Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
Speaker 2: about things falling apart and how we try to put
Speaker 2: them back together again. I'm your guest host, Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: and with me this week is one of your regular hosts.
Speaker 2: Here higare Hello. This week is one of those putting
Speaker 2: things back together episodes. The premise of this episode is simple.
Speaker 2: Let's say you're newly radicalized. Maybe you were participant in
Speaker 2: the occupations and now the school year is over, or
Speaker 2: you got expelled and you're wondering what the next steps are.
Speaker 2: This won't be an all in one guide to how
Speaker 2: to become an activist, but it's sort of a sketch
Speaker 2: of one. It's also not quite a complete Summer twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four guide to protests, but there's some of that
Speaker 2: in here too. It's a magpie's guide to getting started
Speaker 2: in activism. I want to start with my own biases
Speaker 2: up front, because it's going to inform everything that I
Speaker 2: have to say about all of this. I'm an anarchist.
Speaker 2: It's also been decades since I've broke into the movement.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this stuff since two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: when I dropped out of college to join the ultra
Speaker 2: globalization movement. So I have biases towards things like dropping
Speaker 2: out of college because it worked for me, and I
Speaker 2: have You know, a lot of my experience isn't recent,
Speaker 2: at least my direct experience personally, but I've been watching
Speaker 2: people come into the movement for a very long time.
Speaker 2: I also have biases against authoritarian organizing and electoral organizing,
Speaker 2: and biases towards direct action and autonomy as models for
Speaker 2: radical social change. I believe this is how you build
Speaker 2: a freer and better world by practicing freedom along the way.
Speaker 2: But you can adapt this to suit your own interests.
Speaker 2: That's not to say I have any interest in guiding
Speaker 2: people towards specific paths, specific actions, specific issues and movements.
Speaker 2: Exactly the opposite. This is my attempt to kind of
Speaker 2: give a big picture view of how one might get
Speaker 2: involved right now. I don't know if you knew this gear.
Speaker 2: The world's kind of in trouble.
Speaker 3: I have heard this before. I have heard this said, Yeah, do.
Speaker 2: You ever think about how your job is to be
Speaker 2: a professional chicken little?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Sometimes I guess so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm definitely in the dredges trying to find
Speaker 3: what horrible things are always happening?
Speaker 2: Certainly, Yeah, I would say even though the world is
Speaker 2: always in serious trouble, it's like extra in serious trouble
Speaker 2: right now, and we are in desperate need of people
Speaker 2: who dedicate their time, whether part of it or all
Speaker 2: of it, to trying to stop the terrible things that
Speaker 2: are happening and trying to build beautiful things and beautiful alternatives.
Speaker 2: So how do you get started? I want you to
Speaker 2: think about a couple different things that are separate from
Speaker 2: each other. I want you to think about This isn't
Speaker 2: necessarily you gere, although you could if you want, sure,
Speaker 2: why not?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What do you care about? Like what issues are specifically
Speaker 2: important to you? It's the first thing to think about.
Speaker 2: The second is what do you want to do about it?
Speaker 2: And if you have a sense of that, and like
Speaker 2: also kind of how far you're willing to go. If
Speaker 2: you get a sense of those things before you throw
Speaker 2: yourself into the fight, you're going to start off strong.
Speaker 2: Those things can change, they will change over time, but
Speaker 2: getting a sense of those ahead of time is a
Speaker 2: good way to figure out which door you want to
Speaker 2: go in, and then also to avoid some of the
Speaker 2: dangers that lie on the other side of any given door.
Speaker 2: What do you care about? What movements and projects speak
Speaker 2: loudest to you? A ton of causes are interconnected, of course,
Speaker 2: right the fight for Palestinian liberation is not at its
Speaker 2: core a separate project than the fight against policing in
Speaker 2: the United States, for example, the rise of a global
Speaker 2: police state is everyone's problem, and so is the US
Speaker 2: and Zionist imperial project. Causes are interconnected, but you can
Speaker 2: rarely start by trying to fix everything. Usually got to
Speaker 2: pick somewhere to start working. You don't climb a mountain
Speaker 2: by just willing yourself to the top. You climate by
Speaker 2: picking a place and then starting to climate. Maybe you're
Speaker 2: concerned about the police state or surveillance, or the erosion
Speaker 2: of rights, or Palestinian liberation, or fighting for prisoners in
Speaker 2: the US to still have access to books, or for
Speaker 2: LGBT rights, or for migrants at the border, or for
Speaker 2: the protection of the remaining national ecosystems and stopping the
Speaker 2: expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. Maybe you're concerned about something
Speaker 2: hyper local, like the destruction of a local park or
Speaker 2: the sweeping of homeless encampments. Maybe it's something a bit
Speaker 2: broader and more abstract, like you want to get involved
Speaker 2: in explaining the need for police abolition, but there's something,
Speaker 2: there's something that you want to change. As a place
Speaker 2: to start, the second question is what do you want
Speaker 2: to do? There's multiple questions embedded in this. There's how
Speaker 2: far are you willing to go? We'll talk more of
Speaker 2: that later, more immediately, what is your skill set or
Speaker 2: what skill sets do you wish you had? Like a
Speaker 2: lot of times I'll just be like, oh, hey, what
Speaker 2: are you good at? And now'll go do that? But
Speaker 2: sometimes like what you're good at that isn't what you
Speaker 2: want to be doing. And it's also totally okay to
Speaker 2: be like, well what do I want to be good at?
Speaker 2: Like what do I want to be trying to focus
Speaker 2: on what do you have to offer the revolution or
Speaker 2: what do you wish you had to offer? Are you
Speaker 2: in med school or have other first aid or medical experience.
Speaker 2: Maybe you want to plug in with your local street medics.
