. Oh god, okay, so did you do you
Speaker 1: know what else those violent security consultations? Is it? Britain? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were now sponsored by the Nation of Britain help
Speaker 1: better help online counseling. If you don't sign up for therapy,
Speaker 1: a military a military team will break through your windows
Speaker 1: and force you to go to therapy with that's that is,
Speaker 1: that is the better health guarantee. And we're back. And
Speaker 1: I am not thinking about the people who I know
Speaker 1: who were physically dragged by cops in the therapy. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's a great never happened. Never happened. No one's ever
Speaker 1: been forced to go to therapy non consensually. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have Yeah. Yeah, other things that don't happen include include sports. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sports aren't real. Their fingment of our imagination if we
Speaker 1: simply the ontology of sports is fatally flawed. One might
Speaker 1: say that's sports for a way of teaching people to
Speaker 1: be complying with rules and to be administrators in the
Speaker 1: colonial empire. Or people can argue that sports offer a
Speaker 1: gamified version of the world that allow you to recognize
Speaker 1: problem solving in fun and creative ways and encourage team
Speaker 1: building so that you have join online squad. I don't
Speaker 1: actually like sports very much. On the other hand, do
Speaker 1: quite like sports, but I'm aware of the role they play. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is like a big thing that the Gulf
Speaker 1: States do. Um is particularly lead do this sports bullshit,
Speaker 1: and Carter, I think, usually is smarter about it than
Speaker 1: like Carter just has better pr people in the Saudias do.
Speaker 1: And I mean they're they're slightly helped by the fact
Speaker 1: that they are marginally less bad than Saudi Arabia, like
Speaker 1: marginal like this is a this is this is a
Speaker 1: this is a fucking a bar that is so low
Speaker 1: you can trip over it. Like I think we can
Speaker 1: just say both bad. Yeah, So should we talk about
Speaker 1: the Catholic system a little bit? Okay, So the Gulf
Speaker 1: States have this thing called the catholicis now and there
Speaker 1: have been some alterations to it and something that made
Speaker 1: it less bad in the last few years, but basically
Speaker 1: this is the system that lets Okay, So there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of mirket workers, particularly from Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: that like take jobs in the Gulf because they pay
Speaker 1: they have the Gulf States have a like an obscene, fanatical,
Speaker 1: like world rending amount of oil money um and so
Speaker 1: people you know, come seeking these jobs because they need
Speaker 1: to feed their families, and you know, there's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of oil money here, like they have just every
Speaker 1: petro dollar. Um. But the way this labor system basically
Speaker 1: works is that like in order to like be in
Speaker 1: the country, you have to have a job, right you like,
Speaker 1: you like very specifically have to have a job, and
Speaker 1: your employer has to be there. And so very very
Speaker 1: bad things start to happen when you have a group
Speaker 1: of people who you can just like instantly destroy the
Speaker 1: life of. And so these will happen where for example,
Speaker 1: like so you okay, so you show up, you show
Speaker 1: up to Carter right, and your boss will just take
Speaker 1: your fucking passport and it's is gone, right, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, if if you don't do literally everything
Speaker 1: they tell you, like you, you're not gonna get your
Speaker 1: hasbro back. You're just fucked. And this creates a like
Speaker 1: a genuinely like very close to slavery, has a lot
Speaker 1: of the fucking horrors. Like you, there have been a
Speaker 1: bunch of stories people like fucking jumping out of buildings
Speaker 1: trying to escape and then like being dragged back. Like
Speaker 1: it's fucking horrifying labor conditions. Um, it's and it's not
Speaker 1: not indentured serviceude, Yeah, absolutely is. It's yeah, it is
Speaker 1: it is one of the worst. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the worst labor regimes on earth that is not literally slavery.
Speaker 1: It is. It is. It is in the category of
Speaker 1: technically not slavery, but like very horrificly close. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is. It is one of the worst things that
Speaker 1: exists a serious and genuine solution to if you want
Speaker 1: to solve like a bunch of the problems of all
Speaker 1: of the all ship that's happening in the Gulf region,
Speaker 1: if you gave every single one of these migrant workers
Speaker 1: like several artillery batteries and a bunch of assault rifles
Speaker 1: like instantly, like so many of the problems of this
Speaker 1: region would be solved. Yeah. So I was just looking
Speaker 1: at statistics. Six thousand, five hundred of these workers have
Speaker 1: died in cutter since it was awarded the World Cup.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's uh, that's that's a pretty alarming um
Speaker 1: number of Like so it's from India, Bangladesh, ne poll
Speaker 1: for Lanka prices like that, right, I think, Yeah, these
Speaker 1: people have absolutely no rights and they have incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: working conditions. And also we got about like people are
Speaker 1: super fucking racist, Like yes, like the it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the kind of racism that you get when you have literally,
Speaker 1: like basically pure absolute power over someone. It is a
Speaker 1: it is a fucking trip. Yeah, people will literally have
Speaker 1: to pay off the debts that they include. You'll pay
Speaker 1: a recruitment trophee or a travel fee to get these jobs.
Speaker 1: Like we're not messing around me, said the indentured sertitude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to do that. Your your your
Speaker 1: employees could just you know, like they can just withhold
Speaker 1: your pay for whatever the fun reason, because yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's absolute power. There's like a few should I read
Speaker 1: this one? That's an example of one of these deaths
Speaker 1: that I could read if we want so. This guy,
Speaker 1: um mad Hubal Apoly I think his name. He's from India.
Speaker 1: He was forty three. He left his wife and his
Speaker 1: thirteen year old son, Rejesh in India to take a
Speaker 1: job in catering, and they never saw him again. One
Speaker 1: late night, when his roommate returned to his dorm, he
Speaker 1: found Bullapai's body on the floor. Like thousands of other
Speaker 1: sudden and unexplained death, it's passing was recorded his heart
Speaker 1: failure due to natural causes despite working for his employer
Speaker 1: for six years. His wife and son received a hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen thousand rupees it's about a thousand pounds about
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars now as well in compensation and unpaid salary.
Speaker 1: Jess had no idea why his father died. He had
Speaker 1: no health problems. He said, there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah. Pretty,
Speaker 1: there's I'll will link the Guardian story. But there are
Speaker 1: dozens of these stories of people who die working in
Speaker 1: extreme heat for long hours with no breaks and terrible conditions.
Speaker 1: It's pretty terrible shit. Yeah, And a lot of these
Speaker 1: And also, and this is the only thing we should
Speaker 1: point out, is a lot a lot of people have
Speaker 1: died directly building, yes, the stadium stadium, Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: like just like the absolute human horror of why on
Speaker 1: why are we using like why are we building a
Speaker 1: giant fucking soccer stadium in the middle of like in
Speaker 1: the fucking desert, Like, yeah, Jesus Christ, in a place
Speaker 1: with no endemic soccer culture. It's not that the stadium
Speaker 1: is like, you know, going to be packed week in
Speaker 1: and week out with the Qatari Altra is doing tea
Speaker 1: pots and ship like it just exists for people to
Speaker 1: come once to watch this spectacle and then leave again.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same thing with all the Olympics stuff, right,
Speaker 1: Like they like tank a city's economy to build a
Speaker 1: whole like basically miniatured like village in town that then
Speaker 1: becomes useless after like a month. Yeah, some of them
Speaker 1: will just get turned into like I don't know, that's
Speaker 1: what the Olympics are for. The Olympics are like a
Speaker 1: gathering place for a transnational bourgeoilie and they have always
Speaker 1: been there, right like they when they started for a
Speaker 1: very long time, the Olympics had an amateurism clause, which
Speaker 1: meant that like quote unquote, professional athletes couldn't take part,
Speaker 1: which was designed such that like Boua, people who had
Speaker 1: enough leisure time to train could compete, but working class
Speaker 1: people who needed to take time off to train couldn't
Speaker 1: be compensated for that time off. Right, they couldn't even
Speaker 1: be compensated for their time off taken to travel and
Speaker 1: compete at the Games. So like, the Olympics are doing
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to do, which is is bringing these
Speaker 1: elite people together. But Coca Cola benefits more from every
Speaker 1: Olympics in the city that hosts it. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean and obviously the the Olympics are heavily tied to nationalism.
Speaker 1: Um that has a whole bunch of you know, not great.
Speaker 1: A munch of the national symbology comes from the Nazis
Speaker 1: directly like that, yeah, exactly, But also on the flip
Speaker 1: side of that, there's other stuff like um have like
Speaker 1: Taiwan having to compete compete as Chinese Taipei and not
Speaker 1: use their actual flag, which is other Like, yes, the
Speaker 1: alternative would be more, you know, embracing the country as
Speaker 1: like as a nationalist thing, like as it's as its
Speaker 1: own nation. But still it's it is, it's still not
Speaker 1: great that they can't they can't compete under their actual
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a name and yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and and you know, like and then this is like
Speaker 1: Carter's kind of Weirdly, this is slightly backfire on Carter
Speaker 1: a little bit because, like Carter, Carter works the best
Speaker 1: as a sort of diplomatic power when nobody pays attention
Speaker 1: to it. And then the like absolute funk brain geniuses
Speaker 1: at the Gaitari role elite were like, what if we
Speaker 1: fucking drew attention to ourselves? And that everyone was like, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, this place is fucked, but this has not
Speaker 1: stopped it. FIFA is like maybe the only ruling sports
Speaker 1: body more corrupt than the Olympic Committee. Like it is
Speaker 1: is incredibly staggering, like a group of people who have
Speaker 1: figured out a way to just like help a city
Speaker 1: ethnically cleanse a bunch of its population and then extract
Speaker 1: enormous amount of wealth and then look good while doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's it's an exercise and like pointing, pointing
Speaker 1: over there while you steal someone's wallet, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that the last thing I think we
Speaker 1: want to talk about was talking about what the STA
Speaker 1: Saudis have been doing this too, because yes, one of
Speaker 1: the sport I'm most familiar with obviously is like cycling.
Speaker 1: It's a sport I competed in, and it's recently seen
Speaker 1: this influx of money from petrochemical states. Right, so we
Speaker 1: have like you a E teen, We had a Dubuy
Speaker 1: team for a while, and we there is like a
Speaker 1: tour of Cuta and a tour of you buy Now
Speaker 1: that like these are not places ayone wants to go,
Speaker 1: right about it? Right, they're hot, they're flat, they're terrible.
Speaker 1: But like, bike races have always served as a way
Speaker 1: to consolidate nations, right, That's why the Tour of France exists.
Speaker 1: It's like it's literally a loop and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're included in this, And like in in Europe, they're
Speaker 1: often used to consolidate nations that exist outside of states,
Speaker 1: right like Flanders, Catalonia, the Basque country, Wallonia. All of
Speaker 1: these places have bike races that delineate who belongs in
Speaker 1: and who belongs out. Slightly different in these petrochemical economies,
Speaker 1: because more delineates a look at us, We're a great
Speaker 1: country and totally normal, and you can come here and
Speaker 1: do sports. And please don't look at the way that
Speaker 1: we treat our workers from Southeast Asia like um, it's
Speaker 1: it's please ignore our seventeen wars like all the school
Speaker 1: bus full of children we've blown up. Do not look
Speaker 1: at Yemens like yeah, which also, by the way, I
Speaker 1: do want I do want to just put this room.
Speaker 1: And Carter also fucking involved in Yemen. Same with the
Speaker 1: u A. They nobody ever talks about it. They also
Speaker 1: are fucking doing this. Do not left them off the
Speaker 1: book for this bullshit. Uh, yeah, yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see it. Like, yes, it's interesting to see some fan
Speaker 1: groups organizing like against this ship, right And chiefly I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna it's about stuff that you're about to
Speaker 1: talk about, I think, which is the purchasing of clubs
Speaker 1: by these these very wealthy interests. I find it fascinating
Speaker 1: to see that there's always been an anti fascist element
Speaker 1: in football actors, right, there have always been clubs that
Speaker 1: have been anti fascists. Those clubs have always tended to
Speaker 1: oppose like ownership of the clubs that they are fans
Speaker 1: of by finance capital. But it's interesting to see that
Speaker 1: now articulated against these petrochemical regimes in the Middle East, right,
Speaker 1: Like it gets Keith from fucking Bolton and his mates
Speaker 1: who go to the football match every Saturday, and now
Speaker 1: I'm fucking past because I allow an lgbt Q rights
Speaker 1: in Qatar. But yeah, it's it's very funny to see.
Speaker 1: And also it's nice to see, right, Like, it's good
Speaker 1: to see people sharing so darity, like you can't display
Speaker 1: in theory, you can't display pride flags in stadium or
Speaker 1: anywhere else in Qatar right now, No people were talking
Speaker 1: about taking them anyway, So maybe someone will do an
Speaker 1: epic like Pride flag or TFO at the Olympics, which
Speaker 1: would be uh, I don't know, I've never seen the
Speaker 1: World Cup. Then they might all get disappeared. But yeah,
Speaker 1: then the entire with caution. Yeah, then then the stadium
Speaker 1: collapses and there we go. Okay, So the other thing
Speaker 1: that's sort of been happening is that Starily has been
Speaker 1: buying up a bunch of clubs. But they brought Britain's
Speaker 1: Premier League Newcastle United team. There's like bought it that
Speaker 1: they have. They the Stardies have this this thing called
Speaker 1: the Public Investment Fund, which is like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a sovereign wealth fund kind of. They just use
Speaker 1: it to like it buy ship and they've they've been
Speaker 1: doing a bunch of sports stuff. They've also been pushing
Speaker 1: into the sports, which is interesting the disasters. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they bought the e s L, which is the does
Speaker 1: it still stand for Electronic Sports League especially? I think
Speaker 1: it's all does so there doesn't. Okay, you're about to
Speaker 1: be a Biggert and say sports on sports. No, they're
Speaker 1: video games. It's better than actually better than regular sports.
Speaker 1: They're different Chess the same ship is happening here. So
Speaker 1: the E s L is like one of the it's
Speaker 1: it's it basically ate a bunch of the other. So
Speaker 1: they used to be a bunch of sort of circuits
Speaker 1: for a bunch of different like E sports games, right,
Speaker 1: things like kind of strikes seems like StarCraft. Um, those
Speaker 1: are those sort of I think there's another. What's the
Speaker 1: other big one that s L does. Um, seems to
Speaker 1: be counts. Yeah, it's it's mostly kind of striking. They
Speaker 1: basically consumed all of the like StarCraft, So they used
Speaker 1: to be I M and dream Hack that dude stuff,
Speaker 1: and they've eaten them all. And the E s L
Speaker 1: just got like bought out by like like the Saudiast
Speaker 1: fucking investment company, by and by by by a new
Speaker 1: sort of like media group thing at the Saudiast Forum
Speaker 1: that's headed by fucking former Activision CEO Brian Ward. Actually unbelievable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who who's the guy who engineered the fucking Activision Blizzard
Speaker 1: merger and is now going on to do this bullshit
Speaker 1: savvy games group. Yeah, I mean, like like East Sports
Speaker 1: as always, there's funds always sucked, Like a bunch of
Speaker 1: the stuff is funded by like fucking cryptocurrency. Right now,
Speaker 1: I think somehow sports I just can't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: It's the best. But yeah, they the Saudis have taken
Speaker 1: by beloved StarCraft League. I will be waging an unending
Speaker 1: holy war against them until they fucking ceased to exist.
