WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 88 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.680 Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.400 you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.440 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.280 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.800 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:17.720 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:19.479 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:21.440 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.280 Hello, Welcome to a week it happened here. This is Garrison. 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:31.280 We're going to be doing a little bit of an 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.480 update on some of the things that have been happening 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.440 in Atlanta, Georgia the past few weeks in relation to 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.840 the Stop Cop City movement with me today to help 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.320 go through the many, many happenings of the past of 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:46.960 the past few weeks, is a Matt from the Atlantic 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:48.040 Community Press Collective. 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.440 Hello, Hello, my friend, good to see you. 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.120 Yes, last time, last time we talked on the show, 0:00:55.280 --> 0:01:00.280 it was during our very very critically acclaimed comedy episode, 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:06.040 So nice to highlight I lighted the season. I'm glad 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.200 you approve. As someone who was on the episode. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.959 I might have been like the target audience for that, but. 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:14.920 Yeah, there was like there was like four jokes that 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:20.520 only like three people get. But that's the right. So 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:22.160 this is going to be a bit of a bit 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.399 of a looser episode because people are preparing for the 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:28.800 Week of Action. Uh, there's a lot of a lot 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.200 of things in play. It's kind of a lot of 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:33.040 stuff still up in the air. So I don't I 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.839 don't have time to put something super super superscripted together, 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:38.880 but many things have happened that are worth talking about, 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.680 especially before the Week of Action. I guess would the 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:44.679 first thing on the docket be to kind of go 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:49.280 over the stuff regarding the extra funding that that the 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:55.320 city seems to be uh be giving towards the Copsity project, 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.720 even beyond like the thirty three million dollars that was 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:01.120 the that was the target about the city council vote 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.720 a few a few days ago. But there's a whole 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.760 bunch of extra extra money floating around, as discovered by 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:11.280 you guys at the Atlantic Atlantic Community Press Collective and 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:15.160 then who had had their turnalism pretty margital in by 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:16.120 every other outlet. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.040 They put our name, they put our name in there, 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.280 and you know, then you get paid, and you get 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.400 paid in the spotlight. Right, that's how that worked. 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.400 I'm only paying you an exposure for these episodes exactly, 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.640 which is which is which isn't true FAI. 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:43.040 But anyway, so yeah, okay, So going back to twenty 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.400 twenty one, this conversation started a couple of months after 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:50.680 the lease legislation was stuck. Back then, it was a 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.920 conversation about like a fifty five million dollars funding package 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:59.080 between the Atlanta Police Foundation and keep operating off there 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.680 at the time, John Kee. So that conversation has more 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.600 opked over the last two years, but that the key 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:08.960 part of it was the extra money was going to 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.400 come from this lease back agreement. So originally it was 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:14.920 going to be a twenty year, one million dollar a year. 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.720 We found out that that is actually a thirty year, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.840 one point two million dollars a year paid for thirty 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.840 six million dollars going to the Atlanta Police Foundation. And 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.280 part of what they were what they had talked about 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:32.679 using it for in twenty twenty one, was to pay 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.960 down this twenty million dollar loan construction loan that the 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.320 Atlanta Police Foundation was planning on taking out to build 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.040 the facility. So when they were talking about that, like 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:49.560 sixty million dollar philanthropic donation. They really they meant or 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:51.720 twenty of that was going to come from from a 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.720 loan that the city was going to pay back so immediately. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.160 Like these numbers were stewed from the get go and 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.240 have been misleading for the last year and a half. 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:07.480 And I mean part of the original plans for the 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.840 Copsity project and people are unaware included what like thirty 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.800 million dollars of public funds being contributed and the other 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.000 sixty million for the first phase was supposed to come 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:22.680 via like private funds, with the Land Police Findation doing 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:27.600 like fundraising via all their big corporate backers. And then 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.720 what's happened in the past few months of them trying 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.719 to trying to downscale some of the more expensive parts 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.480 of the plan and like cutting some of the fad 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:41.599 in terms of like the stables aren't going to be 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.120 the same spot that they wanted there to be stables, 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:50.080 and other small kind of money saving cuts, and then 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:54.160 all this increase in the amount of the project that's 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.239 just being funded by taxpayers. It seems like the APS 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.240 been not as successful and being able to fund their 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:05.080 project privately as they initially hoped. That's at least my 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.800 read from what's from what's going on here. 