Speaker 2: Are you studying law? Movement lawyers need paralegal help, and
Speaker 2: there are groups that use volunteers to get people out
Speaker 2: of jail or through difficult court cases. If graphic design
Speaker 2: is your passion. This is me referencing a meme from
Speaker 2: a million years ago and totally winning people over. Every
Speaker 2: group that exists needs help with their flyers or Instagram
Speaker 2: slideshows or whatever the fuck that is certainly the case. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: it's funny too, right, because it's like it's one of
Speaker 2: those things where if you do graphic design, you sort
Speaker 2: of think like, oh, everyone sort of does this or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: and then I've been part of groups where people are like,
Speaker 2: no one knows how to do this at all, and
Speaker 2: everything is that we make as garbage, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although there is actually a care full needle to
Speaker 3: thread in this vein, because if you've had enough experience,
Speaker 3: you can kind of figure out what type of action
Speaker 3: it's gonna be based on how well designed and the flyer.
Speaker 2: Is, yeah, and which way. If it's kind of corporate
Speaker 2: well designed, it's like gonna tie into electoral politics and
Speaker 2: be born. But if it's hip and well designed, it's
Speaker 2: a riot.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's sometimes there's some like very like well designed
Speaker 3: flyers that are not like very electoral, but they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: this will be a marge, will be some speeches. We'll
Speaker 3: kind of walk around a little bit because it's like
Speaker 3: a very well polataild flyer versus when you have like
Speaker 3: a white background of big block attacks, maybe one poorly
Speaker 3: cropped picture, you're like, okay, this is obviously a riot flyer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: It takes a degree of subtlety to get the instinctal
Speaker 3: difference when you're looking at a collection of flyers that
Speaker 3: are going out.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 2: This is interesting to me because in like about fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago, the people throwing the best riots were like
Speaker 2: a bunch of graphic designers, and so it was the
Speaker 2: specific h yeah, okay, okay, well you know, and actually,
Speaker 2: as a good graphic designer knows the language that they
Speaker 2: are speaking with and is what they're communicating, So that
Speaker 2: might be what you want to do is get involved
Speaker 2: in making the flyers. If you spend all day on Twitter.
Speaker 2: A lot of activist groups can't find someone to run
Speaker 2: their social media, or they have people who run it
Speaker 2: very badly. Sometimes being an extrovert is a superpower. Building
Speaker 2: strong movements means building strong communities, and every meeting and
Speaker 2: party needs someone willing to introduce themselves to the new
Speaker 2: people and help them figure out where to go. The
Speaker 2: best activist meetings I've ever been to have like someone
Speaker 2: who's there to sit next to new people and explain
Speaker 2: what's going on. Also, if you can plan a party,
Speaker 2: you can plan a benefit show to money for bail funds.
Speaker 2: There's kind of this like like whenever I talk about this, like, oh,
Speaker 2: everyone has their place and people are like, why don't
Speaker 2: I'm a fucking bookkeeper, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: we need you, or like, you know, all kinds of
Speaker 2: different skill sets that people like don't think apply actually
Speaker 2: do project manager. Yeah, we're we're not all instinctively good
Speaker 2: at that, you know. And so the quickest way to
Speaker 2: sum this part of it up is you think about
Speaker 2: what's wrong, and you think about what you're good at,
Speaker 2: and then you get together with other people and apply
Speaker 2: what you're good at to stopping what's wrong. That is
Speaker 2: the like one sentence version of how to start getting
Speaker 2: involved in making the world better. But the last part
Speaker 2: of it that I want the like question of it
Speaker 2: beforehand is risk analysis. It is very easy to get
Speaker 2: swept up in the moment and go beyond your comfort
Speaker 2: zone in terms of risk in a lot of different environments.
Speaker 2: The more you have sorted out ahead of time about
Speaker 2: what kinds of actions you're comfortable with strategically, morally, and personally.
Speaker 2: The easier it is to stick to your decisions when
Speaker 2: things get hard. For example, you might tell yourself, I
Speaker 2: will risk arrest, but I will not get arrested on
Speaker 2: purpose because I have a massage license I don't want
Speaker 2: to lose, or I have kids at home, or I'm undocumented,
Speaker 2: or I don't like the idea of jail. Whatever your
Speaker 2: reason is, there's plenty of reasons to make that decision.
Speaker 2: You might be willing to risk arrest, like be in
Speaker 2: a hectic riot, but you're not willing to lock your
Speaker 2: neck to a bulldozer. So when you go to the
Speaker 2: planning meeting for the lock your neck to a bulldozer
Speaker 2: action and you're trying to figure out who wants to
Speaker 2: lock their neck to the bulldozer, you've already made up
Speaker 2: your mind and you're less likely to kind of pressure
Speaker 2: yourself into volunteering.
Speaker 4: Or feel pressured by others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm imagining the positive version. Well, okay, because it's
Speaker 2: very rarely someone's like, hey, gear been a while since
Speaker 2: you locked your neck to anything, and it's usually more
Speaker 2: like man, it just sure would be good if someone
Speaker 2: was bold and noble enough to just step up right
Speaker 2: now now and then yeah yeah, yeah. I mean I've
Speaker 2: organized some of my friends arrests before, and it's it's
Speaker 2: not always that's not always the strategy that people want
Speaker 2: to be doing. Anyway, I'm just using this as an example,
Speaker 2: like a kind of Earth First style thing. If you
Speaker 2: know what your risk models are, you can make better decisions.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're fine with a spirited march, but as soon
Speaker 2: as windows start getting broken, you're like, you know, I
Speaker 2: want to leave. That's going to not be my scene.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not mad that the people did it,
Speaker 2: but it's not what I am willing to get arrested
Speaker 2: in response to. It's also important to know your risk levels,
Speaker 2: which kind of course shift because there are predators in
Speaker 2: the ranks of direct action activists. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you knew this, gre there's a shadowy, unaccountable group that
Speaker 2: tries to get people to break laws. They're called the FEDS.