Speaker 1: And yea, yeah, you become a stock craft too. Again,
Speaker 1: it sucks. All I know about East Sports is Sonic
Speaker 1: Fox and Smash Brothers. That's all I know because everything
Speaker 1: else just seems like people who are having a fun
Speaker 1: time playing video games. That's great. It was very so
Speaker 1: my my post was founded by the IOC and like
Speaker 1: at the time I was there, there was just massive
Speaker 1: Like first of all, there was like a lot of
Speaker 1: boom iss discussing av sports for sports and then whether
Speaker 1: they should be incorporated in the Olympics, and it was
Speaker 1: extremely funny to watch, like these people completely failed to
Speaker 1: understand the fundamental like you know, sports of physical contest
Speaker 1: with the metal element, right, don't matter if you're moving
Speaker 1: a thumbs or your whole buddy. But it was very
Speaker 1: funny towards these people. I want to say this because
Speaker 1: this is okay, so it's just really funny, but also
Speaker 1: people get like really seriously injured doing the sports ship
Speaker 1: like particularly Starkers. There's a lot of Starker players who
Speaker 1: like sucking paralyzed, who have like serious year damage of
Speaker 1: their spines. Yeah, because they have like StarCraft players, like
Speaker 1: especially older days. You know, people like practicing sixteen hours
Speaker 1: a day, right, and they're sitting in a chair and
Speaker 1: they're they're fucking you know, they have like a PM right,
Speaker 1: so you're doing like like six hundred actions in a minute,
Speaker 1: and people's people's risks just explore loads, Like people get
Speaker 1: fucking like damage to their spines to get nerve damage
Speaker 1: like as it sucks. Um. I have a friend who's
Speaker 1: a human physiologist who used to work for the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense here and said, diego helping like you know,
Speaker 1: like high speed MB people be better at killing people,
Speaker 1: uh a Navy people, I guess in San Diego, and
Speaker 1: then left to work for Red Bull in their sports
Speaker 1: to oh yeah, yeah, yeah, to be the human physiologist
Speaker 1: who like, yeah, optimizes people set up so that they
Speaker 1: arrested a right angle and like, guest, I'm actually training.
Speaker 1: I guess we won't be happy until Taiwan is playing
Speaker 1: Fortnite in a democratized, decentralized East Sports league that has
Speaker 1: union workers and I guess that's what we're advocating for now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the one goal of this podcast. There is a
Speaker 1: there's a MYANMA National Unity Government e sports team. So
Speaker 1: actually that there was actually a whole thing in competitive
Speaker 1: StarCraft where someone someone held up someone held up a
Speaker 1: Hong Kong flag and they fucking like they cut the
Speaker 1: stream and fired this actually fired the two like like
Speaker 1: they not only fired the guy who held the thing up,
Speaker 1: they fired the two fucking casters who like who were
Speaker 1: just there. Well it happens. Yeah, so critical respect that
Speaker 1: person is. See the John Carlos, that's the raised fist
Speaker 1: moment of the sports Yeah. So yeah, fuck sports do
Speaker 1: bad things, make them do good things. Overthrower local governments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the the revolutionary I mean this is this
Speaker 1: has been written about by like actual academics, but the
Speaker 1: revolutionary but the revolutionary potential of like soccer hooligans and
Speaker 1: football hooligans are like it's massive, Like on what one day,
Speaker 1: We'll do one episode about the fucking the Turkish soccer
Speaker 1: ultras who fucking stole a back hoe and we're driving
Speaker 1: it around Turkey, doesn't thirty destroying fucking police barricades with it,
Speaker 1: sick of ship every lots of like in Rear Square
Speaker 1: their Egyptian Ultras were leading in the Maidan it was
Speaker 1: Ukrainian Nottras. And there's a really good book called people
Speaker 1: should read if they're interested in the political potential of
Speaker 1: football ultras. We should we should do something about like
Speaker 1: hooligans in general. But yes, this was supposed to kind
Speaker 1: of be about the various ways that there's sports things
Speaker 1: that are kind of messed up. Yeah, maybe just regular
Speaker 1: one more thing. You can stop these fucking giant mega
Speaker 1: events from happening in your city, like people. People successfully
Speaker 1: do this. They've done this with the Olympics, have done
Speaker 1: this sub lesser sounds World Cup. But yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you can do that, like please do like don't you
Speaker 1: don't have to let these fucking sports company bullshit like
Speaker 1: exacts ethnically cleanse your city. You just don't. You can stop.
Speaker 1: No Olympics l A is something that people in the
Speaker 1: U s should look up. Yeah, that is that is
Speaker 1: your action item for today is look up. I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about an Olympics before, but the ton Olympics.
Speaker 1: On the podcasts I Think and the Last Thing I Will,
Speaker 1: I will give an Easter egg. There's there's one sport
Speaker 1: I actually un ironically enjoy curling. No, not fuck you,
Speaker 1: You're racist racism. That's the episode Hello and Welcome to
Speaker 1: It could happen here. It's a podcast about the world
Speaker 1: falling apart and people who are putting it back together.
Speaker 1: Today we're joined by Jimmy and Rain from mutually Disaster Relief.
Speaker 1: They are helping to put back together some of the
Speaker 1: parts of the world that are acutely falling apart right now.
Speaker 1: My colleague Gare is here as well. I guess, and Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna get into it. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about the response that mutual A disaster relief have made
Speaker 1: too hurricane Ian. We're going to talk about how we
Speaker 1: can solve these things without necessarily giving a bunch of
Speaker 1: money to the wrong people, and people can help people
Speaker 1: in a way that is natural, organic and good for everyone.
Speaker 1: So Jimmy and Rain say hi everybody. Hello, Hey, and
Speaker 1: can you explain to us a little bit first of
Speaker 1: all about what mutual aid disaster relief is and how
Speaker 1: it operates in these natural disasters. SURE mutual Aid Disaster
Speaker 1: Relief is a people power disaster relief network based on
Speaker 1: the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action.
Speaker 1: And we act as a Swiss army knife for the
Speaker 1: larger autonomous disaster response and mutual aid movements UH and
Speaker 1: work with UH affinity groups, local mutual aid groups UH
Speaker 1: and other disaster survivors to help form and foster or
Speaker 1: communal recovery. That sounds great, That's very inspiring. Can you explain,
Speaker 1: maybe for listeners who aren't familiar exactly what mutual aid
Speaker 1: means in this count text. Sure mutual aid is a voluntary, reciprocal,
Speaker 1: participatory exchange among equals. It's about sharing resources, but it's
Speaker 1: also about sharing power. I'll spend a lot of my
Speaker 1: life in poverty, and I know that many people in
Speaker 1: the same experiences would rather not receive something than receive
Speaker 1: something with a downward gaze. If if something costs us
Speaker 1: our dignity, it's not worth it UM, and so mutual
Speaker 1: aid is a way to share with each other UH,
Speaker 1: where we're UM sharing as equals UM instead of a
Speaker 1: powerful giver of aid and a powerless receiver of aid,
Speaker 1: and it also has the dynamic of addressing the root
Speaker 1: causes of the need in the in the first place. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it's really that's a good description. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. What what you've done recently, right, is responded
Speaker 1: to Hurricane Ian, which most people I think will know
Speaker 1: hit Floorida and I think the Carolinas after that. Can
Speaker 1: you take us through some of the work that you've
Speaker 1: been doing down there? Sure? A lot of what I've
Speaker 1: been involved in it supplies distribution, So we're UM every
Speaker 1: day loading up vehicles and going doing mobile distribution to
Speaker 1: trailer parks, to public housing apartments, uh and other communities
Speaker 1: that are hit in historically, you know, left out of
Speaker 1: top down relief models, UM and providing tarps, water, food,
Speaker 1: other essentials that people need. Yeah, sure, that's very important.
Speaker 1: What's the situation like where now? What like with ten
Speaker 1: days out something like that from when the hurricane first
Speaker 1: made landfall? Is that right? I'm not sure exactly right?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Yeah? No, time, time is not a
Speaker 1: thing when this is happening. It's just kind of like
Speaker 1: all of the days go together, or nights or both. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's totally fine. So's you know, UM, in
Speaker 1: some places, power is starting to get turned back on.
Speaker 1: Gas is easier to find than it was, you know,
Speaker 1: several days ago. UM, but there's still um, you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of need for solidarity based relief. There's
Speaker 1: uh just like every disaster, there's uh many communities that
Speaker 1: are left behind. UM. And it's the same communities that
Speaker 1: are left behind by the disaster of capitalism and colonialism
Speaker 1: and white supremacy. And so you know, even though power
Speaker 1: is starting to get turned back on in some places,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be months or years, you know before people
Speaker 1: recover from this. Yeah, there's a lot of folks that
Speaker 1: are not UM like to me he's talking about. There's
Speaker 1: folks that are renters who you know, don't don't know
Speaker 1: what they're supposed to do with their with the apartment
Speaker 1: that they're in. The roof is caving in, and if
Speaker 1: the landlord is not responding, then where do they spit
Speaker 1: to do. So if there's folks on the ground, they
Speaker 1: go in and they'll try to help get the tarp up,
Speaker 1: you know, on the roof and things like that. So
Speaker 1: that's usually the kind of stuff I'm involved with when
Speaker 1: I'm when it's happening more in my area. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of us that are working like remote as
Speaker 1: well to help support on the ground, like doing calms
Speaker 1: and organizing supply lines through the autonomous supply line chain
Speaker 1: that we have, and just kind of trying to mobilize
Speaker 1: more affinity groups in the local areas, like Food Not Bombs,
Speaker 1: UM sitting and Food Not Bombs came down and helped
Speaker 1: out and did a food chair and so just trying
Speaker 1: to get everybody who's close by to be able to
Speaker 1: address the immediate needs and start planning for the long
Speaker 1: term because Jimmy is right, it's going to take years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really fascinating. I think you're right that often like
Speaker 1: and I think we should contrast actually that like that
Speaker 1: they sort of not the large global nonprofit model or
Speaker 1: the service provider model that they contrast with this, right,
Speaker 1: which often kind of floods an area with resources whether
Speaker 1: or not it needs them, and then withdrawals kind of
Speaker 1: once attention is going to when people are left to
Speaker 1: rebuild their lives kind of on their own, right. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: time and time again, Um, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Maria.
Speaker 1: You know, our rain, you know uh. In Louisiana has
Speaker 1: experienced a number of hurricanes, you know, in recent years. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, time and time again, we we we had
Speaker 1: we learn over and over again that the state is
Speaker 1: not coming to save us. The market is not going
Speaker 1: to save us. The nonprofit industrial complex, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: save us. We have to save each other. We have
Speaker 1: to take care of each other from below. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's very true. I remember in eighteen when the
Speaker 1: last seven mid terms came, there was a large migrant
Speaker 1: caravan that came to Tijuana, which is just south of
Speaker 1: where I live, and there are a number of these
Speaker 1: big international non profits, but they weren't actually allowed to
Speaker 1: enter the area where these people were. So you had
Speaker 1: these people in a football stadium and you had large
Speaker 1: non property outside, and they cut off the water to
Speaker 1: the place where these people work because they wanted them
Speaker 1: to go somewhere else. And it was this bizarre scene
Speaker 1: where you had tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: of resources sitting outside, and then you had little children
Speaker 1: who hadn't had a drink of water that day sitting inside.
Speaker 1: And it was really illustrative to me of how these
Speaker 1: massive nonprofits can raise a ship time of money and
Speaker 1: still completely fail people when they need help the most.
Speaker 1: So it's great that you guys are out there doing that.
Speaker 1: Can you take us through some of you You mentioned
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina, you mentioned being in New Orleans, like, can
Speaker 1: you take us through some of the other natural disasters
Speaker 1: and how you've helped UM well, UH in twenty six
Speaker 1: when we first kind of got our paperwork UM official
Speaker 1: or whatever, we had the flood and plank rouge and
Speaker 1: it was one of the most history excellent since like
Speaker 1: the early nine and it barely made the news. And
Speaker 1: there were several other major floods that happened with the
Speaker 1: climate cause floods in the Midwest that UM summer that
Speaker 1: barely made the news. And now people are starting to
Speaker 1: talk about it right, starting to talk about climate change
Speaker 1: because it's inevitable. Every single disaster is you know, more
Speaker 1: just more and more frequency or higher intensity storm, more
Speaker 1: rainfall in a shorter amount of time. And so we
Speaker 1: had that flood and we hit the ground pretty much running,
Speaker 1: just doing lots of bucking and gutting and organizing a
Speaker 1: lot of folks coming up from UH, Texas and south
Speaker 1: in like New Orleans area, and you know, east from
Speaker 1: Florida all the way over Mississippi. UM. And then, like
Speaker 1: Jimmy said, we just kept getting hit and hit. I
Speaker 1: can't even remember everything after that, I knew there was IRMA,
Speaker 1: and we responded to IRMA. We had national calms running
Speaker 1: U which was really cool. People were signing up for
Speaker 1: workshifts and helping out on the ground while people were
Speaker 1: running around and getting transportation and getting people out of places,
Speaker 1: delivering supplies, helping you know again with starping or like
Speaker 1: things that might have happened homes UM. And then we've
Speaker 1: had Maria. I went down to Puerto Rico for that
Speaker 1: UM and helped out with some of the solar and
Speaker 1: water issues there. And then we have Laura and Harvey,
Speaker 1: and I cannot even remember all of them at this point, Fiona.
Speaker 1: They just all they're all going to keep coming either
Speaker 1: into the Gulf or they're going to head along the
Speaker 1: East coast because of the way that the climate has
Speaker 1: affected the currents and the surface water temperatures in the
Speaker 1: Gulf in the Atlantic. Yeah, and like you said, they're
Speaker 1: going to have a disportionate impact on people who are
Speaker 1: already marginalized. What is it you were talking about people
Speaker 1: signing up for work. That's interesting. So do you seems
Speaker 1: like you're mostly volunteer organization to people who have special
Speaker 1: skills just got up to a website and say hey,
Speaker 1: I'd like to help. Well, how does that work? It
Speaker 1: happens in a lot of ways. Sometimes folks will reach
Speaker 1: out via the email on the website, um, or they'll
Speaker 1: reach out on one of the social media, or they'll
Speaker 1: know somebody and be like, hey, I want to get involved. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really grassroots. Some people are in the ground. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of folks that have gotten involved more long
Speaker 1: term because um, you know, there was a response on
Speaker 1: the ground in their area. They kind of got into
Speaker 1: it just because that's you know, what ends up happening
Speaker 1: when there's no one else around, you rely on each
Speaker 1: other and you build that community. It's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of just what happens. Yeah, that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: what's your sort of national Do you have a sense
Speaker 1: of how many people how many volunteers you have on
Speaker 1: a national I'm guessing your national or international scale. Now
Speaker 1: it varies, you know, like in in times of you know,
Speaker 1: when you know, between disasters, uh, you know, there's you know,
Speaker 1: dozens of people involved or you know, like a hundred
Speaker 1: or two hundred, um. But then we're very you know,
Speaker 1: participatory and um so when a disaster happens, you know
Speaker 1: there's a lot more people involved, hundreds and thousands of
Speaker 1: people that participate in one way or another. Like in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of different like DSA groups or
Speaker 1: sri A groups come out and help out, like mobilies
Speaker 1: on the ground and kind of come out as deffinity
Speaker 1: groups and do different jobs, help out with different homes
Speaker 1: and so really it's just like it's a network of
Speaker 1: facilitating anyone who's interested in ensuring that all of us
Speaker 1: have what we need when we know the response is
Speaker 1: going to be slow from those that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be handling that quote unquote right, and then you guys
Speaker 1: can connect people with skills or people with time to
Speaker 1: people who need help. Yeah, so really, anybody who has
Speaker 1: skill of any kind or as welcome, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where can they find that people do want to sign up?