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.440 So maybe not from what they originally hoped, but from 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.080 what they originally show us or told us that they 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:20.840 were going to do. According to the chief financial operator 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.320 of the City of Atlanta, Mohammed Bala, he said that 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.279 the Atlantic Police Foundation has raised thirty three point four 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:33.000 million dollars in film graphic funds for this which their 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.960 goal apparently this whole time was only thirty million dollars 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:44.440 in actual funds from corporations and film graphic organizations. 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.520 Including the streamer Destiny, who've donated I think twenty thousand 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:52.479 dollars to the Atlantic Philly Station, which is a fight, 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.160 which is a reference to all of you Internet cells 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:01.359 out there who are also we are also cursed with 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:01.960 this knowledge. 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:02.320 Yeah. 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.400 So the other interesting thing is is originally ten million 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.880 dollars it was supposed to come in new market credits, 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:10.799 and we're getting like really into the. 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:12.880 Yeah, this is finances, and I'm sorry as soon as 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.240 you said new market tax credits part of my braid 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.520 just like shut off but continue continue. 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.919 Like thirty thousand foot overview that money is supposed to 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:29.200 go to like revitalizing impoverished or like underserved communities. It's 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.359 supposed to go to like businesses that want to like 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.159 open grocery stores and food deserts and things like that. 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.960 So it's not ten million dollars anymore now it's five 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:40.320 million dollars. But it's still going to build a police 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:46.080 training center and you know, predominantly black neighborhood that it's 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:51.760 under the average monthly income. So things got twisted here 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:56.480 that this doesn't seem like a revitalization project that that 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:00.040 is supposed to improve the lives of the neighbors around it. 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:02.799 So yeah, it's it seems like the the the amount 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.080 of funding that they actually are going to end up 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.679 receiving from public funds is ballooned to be much bigger 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.800 than they initially promised. And then project was initially sold on, 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:18.680 which is just another another another thing in the long 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.040 line of of of APF moments. 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:27.200 So this entire time, the deputy Chief Operating Officer for 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.320 the City of Atlanta, la Chandra Burks. She has been 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.520 playing quarterback for the Finance conversation, and she was part 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:40.680 of the Finance Conversation the way back and plain so 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.480 somebody she's she's in the mayor's cabinet and like she's 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.520 privy to these conversations. So the entire time like this 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.200 is happening, Andre Dickens is still like out in the 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.080 press repeating this thirty million dollar number, like tell the 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:59.160 to Rose Scott, who's basically our our NPR like person 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.240 here detel it to the a jac the paper of record, 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.520 and says that it's gonna be thirty million dollars if 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:08.600 it goes over, it's gonna it's gonna come out of 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.800 the Atlanta Police aboutation. And then of course you know 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:15.120 his his cabinet is having conversations about way more money. 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.320 This entire well, do you know who else cares a 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:19.120 lot about money? 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.840 The products and services services, The products and services. 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.920 The products services really really do want your money. And 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.760 now also the the Sophie is poking me to tell 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.240 you the apthel premium subscription option also cares a lot 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:38.040 about your money. Uh, and Android version launching shortly anyway, 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:42.480 here's the ads. Okay, we are back. We're gonna talk 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:48.080 about another another another good uh. Staying on the topic 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.240 of of of stealing your money and using it for purposes, 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.680 and it's probably not very good. Let's talk about let's 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.319 talk about the the the two Atlanta City Council meetings 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.680 that happened. One was during late May, right, that was 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:03.920 the first one with public comment. That was like people 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:07.840 were being public comment for like seven hours. That lasted 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:09.800 quite a while. It was it was a pretty pretty 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.839 long day. And then on the then during the meeting 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.280 on June fifth was even longer. 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:16.080 Like how. 