Speaker 2: They're called the FBI. They have a history going back
Speaker 2: decades and then trapping people by coming up with bomb
Speaker 2: plots or ars and plots or whatever. And we're not
Speaker 2: going to go into this in depth in this episode,
Speaker 2: but if you want to do more research, people should
Speaker 2: look up They should read about cointel pro it's an acronym,
Speaker 2: or read about the case of Eric McDavid, or read
Speaker 2: about how the FBI set up Muslim Americans in the
Speaker 2: wake of nine to eleven. But another thing you should
Speaker 2: go into all this knowing is that that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that everyone who wants to do those kinds of actions
Speaker 2: is working with the Feds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you shouldn't go around accusing everyone you don't
Speaker 3: like of possibly being a secret and federal agent.
Speaker 2: Because you know who likes accusing people of being federal agents.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also our sponsors they don't, they don't. They're all great.
Speaker 2: They might, they might, I don't know. I can't really
Speaker 2: speak to them, but here they are, they can speak
Speaker 2: to you, and we're back. That is a thing that
Speaker 2: is absolutely worth anyone who's getting involved in activism, especially
Speaker 2: direct action activism, including above grounds some of this obedient
Speaker 2: style action. It is really worth understanding the ways in
Speaker 2: which federal oppression works, and how federal oppression works often
Speaker 2: by the fear of federal oppression and getting people to
Speaker 2: spread paranoia and so as a general rule, The way
Speaker 2: that I've always heard it talked about is that it's
Speaker 2: like you never want to be like, hey, I think
Speaker 2: that guy's a fed. Instead you're like, hey, guy, that
Speaker 2: kind of behavior is disruptive and leads towards bad things,
Speaker 2: you know, Like yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think I even have some hesitation to just
Speaker 3: be like you should just just go google co intel
Speaker 3: pro and learn all about it, because I feel like
Speaker 3: that can also lead to someone kind of falling down
Speaker 3: like some conspiracy brained rabbit holes, and like, I've gotten
Speaker 3: the best information by just talking to older people who've
Speaker 3: been in the movement for a while, and like just
Speaker 3: like if someone had like over ten years of experience
Speaker 3: and they're like, you can learn a lot about what
Speaker 3: has happened before through just like actual, like in person conversations.
Speaker 3: And I have found that to be much more useful
Speaker 3: than just like going down like a Google rabbit hole,
Speaker 3: because that can just kind of lead to I think
Speaker 3: slightly even slightly more like paranoid thinking or just it
Speaker 3: just becomes like less applicable than like, hey, you have
Speaker 3: like a friend of a friend who's like done this
Speaker 3: for a while, and you just ask, hey, like what
Speaker 3: if what do you know about this sort of thing?
Speaker 3: Now you're right, what are your experiences of kind of
Speaker 3: of facing like repression in the past. The true chances
Speaker 3: are some of them will probably know people who've either
Speaker 3: turned out to be like informants, has started informing or
Speaker 3: were we're bad actors from the from the get go,
Speaker 3: like it's it does, it does happen. And there's even
Speaker 3: been case it's not even just like stuff from ten
Speaker 3: fifteen years ago. There's a lot of that stuff post
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. Some really some stuff in in Chicago, some
Speaker 3: stuff in Colorado Springs have gotten decent news coverage. I
Speaker 3: think you can also you can look to articles specifically
Speaker 3: of the Colorado Springs infiltration that the FBI was running
Speaker 3: around twenty twenty. I think that's a really useful case
Speaker 3: study for a more recent version as opposed to like
Speaker 3: the green scare stuff from at this point like twenty
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's true, and there's a good there's actually
Speaker 2: a good podcast series where I liked it called Alphabet Boys.
Speaker 2: The first season is about that case. No, that's a
Speaker 2: good point that you that random internet search is not
Speaker 2: the way to get this kind of information. This information,
Speaker 2: like you'll Honestly, it's kind of funny. I would trust
Speaker 2: a random zine in a radical bookstore far more than
Speaker 2: I would trust a Google search result. Agreed, which is
Speaker 2: not true for everything like healthcare. Well, you're gonna get
Speaker 2: shit answers no matter what if you do that. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: the internet is gonna tell you of cancer and the
Speaker 2: zine's gonna tell you that t tre oil will fix it.
Speaker 4: Yes, there we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that is actually a very good point,
Speaker 2: and it is the kind of thing that yeah, the
Speaker 2: longer you're involved, the more you're just like, oh yeah, yeh,
Speaker 2: the you know my ex who's a snitch that sucks?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Anyway, now you have what you care about, what your
Speaker 2: skills are in your risk analysis, it's time to get started.
Speaker 2: How there's two basic ways, and they're not really a dichotomy.
Speaker 2: But you can plug into something that exists and you
Speaker 2: can start something of your own, and both are valid
Speaker 2: and both have advantages and disadvantages. There are structures and
Speaker 2: movements that are already in place that are desperate for
Speaker 2: your help. There's a catch. Many, not all, but many
Speaker 2: of the more reasonable groups are challenging to break into.