Speaker 1: I guess the easiest they would be yet I don't know.
Speaker 1: Jimmy money in that I'm on the ground a lot.
Speaker 1: Check out our website. Mutual Aid disaster relief dot org
Speaker 1: and our emails mutual Aid Disaster Relief at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: We're on all the social media's as well, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we we love it when folks uh reach out to
Speaker 1: us and tell us how they want to be involved.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you there are obviously some other
Speaker 1: organizations who, like maybe I would name it, you can
Speaker 1: if you want to, who have received a lot of
Speaker 1: national press for doing helping people in times of disaster,
Speaker 1: and maybe you can explain why, like some folks wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily be comfortable asking them for help or going to
Speaker 1: them if they needed help. Yeah. UM, so oftentimes, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know like organizations you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: top down organizations. You know they partner with you know,
Speaker 1: police or homeland security or carcetral institutions like that. There's
Speaker 1: um a shelter after um uh when Hurricane Michael hit
Speaker 1: the Panhandle. UM, you know, people who had warrants you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're signed into the shelter and then police came
Speaker 1: and scooped them up and brought them to um, you know,
Speaker 1: to jails into prisons and you know, so you know,
Speaker 1: um and also you know, even with with you know
Speaker 1: with those you know, extreme situations aside um. You know,
Speaker 1: the the top down approach is patronizing, it's stigmatizing it.
Speaker 1: Um can um At sometimes provide the water, the food
Speaker 1: that that people need, but oftentimes comes at a too
Speaker 1: high of a cost. Uh, and people long for a
Speaker 1: communal recovery. That's how we heal from disasters. Likeness from crises,
Speaker 1: events is part of you know, a communal recovery. We
Speaker 1: were all able to kitchen and receive what we need
Speaker 1: and and give what we can. Yeah, can you tell
Speaker 1: us can you give U an example of a communal recovery,
Speaker 1: like that's something that's happened somewhere. Well, you guys have
Speaker 1: been able to assist a community or a community be
Speaker 1: able to assist a family or an individual in recovering. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: One one example that I think that's really representative of
Speaker 1: of our approach is um there there there's a family
Speaker 1: who was evicted you know, the um illegally you know,
Speaker 1: after after a disaster, and uh that you know, single
Speaker 1: mom was looking after the other single moms making sure
Speaker 1: they had you know, uh fuel for you know, their
Speaker 1: generators to um you know, to power their their phone
Speaker 1: in different different devices, and that they had diapers and
Speaker 1: that they had you know what, what they needed to
Speaker 1: get by even though you know, they no longer had
Speaker 1: a roof over their head. And so when mutually disaster
Speaker 1: relief comes across people like this, our resources are their resources,
Speaker 1: you know. So so when we both local mutual aid
Speaker 1: groups just the matriarch on the block who's taken care
Speaker 1: of of of the other folks on the block, mutually
Speaker 1: disaster relief exists to uh to share you know, um
Speaker 1: this this network of supplies and labor and you know,
Speaker 1: back up and support with with efforts like that that
Speaker 1: are spontaneous that arise after every crisis. Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: That That's the thing I really wanted to get to
Speaker 1: here was like, as you mentioned, climate changes causing these
Speaker 1: natural disasters and the worst that things get them, the
Speaker 1: worst that things get. And like you guys have started
Speaker 1: this organization that helps people to help people, and I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like what a like, how can people organize to help
Speaker 1: and be how can people in communities organize to be
Speaker 1: more resilient and in the time when natural disaster is
Speaker 1: becoming more and more commonplace. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think what Jimmy spoke to regarding like a
Speaker 1: matriarch on the black building, that community in advanced and
Speaker 1: after if it happens to just be after, which is
Speaker 1: kind of what happens a lot of times, is when
Speaker 1: it's that forced, um, I don't want to say forced,
Speaker 1: but out of necessity, right, Like necessity is the mother
Speaker 1: of invention, right, And so there's these iterations of what
Speaker 1: community can become. Every time there's a disaster, there's like
Speaker 1: a clean slate and there's a vacuum in which something
Speaker 1: can be created because there maybe nothing. And so if
Speaker 1: you can see an opportunity and if you if you
Speaker 1: have any kind of network on the ground or you
Speaker 1: and it spontaneously erupts, then that can be the new
Speaker 1: growth or the like or however you to phrase it.
Speaker 1: But I think for the resiliency to happen, that solidarity
Speaker 1: in the long term is built from those networks on
Speaker 1: the ground. There's people recognizing each other and seeing each other.
Speaker 1: And I think COVID is so interesting because people have
Speaker 1: become so nuclear and like isolated the technology and then
Speaker 1: forced into these pods of technology and that was the
Speaker 1: only way people existed and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was this need to be around people like people
Speaker 1: like no, no, no no, I really want like human contact.
Speaker 1: And so I think that kind of speaks to the
Speaker 1: reality of what we need to survive and that's going
Speaker 1: to be through disasters, through pandemics. So building that building
Speaker 1: a community garden, like saying hey to your neighbor, finding
Speaker 1: out who on your street is like an elder and
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't have anybody checking up on them, Like knowing
Speaker 1: what is in your what are the resources, whether it's people,
Speaker 1: whether it's a food bank, whether it's like a water fountain,
Speaker 1: Like what are the resources in your area? And where
Speaker 1: can you spontaneously take over areas when something happens. There's
Speaker 1: so many empty lots, different places that are you know,
Speaker 1: really on the verge of being gentrified. And when something happens,
Speaker 1: if you can help in the areas where you can
Speaker 1: maybe take over a building, that would help maintain that
Speaker 1: building for the persons who would otherwise be getting pushed
Speaker 1: out soon. Right, Like we've worked with people that allow
Speaker 1: us to set up school libraries, for example, in their
Speaker 1: areas while we're while we're doing disaster the response, and
Speaker 1: we helped build that house or that community center for
Speaker 1: that school up while we're there and creating a community
Speaker 1: space for people to then run with that concept of
Speaker 1: what they wanted to build, like what they wanted to
Speaker 1: put there. The best way you know, to prepare for
Speaker 1: disasters is ongoing mutual aid projects, groups and efforts. You know,
Speaker 1: the more that we can connect with each other, those
Speaker 1: relationships and those connections, they're the groundwork for uh a
Speaker 1: vibrant people power disaster response. You gotta know who's who.
Speaker 1: You gotta know what people are able to do, wanting
Speaker 1: to do. You know, what are people's strengths. It really
Speaker 1: is about that resiliency. Knowing who you can count on
Speaker 1: for something like who knows about you know, wiring, who
Speaker 1: knows about plumbing, who knows about you know, the streets,
Speaker 1: who knows the area the best? You know, certain members
Speaker 1: in the community that are founders in the community that
Speaker 1: others will respond to or navigate or gravitate too. I
Speaker 1: got you. Yeah, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that, Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting to contrast this with the
Speaker 1: model of like surviving natural disasters that we've seen portrayed
Speaker 1: so often, especially on like TV shows like Preppers, Right
Speaker 1: which is like I will see on my own with
Speaker 1: a ship ton of ammunition and shoot anyone who comes
Speaker 1: off to my Roman noodle castle. But what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do with that? When you're supplies right now? Then?
Speaker 1: When you who are you gonna rely on? All we
Speaker 1: have is each other? We're not. We're not. I mean,
Speaker 1: more power to the you know, outlier individual out there
Speaker 1: that can literally do everything for themselves. But I just
Speaker 1: don't think that's humanities function we have. We have much
Speaker 1: more UM when we share with each other um than
Speaker 1: we have individually. When we pull our resources together, we
Speaker 1: have enough for everybody. Uh. We you know, we take
Speaker 1: what is in our cabinets, you know, as far as
Speaker 1: food or sup supplies, we take what's in our medicine cabinets.
Speaker 1: We make it liberated communal uh space and supplies and
Speaker 1: and very quickly thinks snowball and uh small first aisation
Speaker 1: becomes a wellness center or a clinic. And and and
Speaker 1: that's you know, the hour of sharing with each other
Speaker 1: and building building alternative infrastructure infrastructure together, and the alternative
Speaker 1: infrastructure for me is really important to UM. I think
Speaker 1: for us to be resilient, we we have to teach
Speaker 1: each other the skills we have to start learning the
Speaker 1: ways in which we will be able to actually build
Speaker 1: back the way we want, the way we foresee our
Speaker 1: communities to be. Whatever that looks like. But we need
Speaker 1: those skills if we are going to divest, if we
Speaker 1: are going to have autonomy. Yeah, I really like that
Speaker 1: model of thinking of your natural disasters like an opportunity
Speaker 1: to rebuild in a more a more equal way, rather
Speaker 1: than thinking of it it's the thing which just has
Speaker 1: knocks down, you know, the amount of stuff you've accumulated
Speaker 1: or whatever. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity is
Speaker 1: really positive. It is an opportunity to reevaluate, is an
Speaker 1: opportunity to see each other, to see your neighbor. It's
Speaker 1: an opportunity to be more sustainable in the rebuild, which
Speaker 1: is the thing that I really struggle with in a
Speaker 1: lot of responses. Um, it's just the dependency on the
Speaker 1: existing supply chains and the existing methods of transportation like that.
Speaker 1: That whole needs to be addressed for resiliency in the future.
Speaker 1: There's got to be an entire real world of how
Speaker 1: we respond in some ways in general, Yeah, divest the
Speaker 1: way we want now, I think that's the sustainability thing.
Speaker 1: If just reminded me of something which like, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I bought one back last time I was somewhere. But
Speaker 1: people can't see this being an audio podcast. But one
Speaker 1: of the things you often see in natural disasters is
Speaker 1: these things that are called humanitarian daily rations and it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like an m R E. And it
Speaker 1: comes in a pink packet and everything else comes into
Speaker 1: packet and like it's within like two days. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is a time when like sort of systems for
Speaker 1: disposing of rubbish have been overwhelmed within two days, these
Speaker 1: things and the foil packets and little brown experience of
Speaker 1: fucking everywhere, and it's just it always strikes me as
Speaker 1: so sad that like we've taken this time when people
Speaker 1: are in crisis, and we've made at a time when
Speaker 1: also that their environment is in crisis now as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot, and that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I struggle with, um with water as well. Water is
Speaker 1: kind of like my thing. I know that irony, but um,
Speaker 1: when whenever there's a response, there's a heavy dependency on
Speaker 1: bottled water and there's other alternatives, but it would require
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of advanced skill training, a
Speaker 1: little bit of advanced infrastructure development, but that response could
Speaker 1: be prepared in advance. And I think in in some
Speaker 1: cases there's communities, especially in the local South, where that
Speaker 1: advanced thinking about it's gonna happen, right, It's gonna happen here, right,
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's gonna have what's gonna happen everywhere in
Speaker 1: the Gulf Coast, and it's going to keep going up
Speaker 1: and up, And whether it's a fire, whether it's a
Speaker 1: hurricane where there's a math, to tornado, whether to drought,
Speaker 1: in a food shortage or a pandemic, if we're not
Speaker 1: thinking in advance and be just and I don't want
Speaker 1: to sound like you know, necessarily prepper individualistic, but as
Speaker 1: a community thinking in advance, like for example, small plug
Speaker 1: but cooperation Jackson is thinking about building um their own
Speaker 1: water infrastructure so that they are not going to be
Speaker 1: dependent on just municipal water, which is yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: why not even if it's small scale, why not start
Speaker 1: developing community owned micro grids, water treatment facilities. Why is
Speaker 1: it just capital large capital, Like Jimmy said, we're stronger together.
Speaker 1: So if we pull together in these communities style, just
Speaker 1: like old school see essays we can do that, then
Speaker 1: we can. Essentially it's an it's another opportunity divested to
Speaker 1: build it ourselves. We can do it before, we could
Speaker 1: do it after. But I think for resilience for me,
Speaker 1: finding ways around those existing models and supply lines is
Speaker 1: critical to avoid the gap in the disaster and the response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talk us through a community on water sustainable water project
Speaker 1: like that, like what does that look like? What are
Speaker 1: the what are the components of it? It would So
Speaker 1: that's a fabulous question, um. But it's also when that
Speaker 1: I personally can't answer. I can because I'm not the
Speaker 1: entire community. So there's so many questions that are involved
Speaker 1: with that, like who's gonna who's committing to maintain it financially, operationally,
Speaker 1: maintenance wise, you know how many people? A is it
Speaker 1: going to be be used by? How frequently is it
Speaker 1: intended for all the time? Used for just as a
Speaker 1: response in a backup, So there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are involved there, and also financial structures. There's so
Speaker 1: many different ways that I can get set up, um,
Speaker 1: And like Jimmy knows, I do not like to involve
Speaker 1: myself with money aspects, I'm just straight hammers and like
Speaker 1: you know, solar um. But there there's a lot of
Speaker 1: the good examples of community owned my grigrids for solar,
Speaker 1: and that's really the I don't know that there's that many,
Speaker 1: especially in the US community owned water systems, but if
Speaker 1: you look internationally that is likely different. Um. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: as far as solar, that's a pretty common thing. Diversity. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ways my grogrids can get
Speaker 1: set up and who could own it. So again it
Speaker 1: depends on the scale, right, like who's going to fund
Speaker 1: the operation at the beginning, if you have a few
Speaker 1: angel owners that want to do it, or if you
Speaker 1: have a community that's willing to pitch in an equal
Speaker 1: amount for person you know, and how much they want
Speaker 1: to use for it. So you calculate how much you
Speaker 1: need for each person's use, you know, what's the distribution area,
Speaker 1: how many camels do you need and how are you
Speaker 1: going to get it to everybody? Are they going to
Speaker 1: have battery paints for autonomous use? Are they going to
Speaker 1: be like tied in? So there's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: models that you could do for hurricane just before hurricane
Speaker 1: Ian Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico um and it wiped out,
Speaker 1: you know, for for a time the whole islands power grid,
Speaker 1: but the autonomous off grid solar infrastructure that was built
Speaker 1: up at the central state point of Mutual the Mutual
Speaker 1: aid centers across the island stayed the lights stayed on,
Speaker 1: and they were able to continue powering their communities through
Speaker 1: autonomous infrastrure infrastructure. Oh yeah, that's really cool. I know
Speaker 1: some indigenous nations and on the West Coast certainly have
Speaker 1: their own micro grids as well. Nice. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: smaller scale, like how many like people are in the communities? Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: the smallish scale. I think like maybe a few hundreds,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of thousands something like that. That's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an area of interest, I know for other Indigenous
Speaker 1: people for very obvious reasons. But yeah, that's really cool
Speaker 1: if someone was interested in that. Like let's say I'm
Speaker 1: at home with my community and I hear this and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hell, yeah, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Can they reach out? Can they reach out to you
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, help me, help me join together.