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:19.720 Late were you at city Council on the June on 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:20.480 June fifth? 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:22.000 All? 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.400 Right, Well, on May fifteenth, the first city Council meeting 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.520 one where we kind of like we're like, hey, this 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:30.640 this is going to come up for vote, so and 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.680 then organizers you know, got everyone to show up. Yeah, 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.000 so about seven and a half hours of public comments 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.280 that night city Council meeting ended up like like eleven o'clock. 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:43.720 And then there was a meeting that the Finance Executive 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:47.320 Committee meeting in between that had about two hours of 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:51.120 public comment, which for a subcommittee meeting is a lot. Uh. 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.199 And then all of that, every like record was blown 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:00.920 out of the water on June fifth, where we had 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.000 just just over fourteen hours of public comment that includes 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.920 like breaks for disruption and like a ten minute break 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.560 that the City Council took and then a lot of 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.400 arguing between Doug Ship and the city couple of president 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.760 trying to help people down. But you know, overall it 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.920 was fourteen and a half hours of just public comment, 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:25.000 which is the largest public in person public comment session 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:32.079 that is in modern history. Yeah, and it was basically unanimous. 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.360 There were four speakers who got up pretty early who 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:41.280 were in favor of the training center, and then everyone 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.559 else was anti cop city. 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:48.160 Yeah. Did I remember remember seeing some things about like 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.760 APF police departments trying to like trying to push people 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:53.240 through to give public comment. 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.240 Yeah, So there was a rumor going around that the 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.680 Atlantic Police Foundation and the Mayor's office were trying to 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:01.640 get fifty people. There was like this number. It was 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:06.000 like fifty people. I never saw anything to back up, 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.560 but okay, they did seem like the four people who 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.320 showed up were kind of coordinated, and you know, like 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.520 one of them brought their kids, which the stop top 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.360 city side does the same thing. So it did seem 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.280 to be some like intentional parallels. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.560 But what was not parallel was just the sheer number 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.000 of people on the different sides. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.559 It was I don't think anybody who's in favor of 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:34.440 the facility is like going to wait fourteen hours to 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.920 talk for two minutes. Yeah, that's just not going to happen. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.120 And you know, the Atlanta Police Foundation hasn't shown up 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.680 to defend the facility in since twenty twenty one, and 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:48.120 like they're the most invested. 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:51.400 Yeah it is. It is striking the amount of which 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.240 their work on it is just so much like backdoor lobbying, 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.840 and they really have never had to defend the project 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:02.440 like publicly and openly. It's it's all. It's all just 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:07.319 these these these back backer meetings between city council members, 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.439 between people, people in the Air's office, between people and 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:11.240 the police department. 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.400 Yeah, by the Police Foundation lobbyist was actually running around 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:17.839 City Hall on juth it. 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.160 Yeah, not surprising. So I feel like most if people 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:26.840 are online, they probably heard the result of the vote 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.200 after fourteen hours of public common which was almost like 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:35.680 unanimously against the facility. What was it of four to eleven? 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:38.800 Yeah, four votes against eleven in favor. 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:43.240 So they they passed the funding package, allocating at least 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:47.960 the thirty three million plus the future loans. 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:49.120 The least back agreement. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:50.760 Yeah, yes, the the. 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.760 Thirty one million plus the least back. Okay, we're not 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:56.920 going to get more deep than. 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:02.800 That, Okay, but yes, it was it was like what 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:08.240 what time was? That was like four am? At thirty Jesus, 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:09.480 So I got there. 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.280 There was a Young Democrats like thing against There was 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:15.360 a press conference with the Young Democrats of the already 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.280 coming out against cup City at eight am. So I 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.360 was there at seven thirty. I left City Hall at 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:21.360 six thirty. 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:22.760 That was. 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:25.280 The wildest game. 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:30.719 So so, after probably the longest city council meeting day 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:31.559 in quite a while. 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:37.560 They in history, in history, sure in history, they single day. 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:41.880 They voted to approve the funding, which I mean, I 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.520 don't know, I think I wasn't I was not surprised. 