Speaker 2: Very few groups have a truly open door policy, and
Speaker 2: those that do honestly sometimes or suspect. Yeah, some of
Speaker 2: those people are just trying to use you. They're trying
Speaker 2: to suck you into a political political cult, or use
Speaker 2: your energy and burn you out for some vaguely progressive
Speaker 2: politician or activist cause. Oh. Either way, you're going to
Speaker 2: need to exercise some common sense and do some reading
Speaker 2: and research about what you're getting into. The best publicly
Speaker 2: accessible groups and movements are the ones that are organized
Speaker 2: from the bottom up, because the participants themselves have a
Speaker 2: say in what's happening. There is less ability to be
Speaker 2: sucked into a cult and used. That's not to say
Speaker 2: it's impossible, and there are such things as decentralized cults
Speaker 2: that don't do any you know.
Speaker 4: Many such cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I know it's easy and convenient to join
Speaker 2: a group that'll just tell you what to do. It's
Speaker 2: very nice to imagine that there's benevolent people who will
Speaker 2: just do the hard part of making decisions and you
Speaker 2: can just show up and clock in and listen to
Speaker 2: what they have to say and make the world a
Speaker 2: better place. This is rarely, if ever the case, I
Speaker 2: can't point to examples of it being the case. Movements
Speaker 2: that maintain everyone's autonomy. Instead, I think are what are interesting,
Speaker 2: and they often do it by not being a group
Speaker 2: at all, just a movement. The uprisings of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: I think are a a brilliant example of this. There's
Speaker 2: not the group that organized no, And.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of smaller, smaller groups, whether that be
Speaker 3: some like informal organizations, formal organizations, or just like groups
Speaker 3: of friends that it was. It's made up of a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of these smaller groups. And I think a lot,
Speaker 3: a lot of times the best case scenario in many
Speaker 3: cases is if you have like a friend or too,
Speaker 3: because you shouldn't really showed things alone. I would say,
Speaker 3: but if you have a friend or two, go with
Speaker 3: the friender too, just like just go to things. And
Speaker 3: if you go to enough things and people see you,
Speaker 3: you can chat with people, you can start learning more
Speaker 3: about kind of what the different mechanisms in each different city,
Speaker 3: and each each even't seen how how they operate. It's
Speaker 3: it's kind of silly just to be like no, you
Speaker 3: just like have to like show up. But like that
Speaker 3: is kind of a lot of how it works. You'll
Speaker 3: maybe hear about a Instagram account that posts flyers for
Speaker 3: semi weekly like picnics organized by some of these same people,
Speaker 3: and then you can go to events like that and
Speaker 3: learn to like soci And it really just does require
Speaker 3: a degree of just showing up. And you shouldn't go
Speaker 3: by yourself. You should if you you should ideally have
Speaker 3: a friend or too that you that is that they
Speaker 3: would be okay going with you. But then you'll you'll
Speaker 3: find people to connect with and you'll kind of maybe
Speaker 3: find a different group of people that you want to
Speaker 3: start hanging out with more. I think in general that's
Speaker 3: kind of how the best case scenario works, as opposed
Speaker 3: to like joining like a big above ground organization which
Speaker 3: is just going to use your body as a tool
Speaker 3: to get arrested as or just treat you as disposable
Speaker 3: or in other cases just be actually kind of like abuse.
Speaker 2: Of I agree with that, and that's some of that
Speaker 2: we're going to get into also. But yeah, no, and
Speaker 2: I will say overall, absolutely it is better to do
Speaker 2: those things with friends. I didn't I started going to
Speaker 2: things alone. That has something to do with my temperament,
Speaker 2: and that has something to do with my social standing
Speaker 2: when I was in college and decided to get involved
Speaker 2: in the movement. But overall, that is the best practice.
Speaker 2: But if you're listening to this and you're like, I
Speaker 2: don't have friends I can go do this stuff with,
Speaker 2: there are more risks involved, and you're also kind of stuck.
Speaker 2: You're gonna go to a lot of things where no
Speaker 2: one will talk to you, yeah, you know, and you
Speaker 2: can't necessarily expect that people talk to you immediately or like,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna have to be a little bit more
Speaker 2: self motivated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're going to a zine fair, you
Speaker 3: can chow some people at like the tables. When you're
Speaker 3: looking for a zine, it's like it's, yeah, now everyone's
Speaker 3: gonna want to get into a deep personal conversation with
Speaker 3: a stranger they met at at an event like this,
Speaker 3: because it also has like security risks. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's going to require a little bit of uncomfortable
Speaker 3: social interactions, which for yeah, for someone like you or
Speaker 3: me who did go to a lot of these things
Speaker 3: just by ourselves.
Speaker 4: You know, it just it just kind of.
Speaker 2: Takes more time, No, totally, And I think actually zine
Speaker 2: fairs and things like that, and anarchist book fairs and
Speaker 2: all that are like really good examples of places that
Speaker 2: are publicly facing that are designed for people to interact
Speaker 2: with each other. And also, like one of the main
Speaker 2: pieces of advice that we have is be brave, right,
Speaker 2: and we talk about that in terms of like street actions.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, okay, also social anxiety exactly exactly because
Speaker 2: how much of so social anxiety will become like an
Speaker 2: inhibiting factor, similar to like the state. Not saying those
Speaker 2: things are equal, but they can both like inhibit you
Speaker 2: from doing things, and it's both you can you can
Speaker 2: kind of approach it via similar means of trying to
Speaker 2: like overcome this thing that is limiting your autonomy. Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 2: So to go back to, if you're joining an existing group,
Speaker 2: some groups maintain everyone's autonomy by being structured horizontally. Some
Speaker 2: groups that exist as a structure will do it by
Speaker 2: being structured horizontally. If you found yourself for go ahead,
Speaker 2: claim to be structured horizontally as well. No, it's true,
Speaker 2: but like like if you join a local Earth first chapter,
Speaker 2: you're going to find there's absolutely informal hierarchies that exist
Speaker 2: within these things, and they're like worth being aware of.