Speaker 1: These fifteen press car batteries or would you be able
Speaker 1: to help them with the like planning stages of that
Speaker 1: or is that beyond the scope of your work. Um? So,
Speaker 1: my my main area of knowledge is around water um,
Speaker 1: and I dabble with solar a lot. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of folks in the network who have insane skills.
Speaker 1: Like we have people working on all kinds of projects,
Speaker 1: so many cool things. So I would say, yeah, reach out, um,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of what the network is. It is
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool people trying to just make
Speaker 1: positive change. It's super awesome skills. A lot of folks
Speaker 1: have pretty cool skills. Yeah. In the beginning of this interview,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how you felt like times just kind of
Speaker 1: slowed down or like it's all kind of blurred into one. Um.
Speaker 1: Is that like a common feeling whenever these things happen
Speaker 1: and people are on the ground, the type of otherworldly
Speaker 1: nous or how everything feels so stretched out. How does
Speaker 1: that kind of like what's your experiences with with that feeling? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that feeling is partly trauma, right, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of trauma associated with the work, and you know,
Speaker 1: those conversations happen a lot and it's UM really. I
Speaker 1: mean personally, I won't speak for everybody obviously, but personally
Speaker 1: I've feigned a lot of UM support just in our
Speaker 1: collective network, everybody's UM. I feel really focused on the
Speaker 1: same thing. So I personally gain strength from that. But
Speaker 1: I think there is a lot of UM. I feel
Speaker 1: like you can get a lot of hopelessness sometimes right
Speaker 1: like you start to see the the long term need
Speaker 1: and the fading of the spotlight because the next disaster happens.
Speaker 1: And I mean there's literally still people in ban Rouge
Speaker 1: who still have houses that haven't been fully rebuilt and
Speaker 1: that was from the flood. And there's still places that
Speaker 1: don't have electricity in Puerto Rico right now, and it's
Speaker 1: been like, you know, I don't know what, over a month.
Speaker 1: So you know, Flint, Michigan, just like name of thing. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think, my, my, I don't think I could
Speaker 1: do this work without the support of other people who
Speaker 1: do this work, who have that same UM feeling, who
Speaker 1: who experienced that. And the time. The time work I
Speaker 1: think is partly for me again, partly exhaustion, partly trauma, UM,
Speaker 1: partly UM like excitement. There is so much excitement right,
Speaker 1: seeing seeing it, seeing the love, like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make it sound all bad, Like there's like beautiful
Speaker 1: moments every day with the love that you have on
Speaker 1: the grountain with everybody. Um, and so yeah, go for
Speaker 1: it often. Um. You know, Dorothy Day, after the San
Speaker 1: Francisco earthquake over a century ago, said, while the crisis lasted,
Speaker 1: people loved one another. And what oftentimes we experience after
Speaker 1: a major crisis or disaster is is that our lives
Speaker 1: before we're disastrous. You know that capitalism and colonialism, in
Speaker 1: the isolation and alienation and the meaninglessness, drudgery of the
Speaker 1: work and selling ourselves to the highest bidder so that
Speaker 1: we can survive, you know. Um, all that is an ongoing,
Speaker 1: invisible disaster. And in in the moment where the the
Speaker 1: ruins are around us and we see them, you know,
Speaker 1: we we come together in a way that that draws
Speaker 1: on on on that feeling of solidarity and love and
Speaker 1: and those those ideas of a better world that we
Speaker 1: that we protest for, that we march on the streets
Speaker 1: for that we you know, envision coming you know sometime
Speaker 1: in the future in a microcosm, they exist here and
Speaker 1: now in in these local pockets of people taking care
Speaker 1: of each other against all odds. Two. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's really that's really well put. Like it's sort of
Speaker 1: it made me reflect on like I've reported from it
Speaker 1: and worked in lots of natural disasters, and like that
Speaker 1: time when they like alienation, boredom, and despair they associate
Speaker 1: with everyday drudgery under capitalism goes away and you have
Speaker 1: a purpose and everyone's working together and you're also on
Speaker 1: like Twitter dot com all the time. It's very and
Speaker 1: and in time stretchy is in at the same time
Speaker 1: compresses It's it's very addictive in a sense, like it
Speaker 1: feels wonderful and hopeful. And then it's the feeling that
Speaker 1: an uprising tries to replicate. It's it's the it's this
Speaker 1: moment of peak experience that makes you. It forces you
Speaker 1: to fall out of the kind of the drudgery of
Speaker 1: collapsing capitalist infrastructure and you're forced to actually live around
Speaker 1: people and it's the weirdest feeling. And it happens when
Speaker 1: horrible things happen, like disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, or it
Speaker 1: happens people getting shot. Yeah, the moment of like national
Speaker 1: uprising as well like it's the same it's the same
Speaker 1: function and for a brief moment you're able to actually
Speaker 1: live the things that you like preach um and you're
Speaker 1: able to see them get applied to the world. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us getting away from that just
Speaker 1: being a peak, right and having to come back down,
Speaker 1: because I'm really is to build that resiliency, right, to
Speaker 1: to create it so that the lights don't go out
Speaker 1: and we just keep rolling and if they do go out,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got a backup plan, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's a wood burning stove and we make some pizza.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you know, I think, yeah, the
Speaker 1: peak shouldn't be a peak, there should be just a shift.
Speaker 1: So how do yeah, so how do we how do
Speaker 1: we keep that right? How do we rebuild and keep
Speaker 1: that momentum that that that net for each other? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, yeah, I think that Letton had an answer
Speaker 1: to that that it did not work out the best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and we're still here, yeah, yeah, here we are
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts. But yeah, I think that was wonderful.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that. I think your point just to
Speaker 1: close out that discussion about like how you guys have
Speaker 1: a network that supports people. Some of the most profound
Speaker 1: depression I've experienced has been not like directly around disasters
Speaker 1: or conflict, but coming home and feeling useless. So I
Speaker 1: think that like checking in on people and continuing to
Speaker 1: feel like you're pushing in a positive direction, Like more
Speaker 1: people will experience a natural disaster after listening to this
Speaker 1: and have done before listening to this, and next year
Speaker 1: will be bigger than this year, and it will get
Speaker 1: worse until but like you will feel elated and that's okay,
Speaker 1: and you will feel devastated and that's okay. And checking
Speaker 1: it on people is super duper important. And speaking of
Speaker 1: that network and making connections, where can people find in
Speaker 1: support the work that y'all do? All right, Jimmy Scene,
Speaker 1: We can go to mutual a Disaster Relief dot org
Speaker 1: or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, mutual a Disaster Relief on
Speaker 1: Twitter it's mutual Aide Relief and our email is Mutually
Speaker 1: a Disaster Leaf at gmail dot com. I would love
Speaker 1: for more people to join uh this movement, you know,
Speaker 1: both Mutual A Disaster really their local Mutual Aid Project
Speaker 1: um and and and other other similar efforts or start one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a question we get a lot is like, Yo,
Speaker 1: you guys talk about mutual aid and stuff, but there's
Speaker 1: really nothing in my area. There's I don't I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know what whatether's to do. Like okay, well
Speaker 1: there's some that can fix that problem. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: do you have any like resources to help people kind
Speaker 1: of figure out how they would absolutely? On our website,
Speaker 1: mutual a disaster leaf dot or there's a resources tab
Speaker 1: and one of the sessions is mutual aid about you know,
Speaker 1: diving into the subject of what is mutual aid and
Speaker 1: how to form a group or a project UM and
Speaker 1: and other resources along those lines. We also have a
Speaker 1: newly formed UM mutual Aid Toolkit Relief Toolkit that's on
Speaker 1: our website. So if there are local mutual aid groups, UM,
Speaker 1: this is a public form, so there's a big bold
Speaker 1: like warning about it and happening it's public. For intention
Speaker 1: we have our own obviously like internal threads, but this
Speaker 1: is more like for folks who maybe haven't ever plugged
Speaker 1: into mutually before, like being able to see where's all
Speaker 1: the different mutual aid projects and what they're doing. So
Speaker 1: UM again we talked about the resiliency, so This is
Speaker 1: kind of our attempts to be able to map for
Speaker 1: each other UM away where we can see what every
Speaker 1: where where everyone is that's interested in responding and doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. So if it's a you know, bom
Speaker 1: screw or like whatever your mutually things that you're doing,
Speaker 1: if you want to join on to that UM that's
Speaker 1: a fun way to see who might be in your area.
Speaker 1: If everybody start stilling it out, fantastic. Thank thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking time out of the stretched out
Speaker 1: or fis concept of litera progression of time to talk
Speaker 1: with us about the fantastic work that you are all
Speaker 1: a part of. Thanks for having us appreciate it. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome. It could happen here. I'm Andrew the YouTube
Speaker 1: channel andrewis UM. I would like to borrow some of
Speaker 1: your time today or tonight, whenever you're listening to talk
Speaker 1: about movements, the fact that humans move around and the
Speaker 1: most Indian restrictions on it in our modern world. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my co hosts. Hello Garrison here, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's James as well. Right. Glad to be here and
Speaker 1: to be here with you guys. So even before I
Speaker 1: was an anarchist I would say there were three things
Speaker 1: I really despised. Things I despised from like fairly early
Speaker 1: each that being the education system, advertising and porters. I
Speaker 1: believe freedom of movement is fundamental. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's controversial or anything, but these days it feels like
Speaker 1: it has reached a point of like really great restriction,
Speaker 1: more so, I think than at most points of human history.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the history of borders,
Speaker 1: the role of borders, and the fight against borders. Not
Speaker 1: to give you some context, cause you can't about my
Speaker 1: accent and from the Caribbean, particularly from Trina and Tobago,
Speaker 1: and being from an island nation, twin island nation. Actually
Speaker 1: I have been made away of the constant through history
Speaker 1: that has been into Ireland migration, whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: the Polynesian migrations across the Pacific, whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: even within the Malay Archipelago or the Philippine Archipelago, or
Speaker 1: even when you're talking about of course the Caribbean. There's
Speaker 1: always been, you know, this movement of people going from
Speaker 1: Ireland to Ireland. You know, like Tronada is very close
Speaker 1: to northeastern Venezuela, only eleven kilometers off the coast of
Speaker 1: northeastern Venezuela out in the Northern Area in literally called
Speaker 1: Northern Range, is an extension of Venezuela's maritime and these mountains,
Speaker 1: but the connections to end there. Human settlements in Turad
Speaker 1: dates back at least seven thousand years. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the oldest human settlements discovered in the Eastern Caribbean,
Speaker 1: the Banouari trade site, is found in southeastern turn Dad.
Speaker 1: One of the leading theories of human disposal across the
Speaker 1: world places the migration of the Caribbean as beginning in
Speaker 1: Turnad and going up the Antillian chain. A lot of
Speaker 1: the indigenous groups that settled in turn Dad and in
Speaker 1: the other islands north of Trindad and for the most
Speaker 1: part migrated up the or Nocle River in what is
Speaker 1: now Venezuela. So exchange in migration between the continents and
Speaker 1: the island has continued undisturbed freely for thousands of years
Speaker 1: before the arrival of the Spanish, and today in our
Speaker 1: free quote and code post colonial code and code world,
Speaker 1: what was once the norm is now criminalized. Now you
Speaker 1: have to go through this proper process. In order to migrate.
Speaker 1: You have to ask permission from governments who draw these
Speaker 1: invisible lines or in some cases violently physical lines in
Speaker 1: the sand and demanded deference. And yet still migration continues,
Speaker 1: because migration is a constant of human existence, legal and illegal.
Speaker 1: Recent Venezuela crisis and subsequent migration is just another uptake
Speaker 1: of the same. Refugees, desperate escape the present um of
Speaker 1: American imperialism and Venezuelan government mismanagement and all the component
Speaker 1: is us that have caused Venezuelan crisis have been flee
Speaker 1: into Colombia, to Brazil, to the Dutch Caribbean Islands, to
Speaker 1: the other lastin American countries, and of course to turn
Speaker 1: that well, this migration is extorted by opportunists, facility, by
Speaker 1: the organized crime of human traffickers, because when you try
Speaker 1: to restrict that kind of demand, when you illegalize that
Speaker 1: kind of movement, the people on the margins, we'll try
Speaker 1: to take advantage of those who are who need to
Speaker 1: move around, because that need is still there. And so
Speaker 1: lines also, of course are not necessarily creating, but they
Speaker 1: serve to exacerbate essues like xenophobia, which is you know,
Speaker 1: only amplified by the existence of orders, and they also
Speaker 1: deal with, due to their paperless status, a lot of
Speaker 1: gross exploitation because they struggled to find work and secure
Speaker 1: the basic necessities of life. The Venezuelan refugee crisis is
Speaker 1: a disaster I've seen unfull before my own eyes when
Speaker 1: I have witnessed firsthand, and one that is facilitated and
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the existence of borders. And you've seen similar
Speaker 1: issues of cool another part of the world too, you know,
Speaker 1: borders are enforced between the US and Mexico, between Haiti
Speaker 1: and the Republic, between Spain and Morocco, when you euroupe
Speaker 1: in the Swanna region, between India and Pakistan, between Australia
Speaker 1: and Indonesia, um between Palestine and Israel. And being journalists,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys have experienced, perhaps foodstand other examples
Speaker 1: of the violent enforcement of borders. James, you have any experiences, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. I actually live just about the same distance
Speaker 1: you live from Venezuela. I live about the same distance
Speaker 1: from the US border with Mexico, so I've spent quite
Speaker 1: a lot of my journalistic career crossing the border and
Speaker 1: reporting on the border. And like it's as you said,
Speaker 1: it's become increasingly violently enforced, and it's just ugly scar
Speaker 1: on on the landscape now. And it's and I often
Speaker 1: like to say, the border doesn't protect people, it controls people. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very cruel and vicious and entirely arbitrary distinction
Speaker 1: between what is Kumi is Land to the north of
Speaker 1: the border and Kumi is Land to the south of
Speaker 1: the border in my case, Yeah, exactly exactly. The way
Speaker 1: that borders have cut through, um the homelands of any
Speaker 1: different indigenous groups has been absolutely disastrous for them. This
Speaker 1: has taken place, and of course the us UM and
Speaker 1: most I suppose recognizably in Africa, where these clunial borders
Speaker 1: have been causing tremendous harm to this day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very good point. I remember, just talking of
Speaker 1: like weird border things. I remember just before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I was on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic
Speaker 1: Republic of Congo. And when you it, it just seems
Speaker 1: so absurd, like to think that you know, some literally
Speaker 1: some I'll do it in England or a line on
Speaker 1: a map or whatever in Germany. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that it creates is this weird situation where plastic
Speaker 1: bags are illegal in Rwanda because they're trying to protect
Speaker 1: the environment and they're not in Congos. So there's like
Speaker 1: this illegal arbitrage trade of plastic bags across this border.