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.120 I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed as as a 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:51.640 as a as a parent would say. 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:53.720 I want to point out a couple of things that 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:58.400 that they did in preparation, So I think city Council 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.040 was prepared for like an action Orgler's veto, and they 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.959 had to moves to kind of neutralize them. The first 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.920 is they moved the actual vote on this to the 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:12.760 very last thing. So the vote on the funding came 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:14.880 at the end of the meeting, so if you know, 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.040 there was an attempt to stop the vote itself, it 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:21.160 wouldn't have affected any city business before that. And then 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:24.560 they also prepared a committee room so that if you know, 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:26.760 things got rowdy or there was some sort of direct 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:29.200 action in the chambers itself, they were just going to 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.280 take the council and physically move them to a different 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:36.720 room and let people continue to demonstrate in city Council. 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.560 So I think they were they they made some wise 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:43.400 moves on their end to prepare. 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.000 Yeah, and they've loaded the chamber with the cops before 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.120 the vote. I know, back like during the afternoon they 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.640 were setting up kind of barricades and staging around City Hall. 0:14:57.640 --> 0:14:59.000 I mean, it just seemed to be a lot of 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:05.240 like erratic, uretic stuff happening around, did not I mean, yeah, 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:07.840 I mean I was unsure what was going to happen myself. 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.320 I didn't know how how it would play out, what 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.960 what tax people will try to employ. It seemed like 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.400 people mostly tried to kind of like go buy the 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:17.840 book there and see how far that would get. And 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.360 then if the result was like what we got, then 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.160 other other things will happen in these next few months, 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.760 especially with a week of action coming up. So, yeah, 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.320 do you think people on that like what did people 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.800 on the ground think, Like, did did they think that 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:36.760 that the vote would go through? And do they think 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.120 the vote would be stopped? I met, I am, I 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.320 am kind of it's it's been, it's been. It's been 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:43.880 a little little over a month since I've been in Atlanta, 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.480 and I think that the mood on the ground fluctuates 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:48.480 so quickly often. 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.360 Yeah, And I think it's, you know, kind of dependent 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:55.680 upon which segment of the movement we're talking about. There's 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.600 there's obviously full sections of the movement that at are 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.880 opposed to electoralism. They still showed up, like they still 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:06.760 you know, came and gave public comment, and I feel 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:10.120 like they they didn't expect that this would go any 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:17.040 other way. There's more like electorally plugged in groups that there. 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.560 You know, there was a slim chance of this thing 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:21.720 getting sent back to committee, and that was the closest 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:29.160 that this had to not going through city council. You know. 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.440 The kind of the whip count that that we learned 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:34.960 was if it if it came to a straight up 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.400 or downvote, it was always going to go through. It's 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.040 never the numbers to do anything else. Yeah, So there 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.960 was some lobbying happening behind the scenes that uh, with 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.960 student organizers and various other organizers who are more prone 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:55.680 to having these these discussions, especially with elected officials. So 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:58.520 there was bobbying for the tickets sent back to community 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:01.720 to committe where it would be I will and hopefully 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:07.040 delay the actual funding and mess up if he had 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:12.960 slumming mechanism. But that didn't happen. So there were people 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.119 who were hopeful, Like even I was, you know, I 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:20.200 said that this was the closest electorally that we'd ever 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.679 come to stopping it. I you know, just kind of 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.800 knowing how the whip count changed over the course of 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:32.560 like forty eight hours. It got close and then then 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:36.560 it got taken away. Every Dickens called city council members 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:39.800 into his office Monday morning and started feeling them off. 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:45.720 Yeah. Well, I mean, and this was never going to 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:47.480 be the end of the movement by any means. There 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:50.000 was already plans for things afterwards, like the Week of 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:53.359 Action at the end of June. Here and I guess 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.240 we can we can talk about how some of the 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.600 ways the movement might continue going forward after these these 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:03.359 these messages from our our lovely sponsors who endorse everything 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.359 we're saying. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. I know you agree 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:13.280 with me on this, so we're back. Ghost was crazy, Yeah, 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.720 I mean most people don't. So as if you're part 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.280 of like gold, yeah, exactly, if you're part of the 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.240 ghost on the community, there is there is a few 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.879 types of ghosts who actually really like bargaining material possessions. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.199 If they're able to give away enough of their stuff, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.200 their souls able to actually transcend to the next level 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.720 and go to a more safe, like a more RESTful place. 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.120 So these are people who've been too materially driven on Earth. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:37.919 Their soul gets trapped in that, so they have to 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:39.840 have to make sure that they get rid of their 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:43.800 gold in orders to them to go to their next place, 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:48.199 whether that's like that's like a safer version of Limbo, Paradise, heaven, hell, whatever. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:49.679 So yeah, I wait for you. 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:51.199 To move here so I can learn more about this. 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:53.800 I was just making all of that up on the fly. 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:59.520 So let's talk about what's gonna happen next. Obviously, there's 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.399 a week of backtion planned for June twenty fourth to 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.680 July first, which is going to be a very hot week. 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.880 So there's that, to my understanding, in Trench we Creek, 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.760 Trenchman Creek Park is still closed, correct, So in Trench Creek. 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:17.479 Park is still closed. 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:18.200 There is. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:23.280 There is a motion or there's some legislation in the 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.760 the Caab County Border Commissioners that is supposed to come 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.879 up again on Tuesday. The CEO's office asked for like 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:34.520 thirty days to finish cleaning up the park, so the 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.480 thirty days will expire Monday, and then there's a Border 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:43.360 Commissioners meeting on Tuesday. After that, they hopefully the park 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:44.920 is open, but we'll see. 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:47.679 So it may or may not be open. That is 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:52.760 still park that is still to be determined. I've heard 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.119 there will be another music festival of some sort, not 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:00.880 many details as of the time of recording, so we 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:03.560 knew that was gonna happen. I talked about this during 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:07.200 during the Week of Action retrospective episode, which honestly is 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:10.000 still pretty applicable here in terms of the amount of 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.400 destruction that's happened in the forest and how people are 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.920 thinking about ways to continue resistance in the face of 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:21.520 not again I'm against the binary of like victory and defeat. 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:23.160 I think that's not a useful way of looking at 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:27.120 this situation at this point. But you're, you're, you're, they're 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.600 kind of looking down like the barrel of something now, 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:33.359 being like a lot of the land's been cleared, a 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:37.600 lot of the trees have been cut. Preconstruction is ongoing, 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.200 Construction is scheduled for this summer. They just got approved 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.680 for all the city funding right Like, things are in motion. 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:46.080 So the ways that people are going to choose to 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.439 resist now might be different in the ways that they 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:50.400 chose to resist like a year or two ago, because 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.800 it's just a very different, very different situation. There's a 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.000 different risk level, there's a lot of more surveillance around 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.600 the forest, there's a lot more surveillance outside the forest. 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:03.040 It's just it's just a very different scenario. So I 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.480 think if the retrospective episode still contains a few things 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.560 about how how systance might might take forms during these 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:13.560 next few weeks. But there's this this this other thing 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:15.720 that came up after the city council meeting, which is 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.879 the referendum that some people are planning. Uh, do you 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:21.480 want to go over a little bit of those details. 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:24.760 Yeah, so a lot of people or I've seen kind 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:26.440 of on Twitter where a lot of people are like, oh, 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:29.199 the referendum is just coming out and rise to the 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.600 city council vote, and like, no, this has been in 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:34.600 the works for a little while. Okay, to my knowledge, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:36.919 it dates I mean, I know it dates back to 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:41.600 before even the funding question was was in place, So 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:44.120 it's been in the works for a minute. And then 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:48.800 they decided to hold off until after the city So 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.359 we're probably going to do it regardless of the city. 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:57.000 But the referendum there there is there's a spaceport that 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:00.920 was supposed to be built in South Georgia and basically 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:05.960 this one woman like started a referendum question and got 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:11.360 this spaceboard canceled. Of course, we're talking very different like municipalities. 