Speaker 2: But the decision about who's to lock their neck to
Speaker 2: the bulldozer is going to involve everyone who might lock
Speaker 2: their neck to the bulldozer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not the same as like the DSA or
Speaker 3: the PSL like it's it's going to be a very
Speaker 3: a very different, uh organizational structure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And so you know, you want to be
Speaker 2: part of the decision making about locking your neck to
Speaker 2: a bulldozer because it's your neck on the line. That's
Speaker 2: my best joke in the whole script. I'm sorry, we'll
Speaker 2: just move past it quickly. Thanks. Plugging into an existing
Speaker 2: project is often the good first step. What I did
Speaker 2: personally I started showing up to the meetings of this
Speaker 2: radical media project, Indie Media. I had film skills, and
Speaker 2: soon enough I found myself in the film collective. I
Speaker 2: spent a year or two bouncing around from demonstration to demonstration,
Speaker 2: coordinating with all the radical videographers to collect everyone's footage
Speaker 2: and edit together news of its about what had happened.
Speaker 2: While we collectively fostered a culture of like respectful riot videography.
Speaker 4: I did not realize we had that similar background.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, that it's interesting because I don't I
Speaker 2: don't do that stuff anymore. But that was like my
Speaker 2: thing for a long time.
Speaker 3: Me either, actually, But no, I did not realize we
Speaker 3: had we had that. Uh we had that Overlapp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and it was it was great and it
Speaker 2: was fun and we you know, we taught how to
Speaker 2: not film people's faces. We coordinated runners where in order
Speaker 2: to get footage out before the cops could get it.
Speaker 2: We'd make sure everyone, you know, someone, every videographer had
Speaker 2: someone next to them, like ready to run out of
Speaker 2: the situation.
Speaker 4: Take this SD card and run yep, exactly.
Speaker 2: And I started off by joining an existing group that
Speaker 2: was doing this, but within a few months I was
Speaker 2: doing it independently and coordinating with different groups that came
Speaker 2: together at all these different summit protests because I was
Speaker 2: a known entity to people. You know, it was fun.
Speaker 2: I dropped out of school where I've been studying film
Speaker 2: and photography, and even before I would have graduated, a
Speaker 2: film I had edited sold out a movie theater in Portland.
Speaker 2: We didn't have YouTube, so we organized in person.
Speaker 3: Kate, that makes sense, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: When when we shut the city down on like March
Speaker 2: twentieth or whatever, twenty two thousand and three, for to
Speaker 2: try and stop the Iraq war. I like didn't sleep
Speaker 2: and just edited everyone's film footage together and made a
Speaker 2: like thirty minute documentary about the day of protest and
Speaker 2: sold out a movie theater and I was like, damn,
Speaker 2: this was way better for my career than going to
Speaker 2: fuck it, staying at school. I mean, like, my name
Speaker 2: isn't on it, but that like didn't matter to me. Sure,
Speaker 2: And then everyone the local news media got really mad
Speaker 2: because I didn't include the stuff that could have been
Speaker 2: used in people's court cases, like the time that people
Speaker 2: attacked cops on the bridge, because I was like, nope,
Speaker 2: that's too recent. We don't know what's happening there anyway.
Speaker 2: And get into certain types of groups is kind of
Speaker 2: like applying for a shitty job. A job that'll take
Speaker 2: you without reference is going to treat you like shit.
Speaker 2: But jobs that are worth having require you to somehow
Speaker 2: have already been doing the job before you got hired,
Speaker 2: And once people know who you are, it's easier to
Speaker 2: find folks who work with And I think gear suggestions
Speaker 2: is like the main way you go about that is
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily show up to organize. You just show
Speaker 2: up to participate. You show up to talks, you show
Speaker 2: up to radical bookstores and public events and zine fairs
Speaker 2: and protests and whatever interests you you know, And I
Speaker 2: would say that if you're going to actions and you're new,
Speaker 2: remember to be both brave and cautious. If you tend
Speaker 2: towards recklessness and being swept into things, maybe make sure
Speaker 2: you take less of a frontline's role until you get
Speaker 2: your legs underneath you. But it really is okay to
Speaker 2: be brave. I think we're asked by the times we
Speaker 2: live in to be brave, and sometimes we're going to
Speaker 2: have to step outside of our comfort zone. We should
Speaker 2: just always look to make sure it's us encouraging us
Speaker 2: to step outside of our comfort zone instead of political
Speaker 2: actors whatever political ideology they call themselves.
Speaker 3: And also if you can another another collective that people
Speaker 3: you know, these are like usually like medic collectives will
Speaker 3: maybe maybe we'll have like a radical media collective and
Speaker 3: another another one will be a jail support collective is
Speaker 3: very common a lot of cities, and not even if
Speaker 3: you don't want to take part in that, if you
Speaker 3: can at least get in touch with them to fill
Speaker 3: out a jail support form before going to things that
Speaker 3: will also be useful in case you do end up
Speaker 3: getting arrested, so people can actually find you in the
Speaker 3: system and help you get out of get out. Just
Speaker 3: another another quick tip, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you want more quick tips, I've got
Speaker 2: some for you right now and we're back. Don't do
Speaker 2: anything that you just got told by voices that aren't
Speaker 2: me or there.
Speaker 4: They were trying to sihap you. It is. It is
Speaker 4: the yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another way that you might get involved in something
Speaker 2: is you Some groups are semi open where you can
Speaker 2: contact them and express interest and they might do some
Speaker 2: basic screening to make sure you're not like a Nazi
Speaker 2: infiltrator or whatever. I'm in the process right now of
Speaker 2: doing that with clinic escorting. It's like funny because i
Speaker 2: haven't had to like prove myself to any group in
Speaker 2: a long time, right because I'm like I've been around forever.