Speaker 1: And it's just such an odd and constructed, entirely unnecessary
Speaker 1: and strange sort of legacy of the colonial plunder of Africa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't even hear that before. That sounds quite interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: he says, between Rwanda and Democrats Republic of the Congo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's sending the border town there. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: people people will come across with their plastic bags. Be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how that develops. I know they are
Speaker 1: attempting to unify Democratic Republic of the car and go Tanzania, Kenya,
Speaker 1: you can salt Sudan, um, I think Jubooty and and
Speaker 1: Somalia and a few other places I think into like
Speaker 1: an East African federation. So be interesting to see how
Speaker 1: those um discrapan seas and laws developed. Yeah, the Rwanda
Speaker 1: border with Congo is that there's a soldier every fifty
Speaker 1: meters with a big machine gun, even going right through
Speaker 1: the middle of the New Way rainforest, which is very
Speaker 1: remote by rewinded standards. Under a busy country with lots
Speaker 1: of people. But yeah, yeah, that's a very militarized border
Speaker 1: right now, right, yeah, yeah, that reminds you it's a
Speaker 1: less militarized example. Um. I mean, people point out the
Speaker 1: disparity between the US Canada border and the US Mexico border,
Speaker 1: but I remember reading a story somewhere about how persing
Speaker 1: on the Canadian side UM had like they could very
Speaker 1: easily cross over onto the US side, but there was
Speaker 1: like a steep trooper or something just standing there and
Speaker 1: it's like if you cross over, have to arrest you.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's like you're right there, we're literally
Speaker 1: having a conversation face to face, and yet if I
Speaker 1: walk over this our cherry designation, I have to be jailed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bizarre. There's a very arbitrary The border between Myanmar
Speaker 1: and Thailand is it's a funny example like that where
Speaker 1: like it's a river and this is unfortunately resulted in
Speaker 1: people trying to cross it here and able to swim dying,
Speaker 1: which is terrible, right, But one thing that happens is
Speaker 1: like if you're in the river, you're in neither country.
Speaker 1: And so people will make stilts like little stands on
Speaker 1: stilts which come up to the level of the river bank,
Speaker 1: such that they can stand in like no man's land
Speaker 1: or every man's stand, maybe every one's land, and sell
Speaker 1: alcohol without paying the Thai taxes and to people who
Speaker 1: are standing on the bank in Thailand. And again it
Speaker 1: just really illustrates how stupid now but treat this whole
Speaker 1: thing is. So as we're talking about the absurdity of boarders,
Speaker 1: I suppose it's only fair to get into their history
Speaker 1: because for most of the rule, and for most of
Speaker 1: human existence, really free movement has when the status cool traders, migrants,
Speaker 1: hunter gatherers, nomads, they freely traversed this little blue marble,
Speaker 1: as they call it. Of course, many ethnic groups maintains
Speaker 1: it in relationships with particular lands. But even when city
Speaker 1: states on such rules, it was rare for rulers to
Speaker 1: delineate precisely where their realm ended and another's began. The
Speaker 1: first like large scale restrictions really a rose under the
Speaker 1: Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, when he forbade
Speaker 1: serves from leaving their lord's land. Documents, of course, had
Speaker 1: to be created to request safe passage. To ask O king,
Speaker 1: will you please allow me to move from point A
Speaker 1: to point B, my lord, your majesty soon whatever. What
Speaker 1: what do we call the first passports is what quickly
Speaker 1: and rules the medieval era essentially bound large parts of
Speaker 1: yours population in place by sufdomb and movement was viewed
Speaker 1: by rulers as ruin us to their law and order.
Speaker 1: They needed static populations to stay in place so that
Speaker 1: taxation and the raising of troops and whatever they wanted
Speaker 1: to extract could easily be extracted. Because you know, if
Speaker 1: if these presidents were able to just move as they pleased,
Speaker 1: they will probably try to evade taxation that a little
Speaker 1: bit too excessive. Um, they would probably trying to evade
Speaker 1: the oppression of their rulers. And that they did. I
Speaker 1: mean throughout feudalism, passant revolts and uprisings very commonplace, and
Speaker 1: it's due to those revolts of the masses that sift
Speaker 1: them would come into a decline as a wage labor
Speaker 1: rule was in the fifteenth and sixteen centuries, but that
Speaker 1: would mean that free movement came back because now people
Speaker 1: were commodity that a country's government wanted to keep within
Speaker 1: its borders. Sur rulers offered citizenship and tax incentives and
Speaker 1: want to encourage migration. And yet while they were encouraging migration,
Speaker 1: they were also kicking people out. So countries like Spain
Speaker 1: and France were either executing or expelling ethnic and religious
Speaker 1: minorities and mass So this period also bring about the
Speaker 1: rights of you know, nationalism, which were tapped into an
Speaker 1: earlier sense of um I suppose connection and sort of
Speaker 1: subvert that from connection to community to connection to this
Speaker 1: abstract notion of nation state, the imaginary community of the nation.
Speaker 1: Nationalism in Europe would attempt to unify a vast and
Speaker 1: diverse range of cultural groups and classes under one state
Speaker 1: while defining themselves against outsiders. And of course this ruling
Speaker 1: class meta narrative exists as a mechanism of manufactured, meaningless
Speaker 1: loyalty in order to control you. But that's a topic
Speaker 1: for another time. This era has also been described as
Speaker 1: one of the large just periods of involuntary migration in
Speaker 1: human history, that be in the Transatlantic slave trade, which
Speaker 1: trafficed an estimated twelve point five million in slave African
Speaker 1: people between the sixteen and nineteenth century. But there was
Speaker 1: this one key movement in history of borders that would
Speaker 1: have lasted effects to today. At the end of the
Speaker 1: Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia was signed by
Speaker 1: a hundred and nine principalities and touchies and imperial kingdoms
Speaker 1: which basically agreed in sixteen forty eight that the state's
Speaker 1: borders were inviolable and an absolute sovereign state could not
Speaker 1: interfere in the domestic affairs of another. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: this is all just talk, right at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, states have continued to interfere the domestic affairs
Speaker 1: of others, would continue to violate the borders of other states.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of board of disputes that are alive
Speaker 1: and well some decades or even centuries old um on
Speaker 1: this planet. And then, of course this idea of West
Speaker 1: Pralian severenety would not really be applied to people outside
Speaker 1: of Europe. The actual inhabitants of the interesting looking maps
Speaker 1: that the West Filian era produced, we're not actually made
Speaker 1: privy to any of those um decisions about the drawing
Speaker 1: of borders. They would also be moving, of course, people continuously,
Speaker 1: so you know, Spain was kicking out um Jewish people
Speaker 1: and more's and people who relate the heretics as Uni
Speaker 1: inquisition um. The British was moving their dissenters, criminals and
Speaker 1: general pains and the Bombacy to settle colonized in places
Speaker 1: like Australia, which is why Australia is like that. And
Speaker 1: things progress a bit further, you have the notion of
Speaker 1: free trade and free market gain in some ground thanks
Speaker 1: to Adam Smith this new school of economics. At the
Speaker 1: same time, concerns of population of MOUTHUS, unemployment and social
Speaker 1: unrest in Europe led governments to start facilities and emigration
Speaker 1: moving out their colonies. The more general free flows settler clonalism,
Speaker 1: which would lead to domestic depopulation in Europe. And then
Speaker 1: there was another shift, as tend to be the case
Speaker 1: in human history, as in the nineteenth century, migrants from
Speaker 1: now underdeveloped regions began to stream towards the more developed
Speaker 1: areas and drews. So you had North Africans going to France,
Speaker 1: Italians and Irish headed to New York and all the while,
Speaker 1: of course racism and xenophobia festering and proliferating as nationalists
Speaker 1: with top fay against the so called threats to their nation.
Speaker 1: Of course, Italians and Irish were eventually assimilated into the
Speaker 1: hegemonic notion of whiteness. But North Africans in France have
Speaker 1: not been so lucky. Oh I said, who is lucky?
Speaker 1: Could and could because there's a little conversation about how
Speaker 1: whiteness destroys cultures and erases the unique identities that these
Speaker 1: people would have come up with in an efforts to
Speaker 1: unite them against minorities such as African Americans in the US.
Speaker 1: So you see this period of lockdown, of this increased
Speaker 1: nationalism and these restrictions. These bad restrictions would also try
Speaker 1: to manipulate access to certain technologies, um, the telegraph, the
Speaker 1: rail road. Yes, they enabled central governments to assert their
Speaker 1: presence across the whole territory, but they would also try
Speaker 1: to compete with other nations UM and keep certain secrets
Speaker 1: regarding technology. See that particularly um during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that a bit later. During the
Speaker 1: First World War, we have of some sixteen million people,
Speaker 1: the Great War UM as you should probably call it
Speaker 1: if you ever happened to time travel to that period.
Speaker 1: I don't think people would want to hear that this
Speaker 1: is just the first two wars. But after the World War,
Speaker 1: the Great War UM, the seggregationist Wouldrew Wilson, who was
Speaker 1: US President at the time, proposed fourteen points to the
Speaker 1: international community in order to prevent such horrors. And one
Speaker 1: of those core principles of the fourteen points was it
Speaker 1: the globe's borders. We were drawn along clearly recognizable lines
Speaker 1: of nationality. And like I said before, this is of
Speaker 1: course just in Europe. It's not like any of these
Speaker 1: WILL leaders actually care about the territories they coughed up
Speaker 1: in Africa. And I think there was a point that
Speaker 1: I wanted to make about technology and how technology has
Speaker 1: been restricted because when you look at again the real
Speaker 1: road and telegraph, while they enabled central governments to suit
Speaker 1: their presence and assut their control, and like ever before,
Speaker 1: the potential these technologies was kind of lost. Yes, the
Speaker 1: railroad in the telegraph can help a government to suit
Speaker 1: its control over its territory, but it con justest as
Speaker 1: easily empower people to travel further and faster than they
Speaker 1: ever had before, so communicate across greater distances and they
Speaker 1: ever had before. And insteadin the hands of the states,
Speaker 1: these technologies are of course used for oppress events. Back
Speaker 1: to the end of the First World War. In the
Speaker 1: post war period, which saw the collapse of four European
Speaker 1: empires Ottoman, Russian, Austro, Hungarian, and German, millions of refugees
Speaker 1: were left in a world where immigration controls had continued
Speaker 1: to tighten and passports gained greater prominence. Last once the
Speaker 1: nation state was mented in place, Fascism and Nazism would
Speaker 1: quickly arise to god its supposed purity. The world would
Speaker 1: once again be plunged into war, the second one, this
Speaker 1: time which would again leave millions of uprooting and displaced
Speaker 1: people that states like Switzerland quote unquote neutral and the
Speaker 1: US would largely refuse to assist. After the Second World War,
Speaker 1: nation building would continue to displace and slaughter millions of
Speaker 1: ethnic and religious minorities. Millions of refugees have been dismissed
Speaker 1: from lands that have been colonized and imperialized, and intervened
Speaker 1: with wars and wrecked with just the destruction of climate
Speaker 1: change and poverty, and yet immigration controls only tightened further,
Speaker 1: and they will likely continue to tighten due to the
Speaker 1: effects of climate migration and climate collapse, especially in our
Speaker 1: post ninety leven reality. US border patrol in particular has
Speaker 1: escalated to employed twenty thousands and agents, and Israel Run
Speaker 1: is the largest open air prison in the world. These days,
Speaker 1: militarized borders with heavily guarded barbed wire and electrified fences,
Speaker 1: which were once common in times of war, have now
Speaker 1: been a staple of times of peace. These marginary lines
Speaker 1: in the map have become in some places violent fixtures
Speaker 1: on the landscape, with thousands of people lose their lives
Speaker 1: every year for simply trying to cross. We've entered an
Speaker 1: era of essentially bordering without precedent, and thanks to today's technology,
Speaker 1: governments no more now about the people they govern, the
Speaker 1: people within their territory, but at any point prior and
Speaker 1: human history. Cross border surveillance keeps neighbors in the new
Speaker 1: managing and monitoring their populous like lab rats. Data has
Speaker 1: become of aluable then black cold itself. These governments have
Speaker 1: chosen to wall and survey. This is our will now.
Speaker 1: It's not some future cyberpunk the stupia, The curveillance capitalist
Speaker 1: health keepers here now and borders have an important for
Speaker 1: rule to play. But as our power structure their system
Speaker 1: of control. As the writers that Crime Think have said,
Speaker 1: there's only one world on the border is tearing it apart.
Speaker 1: And I think the idea of borders extends much further
Speaker 1: than just the nations borders. When you look at the Internet,
Speaker 1: fire walls, the checkpoints, the hidden databases, the for profit
Speaker 1: prisons in the gated communities, all these different boundaries enforced
Speaker 1: by ceaseless violence, enforced by a deep aortation, enforced by vigilanty,
Speaker 1: attack by street haraspment by torture, All of these boundaries
Speaker 1: are holding us back and tearing us apart. Migrants, due
Speaker 1: to their vulnerable status or often the first target when
Speaker 1: it comes to the economic down to and oppression, civiilians
Speaker 1: and scapegoating nations wield of fair of this other and
Speaker 1: they use that to prevent their people from fighting for better.
Speaker 1: They turned their eye towards another victim. I doesn't even
Speaker 1: get into all the different categories that have been constructed
Speaker 1: migrant expert, refugee, asylum seeker, illegal alien, and that one
Speaker 1: in particular really grinds my cares because it is I believe,
Speaker 1: the pinner cool of the humanization to look at a
Speaker 1: person who's dice just man just managed to like just
Speaker 1: by happensands fell on the other side of the border,
Speaker 1: to look at them and to deem them alien, deem
Speaker 1: them illegal, to brand them that, and I even acknowledge
Speaker 1: their humanity when referring to them. And it's become a
Speaker 1: normalized part of political discourse to speak of illegal aliens.
Speaker 1: But I don't think we should reget just how violent
Speaker 1: that kind of languages. It's particularly violent when you count
Speaker 1: for the fact that while these borders are used to
Speaker 1: restrict people on the lowest rung of society, capital has
Speaker 1: very few restrictions. In fact, that has much less restrictions,
Speaker 1: and people the right and their capital can cross borders
Speaker 1: with ease, go from place to place without munch process.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we look at Jeff Bassos and we
Speaker 1: say that, oh, well, he's the richest man the world
Speaker 1: for say soon, But when you account for the wealth
Speaker 1: that has not been accounted for, I think it must
Speaker 1: be put into perspective that Bill Gates, Zackaboo, Jeff Bazos, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They are the richest people that we know of, not
Speaker 1: necessarily the richest. A global economy has also been of
Speaker 1: course moving resources for a while now. Resources have more
Speaker 1: freedom than people. The unequal and even development has extracted
Speaker 1: minerals and materials from some parts of the world, process
Speaker 1: them in other parts of the world, manufacture them in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, and then sold worldwide for
Speaker 1: the profits to be hoarded by select few countries and
Speaker 1: select a few people. These wealthy countries plunder the poor
Speaker 1: and then brutalize those who follow. Where the opportunities of Antica.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that one's opportunities one freedom. One's
Speaker 1: freedom should be restricted by where they were born or
Speaker 1: by the wealth that they do. To not control passports,
Speaker 1: inequality is yes, you that should not exist. Passports should
Speaker 1: not exist. Palestinians can travel visa free to only thirty
Speaker 1: eight countries and territories, yet those in the West Bank
Speaker 1: are restricted by violent by violent checkpoints and those who
Speaker 1: live in gas are call you distript at all. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: other regions enjoy fast visa free travels, such as Germans
Speaker 1: who have access to countries and territories, or the Japanese,
Speaker 1: who enjoy the most freedom piece of free of all,
Speaker 1: with ninety three countries available to them. A billionaire like
Speaker 1: Elon musket flying wherever he wants in his private jet.