Speaker 2: The clinic escorting group, it's like, we don't fucking know
Speaker 2: who you are. And I'm like, yeah, that's fair, give
Speaker 2: me that. Yeah, No, absolutely, I live in a place
Speaker 2: is not where abortion is not particularly popular with the
Speaker 2: right wing, and so I submitted my name and social
Speaker 2: media accounts to the to the abortion clinic escorting place,
Speaker 2: and then we'll go to a training at some point
Speaker 2: soon for folks living in southern California or willing to
Speaker 2: go there. For example, there are groups that do border solidarity,
Speaker 2: working with refugees to make sure they're fed in house.
Speaker 2: If you listen to this podcast, you've heard James talking
Speaker 2: about this, and this is the first episode you've listened to,
Speaker 2: in which case, go back and listen to James talking
Speaker 2: about border solidarity work. If you want to show up
Speaker 2: and distribute food and water, track border patrol activity, build shelters,
Speaker 2: do First DAID, all of that, feel like you're part
Speaker 2: of something because you are and are like saving people's
Speaker 2: lives directly. That's something you can likely get involved with,
Speaker 2: but it's not something you just show up at. There
Speaker 2: are a few groups doing that work, any of whom
Speaker 2: you can reach out to and express interest. There's Border Kindness,
Speaker 2: there's Borderlands Relief Collective and Al Ultra Lado, and there's
Speaker 2: other groups like this in different areas. But these are
Speaker 2: the examples where I asked James being like, Hey, how
Speaker 2: do I explain the following concept? In general, you want
Speaker 2: to look for groups. If you're looking for groups, to
Speaker 2: look for groups that are grassroots and non authoritarian. You
Speaker 2: want to watch out for electoral campaigns, and you want
Speaker 2: to watch out for nonprofits. This is not to say
Speaker 2: that the people doing these things are necessarily bad. There
Speaker 2: are local political campaigns that matter, and there are nonprofits
Speaker 2: that do good work. Some of the best political work
Speaker 2: I ever did was two years out a nonprofit, honestly,
Speaker 2: but I was with one of the good ones. And
Speaker 2: structurally those systems, even the good ones, are set up
Speaker 2: to take advantage of people's energy and then like kind
Speaker 2: of profit off of it, right, and to accomplish goals
Speaker 2: that are often tangential to or even counter to the
Speaker 2: goals that they claim. For example, both politicians and nonprofits
Speaker 2: live off of donations. These donations are easy for them
Speaker 2: to get when those groups are seen as necessary, so
Speaker 2: a nonprofit has a financial interest in not winning. Some
Speaker 2: nonprofits manage to maintain their focus and make themselves work
Speaker 2: to make themselves obsolete, but frankly those are the minority.
Speaker 2: You also want to look out for groups that are
Speaker 2: front groups for authoritarian groups attached to communist political parties
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, like the PSL the Party for Socialism
Speaker 2: and Liberation. Generally speaking, these groups will go to protests
Speaker 2: and run events primarily as a way to recruit people
Speaker 2: into a hierarchical structure. These groups are often trying to
Speaker 2: control broader movements that they're involved in. They'll tell people
Speaker 2: how they can and can't pro test, and they're trying
Speaker 2: to essentially own movements that were built by others. So
Speaker 2: those are things to be careful around. You can also
Speaker 2: just not worry about any of that stuff and start
Speaker 2: something yourself. It is not the easy mode to get
Speaker 2: into the movement by starting your own projects. We're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about a ffinity groups later. Actually it was just
Speaker 2: the thing that you kind of started to bring up,
Speaker 2: But it is very rewarding to start your own projects.
Speaker 2: It's like freelancing instead of looking for a job. There's
Speaker 2: no gatekeepers to cross, and the only person who's trying
Speaker 2: to take advantage of you is you. If you want
Speaker 2: to never not be working another day in your life,
Speaker 2: you can freelance or start your own political project. It'll
Speaker 2: be what you think about every hour you're alive in essence,
Speaker 2: the idea here is to say, okay, what's wrong and
Speaker 2: what are we willing to do about it, and then
Speaker 2: get together with your friends and start doing something about it.
Speaker 2: This can look like anything.
Speaker 4: You could start.
Speaker 2: A mutual aid group, bookstore, an anti fascist jim to
Speaker 2: Trained to defend yourself from fascists. Illegal HRT distribution in
Speaker 2: band States, a direct action abortion collective, a zine distributor
Speaker 2: that goes to shows and parties with free literature about anarchism.
Speaker 2: A podcast about how things fall apart and how to
Speaker 2: put them back together again. A click of saboteurs who
Speaker 2: attack billboards. A group that draws attention to international movement
Speaker 2: prisoners and support them. Like you can do anything, And
Speaker 2: that's one of the like things that people. Our society
Speaker 2: is designed to tell us that we can't just do
Speaker 2: anything we want. There's obviously things that if we do,
Speaker 2: we'll get in trouble eventually, but like you know, okay.
Speaker 3: Like like if you make a podcast that's too good,
Speaker 3: yeah they will, they will turn on you, like Jesus,
Speaker 3: yeah exactly. Or if you go around you know, wanting
Speaker 3: to destroy construction equipment, right.
Speaker 2: Not usually legal. I'm not a lawyer, I can't tell
Speaker 2: you whether or not any given bulldozer is illegal to destroy.
Speaker 2: That is the kind of research you might have to
Speaker 2: do on your own. The difference between start something and
Speaker 2: enjoining something is often blurry. For example, you can unionize
Speaker 2: your workplace. You probably should, but you might want to
Speaker 2: do that in the context of an existing union like
Speaker 2: the Industrial Workers of the World or whatever union makes the.