Speaker 1: A political prisoner like a Jory Luta, who can be
Speaker 1: kept in solitary years on end. Traditional seafear and channels
Speaker 1: and land has been militarized and guarded by these vast navies,
Speaker 1: by these vast troops, by these these machines, These structures
Speaker 1: that disconnected, unraveled the deep ties between communities, borderston us
Speaker 1: all into prisoners, and I think it's about time we
Speaker 1: resisted them. As the underground railroads of anti Nazi and
Speaker 1: anti slavery resistance has shown everyday people can help every
Speaker 1: day people, no matter the obstacles. If you live in
Speaker 1: a border sanctuary city or a migrant community, they are
Speaker 1: probably already groups that are put in this work and
Speaker 1: you could join that infrastructure resistance. If not, you can
Speaker 1: help to create that infrastructure to connect with people who
Speaker 1: are affected by borders in ways that you aren't. I mean,
Speaker 1: perhaps you have a neighbor or a cool worker who's
Speaker 1: undocumented and could you use a help in that try
Speaker 1: to connect cross border formal and informal, public and coland
Speaker 1: design because these connections, these networks, or how people move,
Speaker 1: live and evade state violence. Obviously, I can't speak for
Speaker 1: everybody situation because different people's legal status, language, ability, education level, gender,
Speaker 1: raised class, commit muns and ability would affect their contribution
Speaker 1: to the anti borders movement. But however you decide to contribute,
Speaker 1: I hope that you would remember who it is we're
Speaker 1: trying to help. We're not trying to act as you know,
Speaker 1: these saints for the media, and I recognized the irony
Speaker 1: of saying saints in particular considered my old YouTube name.
Speaker 1: But the media is not our focus. The audience of
Speaker 1: our actions is not public opinion. It is those we
Speaker 1: want fighting with us, people who need our help, people
Speaker 1: who know the violent supporters forutand so they get into
Speaker 1: direct action two, you know, directly affect the material outcomes
Speaker 1: of people influence our borders. You know, whether you're helping
Speaker 1: my creation prisoner managed to escape, or helping one person
Speaker 1: get a roof over their head, helping an asylum case,
Speaker 1: having a person who is trapped in this system to
Speaker 1: find the strength to get through a day. These actions
Speaker 1: refuberating our communities and they help oup others do the same.
Speaker 1: We also, need, of course, more infrastructure, networks, alliances, skills
Speaker 1: and resources to be cultivated to strengthen our autonomy from
Speaker 1: these structures and to develop ability to defend against them,
Speaker 1: and of course these actions should be rooted in some
Speaker 1: strategy long term and short term for overcoming this regime
Speaker 1: onnths and for all. Just for a final would I
Speaker 1: would say that there is nothing necessary or inevitable about borders.
Speaker 1: Only the violence of their most ardent believers keep them
Speaker 1: in place and without them what as with seats to exist,
Speaker 1: waters can only exist if they are enforced, and together
Speaker 1: we can make waters and enforceable. Together we can create
Speaker 1: a will in which everyone is free to travel, free
Speaker 1: to create, and free to exist on their own terms.
Speaker 1: Now's it. If you like what I spoke about in
Speaker 1: this episode, or if you just like to hear my voice,
Speaker 1: feel free to check out my YouTube channel and Truism
Speaker 1: and you can support me on picture and dot com
Speaker 1: slash Seeing True, will follow me on Twitter at and
Speaker 1: Disclosing True. Hey everyone, and welcome taken up in the hare,
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew the YouTube channel Andrewism, and today I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the squatting movement. Actually, before I do that,
Speaker 1: I'm joined today by my co hosts Your Cause Andrew
Speaker 1: or Garrison Davis and James Stout, and I am your
Speaker 1: producer Sophie and I am here Andrew, please continue, Thank you, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the squatting movement and particularly
Speaker 1: how people love overcome the analities of privatizing land and
Speaker 1: restricting people's access to it so they could cove a
Speaker 1: life for themselves. Um in this troubling world now, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are least passionally familiar with
Speaker 1: the squatting movements, the political squatting movements where be an anarchist,
Speaker 1: a tournament store, socialist of nature that I've taken place
Speaker 1: in Italy, the US, and most famously Denmark where they
Speaker 1: had you know, Freetown Christiania set up. But outside of
Speaker 1: the global North and much of the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: squatting is just a fact of life. It doesn't typically
Speaker 1: though sometimes it does have radical political ambitions. So today
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be spending time discussing the squatting
Speaker 1: movement in Europe or North America, but instead discussing the
Speaker 1: millions of people in the world lack of access to
Speaker 1: land where they can find secure shelter. And I turned
Speaker 1: to what has been deemed informal occupation or squatting to
Speaker 1: find residents. Most specifically, I'll be discussing the Caribbean, but
Speaker 1: first I need to get into some statistics. It's always
Speaker 1: that kind of weird, right. In nine fifty, only eighty
Speaker 1: six cities around the world had populations of one million
Speaker 1: people or more. In twenty sixteen, there were just over
Speaker 1: six hundred cities that met this threshold. Over half of
Speaker 1: the world's population now lives in urban areas, and nearly
Speaker 1: a billion, if not a billion, are estimated to be
Speaker 1: living in informal settlements, mostly in the urban and perry
Speaker 1: urban areas of less developed countries. I don't know if
Speaker 1: any of you have read Planets of the Slums by
Speaker 1: Mike Davis. I don't think I have, but he discusses
Speaker 1: this phenomenon, this explosion in urbanization, and the fact that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you know, these cities aren't exactly urban Eden's. They are
Speaker 1: deeply impoverished, filled with m makeshift and often unsafe, whether
Speaker 1: it be you know, poison us or just poorly constructed
Speaker 1: or disease written dwell ends areas such as their roots Quarantina,
Speaker 1: Mexico cities Santa Cruz, Maya, Huaco Ros Favelas, and Cairo
Speaker 1: is a city of the dead. We're up to one
Speaker 1: million people living homes made out of actual tools. Now
Speaker 1: Davis addresses the issues root cause, that being post colonial
Speaker 1: neoliberal policies driven by free market Catholics principles. It is yes,
Speaker 1: cities modernized in the wake of the colonial era, a
Speaker 1: lot of the same zone and boundaries enforced by imperial
Speaker 1: powers across racial and soce economic lines were continued. So
Speaker 1: quality colonization did not really take place, and did imperial
Speaker 1: rule didn't lead to a magical increase in equality e galitianism.
Speaker 1: It's just that post colonial rulers took up the mantle
Speaker 1: where a colonial rulers left so and of course this switch,
Speaker 1: this changing of hands of power was kept up by
Speaker 1: the International Monetary Fund, which stepped in on behalf of
Speaker 1: these elites and pushed the poorest citizens basically into thickly
Speaker 1: concentrated slums by making it easier for the ruling class
Speaker 1: to ignore these issues and prioritize the affluent. The debt
Speaker 1: restructure and policies and nine also LEDs a lot of
Speaker 1: governments cutting down on their public health and education investment
Speaker 1: expenditure so that they could repay the loans that they
Speaker 1: had been forced to take out David spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about Asia and sometime talking about the
Speaker 1: increasing hardship in African cities. But the situation of squatting
Speaker 1: is often overlooked in the Caribbean, and so I'd like
Speaker 1: to draw some attention to that. I think that anyone
Speaker 1: who has lived in the Caribbean or as family in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean would be somewhat familiar with the idea of
Speaker 1: family land, which is this idea that you know, you
Speaker 1: have these plots that the family essentially owns collectively, maybe
Speaker 1: somebody living there, or it may just be landed as
Speaker 1: being passed along for anyone who needs it. UM. A
Speaker 1: lot of this land was acquired by purchase, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it was acquired by squatting in Trinidad, in
Speaker 1: Jamaica and Puerto Rico and Martinique and Barbadoes. Squatting was
Speaker 1: how a lot of recently emancipated people gained some foothold
Speaker 1: to live now they could not stay on the plantation system. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: the early squatting movement was largely wiped out by the
Speaker 1: growing plantation system UM, but eventually a new squatting movement
Speaker 1: would arise due to escaped slaves and maroons and post
Speaker 1: indentured individuals who would resettle um on those regions that
Speaker 1: were previously wiped out by the plantation system. I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend most of the focus of this episode discussing
Speaker 1: what took place in Jamaica because I discovered this really
Speaker 1: excellent research paper done by Professor Jean Besson. But Jamaica
Speaker 1: is really quite an interesting example because Jamaica is one
Speaker 1: of the few Caribbean countries that had a successful, sustained
Speaker 1: maroon movement that lasted into the twenty one century. And
Speaker 1: so what happened, as is the case for a lot
Speaker 1: of these colonies, is you have this Cittain model of
Speaker 1: land ownership called crown land. Basically all the land of
Speaker 1: the crown deemed themselves to own by virtue of colonized.
Speaker 1: In these places, crown land would often be you know,
Speaker 1: parceled out when they want to attract new colonists to
Speaker 1: their different colonies, and so enslaved people in Jamaica created
Speaker 1: these squatters, settle months on crown land, basically recaptured that
Speaker 1: land and created villages and communities um in as maroons
Speaker 1: in that context of colonial violence, and of course these
Speaker 1: governments would demolish the squads settlements and try to effect
Speaker 1: land capture. But in Jamaica, the Maroons succeeded, particularly the
Speaker 1: Leeward Maroons, as they were two different groups to win
Speaker 1: Wood Maroons in the Leewood Moroons, and that's a whole
Speaker 1: different history. Today, a Kampong Village is the only survive
Speaker 1: in village for the Jamaican Leewood Maroons, and there's also
Speaker 1: the oldest persistent Maroon society in African America. After the
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans and Creoles escaped the plantations and squatted Crown Land,
Speaker 1: they waged successful guerrilla warfare against the British colonists in
Speaker 1: the First Maroon War and the leadership of Kujo and
Speaker 1: that land would be the basis of two Leewood Maroon
Speaker 1: villages that be in Kujo's Town in St. James and
Speaker 1: a Kampongs Town in St. Elizabeth, a Kampong being named
Speaker 1: after Kujo's brother in arms, Captain A. Kampong. Eventually, Kujo
Speaker 1: Town will be renamed Trelawny Town after the treaty between
Speaker 1: the British governor would grant the Maroons their freedom and
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred acres of legal freehold land. A compound town,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, did not really get any legal
Speaker 1: recognition until a land grant was given to them to
Speaker 1: some two thousand fives around a couple of decades later
Speaker 1: between six the Second Maroon War before between the Trelawny
Speaker 1: Town Maroons and the British colonists. Because of course the
Speaker 1: British did what they would do and whipped two of
Speaker 1: the Maroons for the theft of pigs in Montego Bay.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is just the insight and incident, as
Speaker 1: these things tend to be, for the deeper discontent regarding
Speaker 1: access to the land. And after this Second Maroon War,
Speaker 1: the learning Roons ended up being deported to Nova Scotia. So,
Speaker 1: for those a bit familiar with you know Canadian history,
Speaker 1: the Maroons are moved to and resettled in Canada. As
Speaker 1: a result of this and the Trianytown ruins Land being confiscated,
Speaker 1: a compunc Town became the soul surviving village and today
Speaker 1: it remains Common Treaty town. It is owned in common
Speaker 1: by the some I believe it's like just over three
Speaker 1: thousand adults, all of which, by the way, claimed descent
Speaker 1: from you know Couju and they sort of have a
Speaker 1: mixed settlement, producing for household use, rare and livestock, utilizing
Speaker 1: in the forest of medicines and timber um, cultivating food
Speaker 1: forests and provision grounds. And even after that was of
Speaker 1: the communitude migrate, they would still have that connection to
Speaker 1: their commons and often returns to either live or visit.
Speaker 1: Trilony Town. On the other hand, after being recaptured by
Speaker 1: the crown, it was eventually purchased and transformed into family
Speaker 1: lands by the descendants of slaves, lanterns, and ruins, and
Speaker 1: of course squatting played a part in that development. Most
Speaker 1: recently in Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been
Speaker 1: a move by governments switching from a policy of trying
Speaker 1: to eradicate squatters and instead trying to give them titled
Speaker 1: their lands, either granting them or usually selling it to
Speaker 1: them in an effort to alleviate poverty so they could
Speaker 1: use their house as you know, collateral for business loans
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. And that's basically what happened
Speaker 1: for a compound town and for Trelawney Town, where the
Speaker 1: captured land was surveyed and subdivided and put for sale
Speaker 1: and so the squat was able to purchase the land
Speaker 1: and the government was able to impose taxation on the
Speaker 1: people who lived on that land. Now, I I spoke
Speaker 1: of squatting in the Caribbean Latin America typically being not
Speaker 1: radically political, but there are political slash religious movements that
Speaker 1: have used squatting to gain a foothold. For example, the
Speaker 1: Revival Zion movements and offshoot of Rasterfarian movements. If I'm honestly,
Speaker 1: couldn't find much information about them, but they're enough from
Speaker 1: Jamaican religion and slash cult and so they managed to
Speaker 1: capture a lot of the land near Trelawney Town and
Speaker 1: we're often settled their homes right behind the city councils,
Speaker 1: no squatting signs. Eventually, you know you have about thirty
Speaker 1: house shools who have basically recaptured their land from Babylon,
Speaker 1: as Rastafarians would describe the state um. Their community, which
Speaker 1: they called Zion, became a very vibrant squatter settlement of
Speaker 1: some seventy house yards on about thirty acres have captured land. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the land was surveyed and subdivided, of course, trying to
Speaker 1: tax and control the people that were there, But the
Speaker 1: situation led to a lot of people still you know,
Speaker 1: not being able to afford the land, and still of
Speaker 1: course having to squat on the land that they lived on.
Speaker 1: But so long difficulty with squatted land is that it's
Speaker 1: a very um tenuous, very fragile, wild state of being.