Speaker 4: Most so the writer's field of America.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: If you have a podcast about how the world's falling apart, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: If you're going to start something above ground, it's worth
Speaker 2: looking around and making sure that the need isn't already
Speaker 2: being met by someone else already. Sometimes it's better to
Speaker 2: figure out how to help an existing bail fund rather
Speaker 2: than start another. But also sometimes it is better to
Speaker 2: start another, Like it's harder for the police to raide,
Speaker 2: for example, which didn't used to be an issue when
Speaker 2: you start bail funds, but is now an issue, which
Speaker 2: is worth pointing out that like there's no true safety,
Speaker 2: you know, like when we talk about risk analysis, like
Speaker 2: running a bail fund is entirely legal and is the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that often is done by the people
Speaker 2: who care about a movement and are like not frontlines people, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Aren't wanting to do felonies in downtown right Portland or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the more successful a movement is the broader. The
Speaker 2: state repression will reach out to the fringes, not the French.
Speaker 2: I mean the bail fund isn't the fringe, but the
Speaker 2: less privery. The people who aren't committing the felon felonies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: are going to get tagged with felonies anyway, because the
Speaker 2: state being repressive is the reason we're fighting it.
Speaker 3: They will still get their houses rated. And it's the
Speaker 3: same same thing ad demos. You don't need to be
Speaker 3: the one breaking windows for the police to tackle you.
Speaker 3: Like at a certain point, it actually doesn't. It seems
Speaker 3: to matter very little. I mean if things get to trial,
Speaker 3: then things you know will maybe matter a bit more.
Speaker 3: But in like how police display the power of the state,
Speaker 3: Like out in the open world, it really doesn't matter
Speaker 3: if you're holding a sign or you're holding a ham
Speaker 3: or when you're getting tackled from behind by a big
Speaker 3: man with a gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, which is why it's like kind of worth
Speaker 2: I mean that's like almost like what the answer to
Speaker 2: that is like solidarity, and by recognizing that to a
Speaker 2: certain degree, if you were at a protest and people
Speaker 2: are breaking windows and it's like, okay, well now we're
Speaker 2: all in danger together, and if that is a danger
Speaker 2: beyond what you particularly feel like exposing yourself to, that
Speaker 2: is probably the time to depart. Another pitfall to avoid
Speaker 2: if you're starting your own thing. Any group that involves
Speaker 2: money will at some point have someone from that group
Speaker 2: steal the.
Speaker 3: Money, including bail fuds. Unfortunately, it does happen, and it sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have lost count of the number of times
Speaker 2: someone who was an organizer has stolen all of the
Speaker 2: money from this or that thing. And that's because capitalism
Speaker 2: puts people in absolutely weird and terrible positions. Right, it's
Speaker 2: still not okay for people to steal the bail fund,
Speaker 2: and we should stop them. But often the people who
Speaker 2: steal the stuff, if they're the organizers, they don't even
Speaker 2: necessarily conceptualize what they did as stealing. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pay that back. I don't think anyone needs
Speaker 2: it right now. I just need it for rent.
Speaker 3: In order for the bail fund to continue, I have
Speaker 3: to have stable housing so I need to use these
Speaker 3: two thousand dollars right now, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right without checking with the rest of the group,
Speaker 2: and like, you know, like and so if there's money involved,
Speaker 2: you should set up some best practices around multiple eyes
Speaker 2: on the money at any given point and making sure
Speaker 2: that it's accountable to the broader group. One organizing model
Speaker 2: that is worth considering is the affinity group. This is
Speaker 2: basically you and some of your closest friends that you
Speaker 2: feel like doing safe with actions with, whatever the scale
Speaker 2: of actions, you get together with your friends.
Speaker 3: Or people you're not even necessarily like social friends with,
Speaker 3: but people you feel comfortable working with, because there sometimes
Speaker 3: is a distinction. Like you said, sometimes you have a
Speaker 3: lot of close friends you don't want int your affinity group,
Speaker 3: and sometimes there's people in your affinity group that you
Speaker 3: may not really want to hang out with like every
Speaker 3: week totally, but they're good to work with. Now, that's
Speaker 3: a really good point. It's about trust rather than like
Speaker 3: getting along with sometimes you know, yeah, it might function
Speaker 3: better if you know, you don't all hate each other, ah,
Speaker 3: have some affinity yeah, yes, you know, but perhaps you
Speaker 3: have a shared affinity within the group.
Speaker 2: Ideally, Yeah, it is if you're in a riot, whether
Speaker 2: by choice or by accident, you are safer and you
Speaker 2: can feel more comfortable if you are there with two
Speaker 2: or seven of your closest and most trustworthy friends or frenemies.
Speaker 2: These are the people who are the most likely to
Speaker 2: de arrest you. These are the people who are there
Speaker 2: to notice if you are caught and will organize your bail.
Speaker 2: These are the people who'll be in direct commun You'll
Speaker 2: be in direct communication with during the protest, so you
Speaker 2: can coordinate your actions together.
Speaker 3: It's figure out how you want to get into the
Speaker 3: area get out of the area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that's like a going alone is sort
Speaker 2: of expert mode, and so you should take fewer risks
Speaker 2: if you go alone until you are good, you know,
Speaker 2: and most people do not prefer and are not better
Speaker 2: off going to protest alone. And then the final thing
Speaker 2: kind of tying together the existing groups versus whatever else
Speaker 2: existing protests movements EBB and flow protests are contagious, especially
Speaker 2: when they're rowdy and they show that they take themselves
Speaker 2: seriously enough to not just go along with whatever professional
Speaker 2: protest managers tell them to do, and take themselves seriously
Speaker 2: enough to resist the police and authorities. It's more or
Speaker 2: less impossible to know which protests like sparks, will catch
Speaker 2: a bigger fire. It is good and useful to cast
Speaker 2: sparks and see what catches, or to notice when something
Speaker 2: is starting to spread and to help it spread.