Speaker 1: The future is often unswittan and cleats. It's more secure,
Speaker 1: i would say, than being like homeless, but you're still
Speaker 1: very much subject to state violence. Um And even when
Speaker 1: so called legal avenues opened up for you to get
Speaker 1: the land, you know, through purchase, the fact that you
Speaker 1: had to squat in the land in the first place
Speaker 1: should be some indication that you probably can't afford to
Speaker 1: buy land. But squatting enables people, at least in the
Speaker 1: interim two potentially you know, develop some funds and stuff
Speaker 1: until they are able to secure a future for their families.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the liberal solutions to the
Speaker 1: issue of squatting and poverty is to replace these sorts
Speaker 1: of systems and put it instead like proper private property
Speaker 1: rights and giving these people private property so that they
Speaker 1: could achieve sustainable development goals and all the other buzzwords
Speaker 1: that you know, these programs tend to use. I think
Speaker 1: the future of these kinds of projects, however, should be
Speaker 1: more along the lines of commons. I think that the
Speaker 1: fact that they were able to secure that land without
Speaker 1: the government's approval should be an indication that the government
Speaker 1: should not need to approve for people to live on
Speaker 1: the ether You're called home. I've spoken a previous episode
Speaker 1: about barb Uda and they are commons, and I really
Speaker 1: don't see why. I do see why, but I really
Speaker 1: believe the solutions these isssues lies in reclaiming the commons,
Speaker 1: lies in rejecting these colonial and post cluonial governments which
Speaker 1: based themselves on exclusion and illegality. And bring a boat,
Speaker 1: participatory local management of the land, by the people, for
Speaker 1: the people. And that's about it. Thanks, and do you
Speaker 1: think it was re fascinating? Any any final thoughts, Scare James.
Speaker 1: My final thought is that we have a live share
Speaker 1: wonderful And yeah, just the thing I was thinking about
Speaker 1: as we talked about squatting this one. You will be
Speaker 1: excluded unless you can pray the cost of entry or
Speaker 1: work out how to not be excluded, I guess. But
Speaker 1: it's on the twenty six of October I nearly forgot
Speaker 1: what month it was, And you can buy tickets on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, so we're doing this live stream October
Speaker 1: twenty six, six pm. It is a live virtual event
Speaker 1: and you can get tickets at moment dot c o
Speaker 1: slash I see h H will link that in the
Speaker 1: episode script. Will be a fun, spooky themed light show. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 1: You know, when we started the show, when I did
Speaker 1: the first season of it, you know, the one about
Speaker 1: all the Civil War stuff. Back in this was basically
Speaker 1: a place for me to write long essays explaining my
Speaker 1: vision of the future and the present. Uh, And people
Speaker 1: seem to like that a lot. We did a little
Speaker 1: bit of that at the start of this new Eternal
Speaker 1: daily season of the show. Um, but obviously over the
Speaker 1: last year or so, it's it's morphed into something very
Speaker 1: different and something wonderful and successful, and it's brought a
Speaker 1: lot of new voices, or at least voices people maybe
Speaker 1: hadn't heard from as much out in front of the audience,
Speaker 1: and I've been really happy about that. But what I
Speaker 1: also haven't been doing is writing any more essays about
Speaker 1: the world and how fucked up shit is. Because you know,
Speaker 1: I've been managing a bunch of stuff and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of work to do, but I like doing
Speaker 1: that stuff, and I think you people like it, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to do more of that. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of start by talking a little bit
Speaker 1: about Silicon Valley. And I'm going to say something at
Speaker 1: the start of this essay that a lot of people
Speaker 1: are probably instinctively gonna want to disagree with, which is
Speaker 1: that Silicon Valley and the tech industry have been gigantic
Speaker 1: failures by every metric that matters. They have made life
Speaker 1: comprehensively worse for humanity, and there is no real fact
Speaker 1: based counter argument to that statement. This is a hard
Speaker 1: pill for people to swallow. I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: folks are frustrated in me for saying it right now
Speaker 1: and are thinking of counter arguments. Most people today are
Speaker 1: critical of the tech industry, obviously, particularly made your social
Speaker 1: media companies, but they still tend to acknowledge the tremendous
Speaker 1: wealth created by Silicon Valley, as if there's some sort
Speaker 1: of inherent value to that. Behind a number on a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet collectively, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, the so
Speaker 1: called Big Five had a seven point five trillion dollar
Speaker 1: market cap. And every person listening to this keeps a
Speaker 1: device in their pocket made by or using the software
Speaker 1: of one or more of these companies. And so when
Speaker 1: people want to make the counter argument to what I
Speaker 1: just said, they'll tend to point out some version of this. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: companies like Facebook have done bad things, but the Internet
Speaker 1: is still a tool for good. It connects people, YadA
Speaker 1: YadA YadA. Smartphones empower us. You know. There's all these
Speaker 1: positive things about the internet, to which I will say,
Speaker 1: present me with your fucking evidence that that has mattered
Speaker 1: for people really in terms that actually, inaggregate improve their lives.
Speaker 1: I will show you my arguments to the col dry.
Speaker 1: In the period of time from Harry Truman's election to
Speaker 1: the end of the Nixon administration, American productivity on a
Speaker 1: per capita basis increased at a faster rate than it
Speaker 1: did at any other point in history. But then something happened.
Speaker 1: From nineteen seventy three to two thousand and thirteen, income
Speaker 1: growth was eighty percent slower than it had been in
Speaker 1: the previous three decades. If productivity had continued to grow
Speaker 1: at the same rate from nineteen seventy three to two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen as it did from nineteen forty six to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, the economy in two thousand thirteen would
Speaker 1: have been sixty percent larger than it actually was. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess a decent number of the people
Speaker 1: listening to this grew up watching The Jetsons. I know
Speaker 1: I did, and for the most part it was a silly,
Speaker 1: pretty harmless animated show. But at the center of it
Speaker 1: was a dream about the future that seems unfathomable in
Speaker 1: light of current events. George Jetson, who was in the
Speaker 1: show a pretty normal working class guy, worked three hours
Speaker 1: a day for three days a week. One of the
Speaker 1: running jokes in the show is that he considered himself
Speaker 1: overworked despite this idyllic schedule. Now, this was never particularly
Speaker 1: a focus of the show. It was just kind of
Speaker 1: something that was mentioned from time to time. And that's
Speaker 1: because the idea that a work week might just be
Speaker 1: nine hours in the future wasn't a joke. This was
Speaker 1: the direction of futurists in the nineteen sixties, looking at
Speaker 1: that surgeon productivity I just mentioned, and all of the
Speaker 1: middle class wealth that had been created from the forties
Speaker 1: through the early sixties. This is the direction they saw
Speaker 1: us heading in around a decade ago, in a period
Speaker 1: that was still significantly more optimistic than our current age.
Speaker 1: The Atlantics. Alexis Madrigal, when on a reading spree of
Speaker 1: some early twentieth century futurist novels, his conclusion was this quote.
Speaker 1: Technological optimists sold the world on automation by telling people
Speaker 1: it would create unimaginable amounts of leisure for them. The
Speaker 1: big question for the workers of the twenty first century
Speaker 1: would be how to spend their copious amounts of free time. Now,
Speaker 1: the future we've actually gotten has given us the opposite
Speaker 1: of this dream. To try and cover up the rank
Speaker 1: and rampant ways modern technology has failed. Human think tanks
Speaker 1: funded by venture capitalists and tech gurus produce an endless
Speaker 1: stream of identical futurist thinker types who write columns about
Speaker 1: how the world is actually better today than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: A good example of this would be this June column
Speaker 1: by Rob Ascar titled the World's getting better, Here's why
Speaker 1: your brain can't believe it. It opens with this paragraph
Speaker 1: life has improved for most people around the world over
Speaker 1: the past generation, temporary pandemics aside. The rub is that
Speaker 1: you can't get anyone to believe the good news, and
Speaker 1: the result is a toxic political environment and the potential
Speaker 1: collapse of democratic norms if too few people feel that
Speaker 1: a stressed system is worth saving. Now, I might point out,
Speaker 1: for example, that if people don't actually feel like the
Speaker 1: system is good, perhaps it's not really working well. There's
Speaker 1: a number of counter arguments you can make to this. Now,
Speaker 1: two years later, this again was written in June, We've
Speaker 1: got a massive war in Europe. People are worried about
Speaker 1: nuclear warfare as a result of that. Again, we've got
Speaker 1: a degradation of democracy world I that's continued to pace
Speaker 1: from where it was. We've got soaring inequality, we've got
Speaker 1: inflation the likes of which a lot of people alive
Speaker 1: have never seen, myself included prior to this point. And
Speaker 1: we still have a pandemic. So it's clear that Rob
Speaker 1: is at least not as smart as he thinks he is,
Speaker 1: which is what I would say about everyone who makes
Speaker 1: versions of the same claim that he was making. Now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean I'm saying that life is worse now
Speaker 1: than it was at some imagined pre lapse arian version
Speaker 1: of the past. I actually think that's kind of a
Speaker 1: useless way to think about the past. In the future,
Speaker 1: there's different things people would have preferred. There's things that
Speaker 1: are objectively better, there's things that are objectively indebatably worse.
Speaker 1: You know, that's hard to make those kind of claims
Speaker 1: about history, especially when they often rely on saying, well,
Speaker 1: X amount of more people have been pulled out of poverty.
Speaker 1: And the question to that is, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: before colonization of Africa, would you say all of those
Speaker 1: people in what became the colonized parts of Africa were
Speaker 1: in poverty or were they simply not part of a
Speaker 1: system that measures poverty and anyway whatever. We can go
Speaker 1: on and on about that. My point is that the
Speaker 1: metrics these people used to claim the success of our
Speaker 1: current system to talk about how wonderful things are today
Speaker 1: are constantly shifting, and they're widely arbitrary. The same year
Speaker 1: Rob wrote his stupid column, an in O r C
Speaker 1: studies showed that Americans self reported being happy at the
Speaker 1: lowest levels in fifty years. You can quote Jukes statistics
Speaker 1: about wealthare access to luxury goods all you want. But
Speaker 1: the modern world and the post two eight financial crash economy,
Speaker 1: all of which was built in the shade of the
Speaker 1: tech industry, is making people miserable now. Happiness is obviously
Speaker 1: not a perfect measure of progress either. Self reporting is
Speaker 1: always dicey, but things like the consumer price index in
Speaker 1: per capita income, which are often used by folks on
Speaker 1: the optimist side, are also juked and jiggered to hell
Speaker 1: and back. So to provide a bit more of an
Speaker 1: international scale, I'm going to quote from the Berkeley University's
Speaker 1: Greater Good magazine. Quote released annually on the International Day
Speaker 1: of Happiness, the World Happiness Report ranks countries based on
Speaker 1: their life satisfaction the Gallop World Pole. Residents rate how
Speaker 1: satisfied they are with their lives in a scale of
Speaker 1: zero to ten, from the worst possible life to the
Speaker 1: best possible life. This year's report also analyzes how global
Speaker 1: happiness has changed over time, based on data stretching back
Speaker 1: to two thousand five. One trend is very clear. Negative feelings, worry, sadness,
Speaker 1: and anger have been rising around the world, up by
Speaker 1: from two thousand ten to two thousand eighteen. The others
Speaker 1: also found troubling trends and happiness in equality, which is
Speaker 1: the psychological parallel to income inequality, how much individuals in
Speaker 1: society differ and how satisfied they are with life. Since
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, happiness inequality has been rising within countries,
Speaker 1: meaning that the gap between the unhappy and the happy
Speaker 1: has been getting wider. This trend is particularly strong in
Speaker 1: Latin America, Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. And this is
Speaker 1: kind of getting it. I think, what is an incredibly
Speaker 1: important point, for one thing, if you want to look
Speaker 1: at how people have self reported their unhappiness rising. This
Speaker 1: massive recent surge and unhappiness occurs almost at exactly the
Speaker 1: period of time that the smartphone takes off and becomes ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: And the smartphone is such a bafflingly useful device. I
Speaker 1: would never want to give mine up as a thing
Speaker 1: that I had access to, And the Internet is an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful tool. I wouldn't want to give the Internet
Speaker 1: up either. But the usefulness and the the undoubtable brilliance
Speaker 1: behind these products makes it seem inconceivable to argue that
Speaker 1: they haven't made us better at accomplishing the things that
Speaker 1: matter to us. But the evidence on this is pretty clear.
Speaker 1: I want to quote now from a write up in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic. No matter how aggressively you torture the numbers,
Speaker 1: the computer age has coincided with a decline in the
Speaker 1: rate of economic growth. When Chad Civerson, an economist at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago's Business School, looked at the question
Speaker 1: of missing growth, he found that the productivity slowdown has
Speaker 1: reduced GDP by two points seven trillion dollars since two
Speaker 1: thousand four. Americans may love their smartphones, but all those
Speaker 1: free apps aren't worth trillions of dollars. The physical world
Speaker 1: of the city, the glow of electric powered lights, the
Speaker 1: rumble of automobiles, the roar of air planes overhead, and
Speaker 1: subways below is a product of late nineteenth century in
Speaker 1: early twentieth century invention, the physical environment feels depressingly finished.
Speaker 1: The bulk of innovation has been shunted into the invisible
Speaker 1: realm of bites and code. All of that code, technology
Speaker 1: advocates argue, has increased human ingenuity by allowing individuals to tinker, talk,
Speaker 1: and trade with unprecedented ease. This certainly feels true. Who
Speaker 1: could dispute the fact that It's easier than ever to
Speaker 1: record music, market a video game, or publish an essay,
Speaker 1: but by most measures, individual innovation is in decline. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen, Americans were far less likely to
Speaker 1: start a company than they were in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: According to the economist Tyler Cohen, the spread of broadband
Speaker 1: technology has corresponded with a drop off an entrepreneurial activity
Speaker 1: in almost every city and in almost every industry. Now
Speaker 1: you might think from all this that I'm out ahead
Speaker 1: into some sort of techno dumer anti si primitivist rant here.
Speaker 1: I'm not. Perhaps I should, but I'm not. I am
Speaker 1: a person who loves technology. I got my start as
Speaker 1: a journalist. As a tech journalist, I joy as Lee
Speaker 1: traveled the world for years, visiting conventions looking at new gadgets.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this was in that pretty wondrous
Speaker 1: period if you're a gadget nerd from two thousand eight
Speaker 1: to two thousand eleven, where there were there's these amazing, new,
Speaker 1: weird sci fi gadgets dropping every single week, stuff that
Speaker 1: you'd grown up watching and like Star Trek, the next
Speaker 1: generation suddenly getting mailed to your door for you to
Speaker 1: test out. I tested hundreds of tablets and smart gadgets
Speaker 1: in that time frame, and there's some really great products
Speaker 1: that came out from that period. Bluetooth speakers are wonderful.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, including me, use them happily on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. But when it comes to legitimately life
Speaker 1: changing applications of technology that's come to us in the
Speaker 1: last fifteen years or so, I can really only think
Speaker 1: of three things. Number one is the ability to navigate
Speaker 1: by GPS basically everywhere. Number two is the ability to
Speaker 1: be in constant contact with people around the world. And
Speaker 1: number three is the ability to store a shipload of
Speaker 1: media on a portable device. So I'm not anti technology,
Speaker 1: Nor am I saying that big tech doesn't make things
Speaker 1: that are cool or useful? And what am I saying
Speaker 1: we should get rid of this stuff? The point I'm
Speaker 1: making is that viewed at thirty thousand feet, the tech
Speaker 1: industry has produced very little of quantifiable value to the
Speaker 1: human race, and it has caused unfathomable harm at the
Speaker 1: same time. Now, in my opinion, this has nothing, or
Speaker 1: at least fairly little to do with how the technology
Speaker 1: inherently works, and instead has everything to do with the
Speaker 1: ideology behind the people who developed and who continue to
Speaker 1: marshal that technology. In nine, two of the smartest guys
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century by my estimation, Richard Barbrook and
Speaker 1: Andy Cameron, wrote an essay about the ideology that animated
Speaker 1: the men who had come to dominate the twenty first
Speaker 1: century tech industry. They titled their essay the Californian Ideology,
Speaker 1: and I think it still counts as one of the
Speaker 1: three or four most incisive accurate essays of that century.