Speaker 3: Like what happened a few weeks ago with the campus stuff,
Speaker 3: right exactly? What are two places really start popping off?
Speaker 3: And you're like, hey, I know some people in college
Speaker 3: who are in whatever town I'm in.
Speaker 4: Maybe we can figure something out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so's if that was your involvement. And you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's not currently happening where I am anymore. What do
Speaker 2: I do next? Things like that will happen again, and
Speaker 2: you can also make things like that happen. Most of
Speaker 2: the time they will not catch. However, sometimes they do,
Speaker 2: and that is like kind of our job in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways is to organize things and try things
Speaker 2: and see what catches. I'm curious your take. There are
Speaker 2: two political conventions happening this year. The Republican National Convention
Speaker 2: will happen from July fifteenth to eighteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: in Milwaukee, and then in August nineteenth to twenty second
Speaker 2: in Chicago is the Democratic National Convention. They're basically always
Speaker 2: protests at these conventions to me, and I'm a little
Speaker 2: bit out of touch with it. There's going to be
Speaker 2: more this year, Yeah, that's what I'm thinking there certainly will,
Speaker 2: I think, especially at the DNC. I don't have much
Speaker 2: to say on this at this point besides read up
Speaker 2: on the previous ones that have happened. You can go
Speaker 2: all the way back to sixty eight if you want
Speaker 2: to read about Chicago and the DNC, but also like
Speaker 2: the RNC protests from the Iraq War era, I think
Speaker 2: would be verally useful to look at. If you want
Speaker 2: to go back to like two thousand and eight and
Speaker 2: see how those protests were, I would just recommend reading
Speaker 2: up on it. I don't really have much else to
Speaker 2: say on those in the moment. They're too far out
Speaker 2: totally to forecast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of all I'll say at the moment.
Speaker 3: These will become recurring topics on this podcast the next
Speaker 3: few months.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And so keep track of what's happening and
Speaker 2: get ready to go to what you feel comfortable with,
Speaker 2: and don't be afraid to be brave, but don't let
Speaker 2: anyone trick you into doing stuff that you're not comfortable with.
Speaker 2: But we need you. We're glad you're here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't be.
Speaker 3: So down that the school year is over and these
Speaker 3: campus protests only had a few weeks to live. I
Speaker 3: know there were certainly people who were really hoping that
Speaker 3: after we saw you know, what happened during April and May,
Speaker 3: that maybe this would you know, trigger things happening off
Speaker 3: campus around the summer.
Speaker 4: And maybe they still will.
Speaker 3: And at the very least, we have a lot of
Speaker 3: young people listener, possibly included, who like experienced their first
Speaker 3: example of like actual state violence like on them, and
Speaker 3: that can be a very radicalizing experience. So yeah, don't
Speaker 3: don't be so down that maybe your occupation didn't go
Speaker 3: as well as you wanted to. Maybe you're protested, and
Speaker 3: but I think there's a lot of lessons to learn
Speaker 3: from what happened the past month, and they will become applicable,
Speaker 3: possibly this summer, possibly two years from now, who knows.
Speaker 3: Like it's hard to say, but yeah, it's whenever you
Speaker 3: get that first hint of tear gas, you kind of
Speaker 3: become a different person, in my opinion, So congratulations to
Speaker 3: everyone who that hopefully didn't get arrested, and if you did,
Speaker 3: hopefully you have a jail support crew that is helping
Speaker 3: you out.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I think that people never really
Speaker 2: recover from isn't the right word. The first time you
Speaker 2: see the police retreat totally, you recognize that this thing
Speaker 2: you have been taught is completely unassailable. The reason they're
Speaker 2: building cop cities is they know they are assailable and
Speaker 2: they want to be less. So well, listen to this podcast,
Speaker 2: and that's the only place you'll ever find anything useful.
Speaker 2: That's the fine.
Speaker 4: I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, But there are other podcasts that There's
Speaker 3: a lot of books, there's a lot of zines, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of sketchy noblog sites which may sometimes have
Speaker 3: misinformation and sometimes have good information yay. And you could
Speaker 3: certainly certainly check out Margaret. I've heard that you you yourself,
Speaker 3: had a few other podcasts what I do, well, if
Speaker 3: you want to hear a lot of the history around
Speaker 3: some of the stuff we talked about, including like the
Speaker 3: co Intel pro stuff.
Speaker 2: For example, I run a podcast called Cool People Who
Speaker 2: Did Cool Stuff on this very network cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: And you can listen to it every Monday and Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I just finished a very long, but I swear entertaining
Speaker 2: series of episodes about the Russian Revolution in the Civil War.
Speaker 2: I've did an episode about the Burglars for Peace who
Speaker 2: exposed co intel pro by robbing an FBI office in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night in the early seventies, and
Speaker 2: all kinds of other stories, so you can listen to
Speaker 2: that or if you want to know more about the
Speaker 2: end of the world. I help run a podcast called
Speaker 2: Live Like the World Is Dying, comes out every Friday,
Speaker 2: and that one is Prepper Butt Community. Yep.
Speaker 4: There, well go.
Speaker 2: And I have a book coming out. It comes out
Speaker 2: of September. It's called The Sapling Cage and it's going
Speaker 2: to be kickstarted in June, and if you go to
Speaker 2: Kickstarter you can sign up for announcements about that. And
Speaker 2: it is the best book I've ever written, so you
Speaker 2: all should read it.
Speaker 3: Very excited to see that. That does it for us,
Speaker 3: that itch could happen here. We will probably see you
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 4: Good luck.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
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