Speaker 1: The gist of the idea was that as the first
Speaker 1: wave of the digital boom started to hit in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen nineties, the thinkers behind it were fueled by
Speaker 1: a mix of left wing by a x of left
Speaker 1: wing egalitarian, often anti status beliefs that got wedded to
Speaker 1: right wing free market fundamentalist libertarian ideology and created this
Speaker 1: deeply toxic way of thinking about the future. You can
Speaker 1: see this in the story of guys like Steve Wozniak,
Speaker 1: the inventor of the personal computer, who was also a
Speaker 1: former phone freaker. He committed federal crimes as a kid,
Speaker 1: hacking the phone system primarily because fuck the man. But
Speaker 1: then when he's a young man the Waws hooks up
Speaker 1: with a guy named Steve Jobs, and Jobs is a
Speaker 1: brilliant but heartless con man who cares about nothing but
Speaker 1: market dominance. Jobs recognizes the naive brilliance of Steve Wozniak,
Speaker 1: and he turns it into an engine for wealth creation.
Speaker 1: At one point, he steals money that Wosniak was owed
Speaker 1: for a project that they took on together, money Wniac
Speaker 1: probably would have just given him if he'd asked, and
Speaker 1: he used it secretly to fund their business, which became Apple.
Speaker 1: In their essay, Cameron and Barbara, who are much better
Speaker 1: writers than I, described the Californian ideology this way. The
Speaker 1: Californian ideology is a mix of cyber and etics, free
Speaker 1: market economics, and counterculture libertarianism, and is promuligated by magazines
Speaker 1: such as Wired and Mondo two thousand and preached in
Speaker 1: the books of Stuart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and others. The
Speaker 1: New Faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students,
Speaker 1: thirty something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats, and even by
Speaker 1: the President of the USA himself. Now, the tech industry
Speaker 1: as we know it got its start courtesy of government money.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that the first version of the Internet was
Speaker 1: developed as part of a Defense Department project, but the
Speaker 1: entire computer industry, all of the coders and engineers who
Speaker 1: would form the first generation of Selincom Valley profit engines,
Speaker 1: all these guys got their start working for or as
Speaker 1: defense contractors. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, thousands
Speaker 1: of these people were left out of jobs and they
Speaker 1: were forced to move into the private sector. Everything worthwhile
Speaker 1: that's come out of big tech has involved a titanic
Speaker 1: amount of public funding, one way or the other. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that essay again. Almost every major
Speaker 1: technological advance of the last two hundred years has taken
Speaker 1: place with the aid of large outs of public money
Speaker 1: and under a good deal of government influence. The technologies
Speaker 1: of the computer in the net were invented with the
Speaker 1: aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the first difference
Speaker 1: Engine project received a British government grant of five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen thousand, four hundred and seventy pounds a small
Speaker 1: fortune in eighteen thirty four. From Colossus to EDVAC, from
Speaker 1: flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing has
Speaker 1: depended at key moments on public research handouts or fat
Speaker 1: contracts with public agencies. The IBM Corporation built the first
Speaker 1: programmable digital computer only after it was requested to do
Speaker 1: so by the U. S Defense Department during the Korean War.
Speaker 1: The result of a lack of state intervention meant that
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the first electronic
Speaker 1: computer in the late thirties when the Wehrmacht refused to
Speaker 1: fund Conrad Zooz, who had pioneered the use of binary code,
Speaker 1: stored programs, and electronic logic gates. One of the weirdest
Speaker 1: things about the Californian ideology is that the West Coast
Speaker 1: itself was a product of massive state intervention. Government dollars
Speaker 1: were used to build the irrigation systems, highway schools, universities,
Speaker 1: and other infrastructural projects which make the good life possible.
Speaker 1: On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast high
Speaker 1: tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork
Speaker 1: barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured
Speaker 1: billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics, and
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs from Californian companies. Americans have always had state planning,
Speaker 1: but they prefer to call it the defense budget. Now
Speaker 1: this state of affairs is more or less unchanged today.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is probably the most celebrated modern tech visionary.
Speaker 1: Miss Sundry companies have taken nearly five billion dollars in
Speaker 1: public funding, subsidies, and government support since two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: All of these libertarian visionaries, who push in their political
Speaker 1: lives for a world of lossyfair economics and corporate sovereignty,
Speaker 1: only produce value with the help of taxpayer dollars. Period.
Speaker 1: The irrational exuberance of public financing and the narcissism to
Speaker 1: ignore its role in innovation has given us a generation
Speaker 1: of tech industry overlords who seem bound and determined to
Speaker 1: destroy their own creations. Steve Jobs represented the most successful
Speaker 1: and probably the most intelligent manifestation of the Californian ideology.
Speaker 1: Every tech industry ghoul currently boiling away fortunes for the
Speaker 1: sake of their ego. I'm thinking of Zuckerberg and Musk
Speaker 1: most prominently right now is trying to be him. Steve's
Speaker 1: skill was being able to perfectly inhabit the form of
Speaker 1: a visionary, and he was so good at doing this
Speaker 1: that he convinced this generation they could follow in his footsteps.
Speaker 1: But Steve Jobs was only ever playing at being a creator,
Speaker 1: at being an inventor. His skill was not in making things.
Speaker 1: He had other people to do the making. Steve was
Speaker 1: an exceptional confidence man, and like all good confidence men,
Speaker 1: he was able to make money because he understood on
Speaker 1: a deep level what other human beings wanted. This skill
Speaker 1: allowed him to lock Apple into spending hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars on R and D for what would become
Speaker 1: the first proper smartphone, and for a while, he was
Speaker 1: just having them toss that money into an apparent chasm,
Speaker 1: repeatedly turning back iterations of the product that weren't quite right,
Speaker 1: on the strength of his belief that when they got
Speaker 1: it right, it would be worth it. In the year since,
Speaker 1: we've seen many wanna be Steves try to follow in
Speaker 1: his footsteps, igniting tens of billions of dollars of venture
Speaker 1: capital for absolutely nothing. One of the best examples would
Speaker 1: be Uber They lost eight point five billion dollars in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen six point eight billion dollars. Once upon
Speaker 1: a time, The understanding the jobs and vision of what
Speaker 1: Uber could be was that all of this ignited VC
Speaker 1: cash would be worthwhile because eventually the company would succeed
Speaker 1: in replacing human drivers with autonomous cars, cutting out the
Speaker 1: primary cost in the entire professional driving industry, and making
Speaker 1: the potential for a shipload of profit. But after investing
Speaker 1: more than a billion dollars in self driving cars, Uber
Speaker 1: sold their entire autonomous vehicle division off at a loss.
Speaker 1: All of that expense had resulted in self driving cars
Speaker 1: that averaged one half mile travel per accident. Despite this,
Speaker 1: after a two point six billion dollar loss in August two,
Speaker 1: Uber stock sword. Now the realities of what generates profit
Speaker 1: and loss in the tech industry have been completely divorced
Speaker 1: from productive reality or value created. For quite some time.
Speaker 1: The delamination of real value in big tech happens subtly.
Speaker 1: It's not hard to see why Apple, who created a
Speaker 1: device every human being wanted to have in their pocket,
Speaker 1: became worth a shipload more money, right, pretty obvious. The
Speaker 1: value case for Google's core business search is also pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: And as much as I hate Facebook, it became initially
Speaker 1: successful because it provided people with something of real value
Speaker 1: a way to stay in touch with human beings they
Speaker 1: had met over the course of their lives. Younger folks
Speaker 1: may find this odd because they've grown up with the Internet,
Speaker 1: but as a kid, I can remember very vividly my
Speaker 1: parents talking about the friends they'd had in high school
Speaker 1: and in college, and how a lifetime of moving regularly
Speaker 1: had severed many of the connections they'd valued with these people.
Speaker 1: When I joined Facebook and my freshman year of college,
Speaker 1: I found real value and the ability to maintain and
Speaker 1: sometimes even build stronger connections with people I would otherwise
Speaker 1: have lost touch with entirely. There is the core of
Speaker 1: something good, or something at least valued inherently by people
Speaker 1: in Facebook, and that's true with most, if not all,
Speaker 1: of the Big five companies. When people reflexively leap to
Speaker 1: defend the tech industry as an engine of innovation, they
Speaker 1: can point to these successes. But the point that I'm
Speaker 1: making isn't that no good ideas come out of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: or that there isn't anything valuable that is involved in
Speaker 1: what these companies do. It's that the endless quest for
Speaker 1: profit and the narcissism of this Californian ideology lead inevitably
Speaker 1: to the destruction of whatever value the industry creates. This
Speaker 1: is why none of these innovations have actually led to
Speaker 1: surges and productivity, why none of them have made us
Speaker 1: any happier, which I think might be more important. Any
Speaker 1: potential these creations had was smothered by the ideology that
Speaker 1: drives Silicon Valley money. Facebook took the connections that they'd
Speaker 1: made with people and used them to feed those same
Speaker 1: people rage bait. They destroyed the open Internet, shuttered countless
Speaker 1: local news sites, put tons of people out of business,
Speaker 1: while algorithmically pushing millions of folks around the world towards
Speaker 1: whatever kept them angriest and most online. Google spent billions
Speaker 1: on an endless stream of spinoff products like Google Plus
Speaker 1: and Google Glass, which were nearly all catastrophic failures, at
Speaker 1: least on a financial sense, and all the while they
Speaker 1: gradually turned the search results they prided themselves on into
Speaker 1: a sponsored ad feed. Google is less useful now than
Speaker 1: it was a couple of years ago. You noticed this
Speaker 1: immediately if you just get on there and start asking
Speaker 1: it questions. Elon Musk has taken the visionary technology that
Speaker 1: underpins the Tesla, all created by other people and used
Speaker 1: the clout from that to shatter any chance of California
Speaker 1: developing a high speed rail system. By the way, in
Speaker 1: June of two, Tesla stock value plunged seventy five billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which is substantially more money than the company has ever
Speaker 1: actually made. Elucidating the full scale of the failure of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley an American techno optimism would take more time
Speaker 1: than I'm able to spend right now, So instead, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the idea that's behind so much
Speaker 1: of the recent big failures that we've seen from big
Speaker 1: tech stuff like Meta pissing away ten billion dollars half
Speaker 1: the budget of NASA in a year to create a
Speaker 1: worse version of vr chat. The idea is called blitz scaling,
Speaker 1: and it basically means attempting to achieve massive scale at
Speaker 1: breakneck speed. You take big risks and you spend huge
Speaker 1: amounts of money very quickly to try enforce apps or
Speaker 1: other products onto the market that are then adopted rapidly
Speaker 1: by huge numbers of people. This brings in a shipload
Speaker 1: of VC money, and as a way that you can
Speaker 1: make a fortune. In the years since Jobs brought the
Speaker 1: first iPhone out, on stage. This has become the dominant
Speaker 1: model of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Everyone is looking for the
Speaker 1: next iPhone, right, something that can take over an industry,
Speaker 1: something you can take over the world that rapidly, that
Speaker 1: can change human life almost overnight. In Funding Calls, Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg says this. In Funding Calls, Mark Zuckerberg says this
Speaker 1: very directly, comparing his company's metaverse dreams to the new smartphone.
Speaker 1: The thing that Mark misses because his ideology renders it invisible,
Speaker 1: is that Steve Jobs didn't make people want the iPhone.
Speaker 1: He was able to figure out what they wanted already,
Speaker 1: what they had talked about wanting for decades, starting with
Speaker 1: trike orders and communicators on Star Trek, and he lashed
Speaker 1: his dev team until they built the damn thing. Now.
Speaker 1: The metaverse has some analogs in fiction, including the thing
Speaker 1: that it gets its name from, um, but number one,
Speaker 1: most depictions of the metaverse in fiction are not aspirational
Speaker 1: things people want their dystopian uh, there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: people actually want this thing that he's igniting a fortune
Speaker 1: to build, or that they'd spend meaningful periods of time
Speaker 1: in it if it existed. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: polling on this data, but one in seven but one
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand person survey I found showed less than twenty
Speaker 1: respondents respect expressing an interest in meta in a metaverse
Speaker 1: like the one Zuck is trying to build. The last
Speaker 1: time Facebook provided any kind of information about how many
Speaker 1: people are on Horizon Worlds, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: core of their metaverse efforts, it was somewhere around three
Speaker 1: dred thousand people in the most recent quarter. They declined
Speaker 1: to provide an update to those numbers, which suggests the
Speaker 1: number has not increased um And if you just want
Speaker 1: to look at what happens when people create a digital
Speaker 1: product that actually has a strong base of interest, look
Speaker 1: at how quickly World of Warcraft went from, you know,
Speaker 1: a thing that very few people outside of nerds would
Speaker 1: have known much about, to a thing that was entirely mainstream,
Speaker 1: millions of users, regular references to it on television. You're
Speaker 1: just not seeing that with any of this metaverse ship
Speaker 1: because there's nothing in it that people actually want. The
Speaker 1: sheer hollowness of big tech is starting to become financially
Speaker 1: obvious to Facebook. Stock has lost fifty seven percent of
Speaker 1: its value in the last year. Amazon is down Google
Speaker 1: by and even Apple has fallen by fourteen sent More
Speaker 1: to the point, I think any honest person has to
Speaker 1: look at the last fifteen years or so in which
Speaker 1: these companies have ruled our economic and social lives and asked,
Speaker 1: are we better off now? Over the course of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, productivity and income rose at unprecedented rates. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of brutality in this process, right. We talked,
Speaker 1: you know, on behind the Bastards regularly about all of
Speaker 1: the horrible labor things that happened in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: It also marked the beginning of the fossil fuel age,
Speaker 1: which may well kill us all. But while all this
Speaker 1: was going on, another thing that happened is wages for
Speaker 1: the working class doubled in the first half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and the second half. Life expectancy rose faster
Speaker 1: than it ever had before as well, and that continued
Speaker 1: through the first part of the twentieth century. Now, near
Speaker 1: the end of the first quarter of the twenty one century,
Speaker 1: we're not seeing that kind of movement. The United States
Speaker 1: is now ending its second consecutive year of declining life
Speaker 1: expectancy for the first time in any of our lifetimes,
Speaker 1: and real average wage adjusted for inflation, has remained flat
Speaker 1: for almost half a injury progress has flatlined, and nothing
Speaker 1: about how brilliant the modern tech industry is or how
Speaker 1: cool some of these gadgets and products are can change
Speaker 1: those fundamental facts. It's a failure. Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.