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:13.840 That was a much smaller one. She only had to 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:17.920 collect fourteen hundred signatures or something like that. But there's 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:23.119 a referendum question that is in front of the municipal 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.640 clerk to kind of sign off on it and make 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:29.320 sure that it is properly worded and all these things 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:34.040 like just to administrate issue at this Once the clerk 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:38.399 signs off on it, then these organizers have sixty days 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:42.240 to collect seventy five thousand. The number they actually need 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:44.760 is just over seventy thousand, but they're collecting a little 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.160 extra because these signatures will be challenged, you know, things 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:52.880 like that with a vote. If they're successful in doing so, 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:56.080 it goes to city council, who again as in the 0:22:56.119 --> 0:23:00.719 administrative position, has to all the signatures, make sure everything 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:05.880 you know is official. And then if once that passes, 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:11.680 then it goes automatically on the November seventh, and then 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:13.760 it will be a straight up or down question of 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.000 do we cancel this twenty twenty one lease to the 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:23.960 Atlantic Police. But there there are a couple where this 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:28.399 comes in. I think most interestingly is the organizers of 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:32.639 this believe that they can get an injunction to stop 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:39.480 construction both now once the referendum campaign picks off, and 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:43.479 then if they collect the seventy thousand signatures again until 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:48.080 November seven. So this could significantly delay the Atlanta Folet 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:51.320 Foundation's ability to continue destruction on the land. And like 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:53.919 right now we are in the mass rating days of 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:58.360 the project, which is the most environmentally damaging part of it. 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:01.160 Now we're we're screwing with the contours of the land. 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:06.040 So you know, they're going to have to prove that 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:08.960 they're serious about the referendum, and the judge is going 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:11.280 to have to believe that the referendum is at least 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:15.080 likely to succeed in order to get this injunction. But 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:19.080 it does look like they should be able to prove 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:21.280 at least that they are serious and there is a 0:24:21.280 --> 0:24:22.480 good chance of the succeeding. 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:25.359 How soon do people have to start like doing stuff 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:25.680 for that. 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:30.000 So the referendum once the clerk signs off on the paperwork, 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:35.480 and that the clerk has seven days to validate, and 0:24:35.520 --> 0:24:38.080 then once that spends, you have the sixty days. So 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.040 we're in this kind of interim period where they can't 0:24:41.119 --> 0:24:45.399 start collecting signatures, but as soon as the clerk signs 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:48.560 off on it, they will start collecting signatures. So they 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:51.640 anticipate the clerk to like kind of try to hold 0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:55.359 off as long as possible. So they're looking at Wednesday, 0:24:56.320 --> 0:25:00.040 which I'm going to look at my calendar because you 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:06.359 know exactly what. So they're looking at Wednesday the fourteenth 0:25:06.520 --> 0:25:11.639 as the kickoff for the signature collecting camp. So for 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:15.600 more information about the referendum campaign or to find ways 0:25:15.600 --> 0:25:18.320 to volunteer, or if you are an Atlanta resident who 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:21.640 was registered to vote in the last election, you can 0:25:22.160 --> 0:25:26.720 sign the referendum. So copsity vote dot. 0:25:27.400 --> 0:25:29.640 That's copcityvote dot com. 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:31.440 Cool. 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:34.440 Let's see, there's one other thing that happened of note 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:35.600 the past few weeks. 0:25:36.520 --> 0:25:37.720 One thing, one little thing. 0:25:38.080 --> 0:25:41.080 There's one other thing that happened of note the past 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:46.679 few weeks, and that's when police rated the home of 0:25:46.800 --> 0:25:51.320 three people and this this home kind of serves as 0:25:51.320 --> 0:25:56.440 like a legal defense hub in Atlanta and arrested three 0:25:56.520 --> 0:26:01.240 people associated with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund and are charging 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:06.000 them with a variety of of of quote unquote charity 0:26:06.080 --> 0:26:12.160 fraud and like uh another other quite nonsensical financial crimes. 0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:18.800 As the bail hearing judge admitted himself, so do you 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:20.320 wanna do you want to go over some of some 0:26:20.359 --> 0:26:22.199 of those details, because I mean, this is something that 0:26:22.320 --> 0:26:25.119 was honest. People have been expecting this to happen, Like 0:26:25.119 --> 0:26:27.560 the alne of solid already Fund themselves has said, hey, 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:30.239 we will probably be the target of something like this 0:26:30.440 --> 0:26:35.800 in the future. During during other hearings, the prosecutors that 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:38.679 have talked about how they're investigating the Solidarity Fund as 0:26:38.720 --> 0:26:43.080 a part of this like conspiracy they're trying to to weave. 0:26:44.640 --> 0:26:46.879 So it's definitely something that's been on on people's minds 0:26:46.920 --> 0:26:50.600 of of this type of legal this type of like 0:26:50.640 --> 0:26:53.720 state repression targeting all of like the bail funds and 0:26:53.760 --> 0:26:57.960 like legal support structures that have been set up. So yeah, 0:26:58.200 --> 0:27:03.880 this happened like late late May, I believe mast Yeah, 0:27:03.920 --> 0:27:04.960 last day of the May thirty. 0:27:04.960 --> 0:27:10.040 First, they were still asleep in their beds, they got swat, 0:27:10.160 --> 0:27:13.480 broke down their door. You know, I'm sure everyone's seen 0:27:13.480 --> 0:27:17.280 the video. Broke down their door, armored vehicle and pulled 0:27:17.320 --> 0:27:19.639 them all out of their beds in their pajamas and 0:27:19.680 --> 0:27:24.480 took them to jail in their pajamas. Just you know, 0:27:24.600 --> 0:27:28.680 utterly insane for a bail fund or a nonprofit to 0:27:28.680 --> 0:27:30.480 to have this go down. But yeah, they had been 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:35.119 prepared for this for quite some time. Marlin, one of 0:27:35.160 --> 0:27:40.719 the organizers, had sent ACPP, you know, a statement in 0:27:40.800 --> 0:27:44.119 preparation for this, and you know, you saw how quickly 0:27:44.640 --> 0:27:50.399 they transitioned the actual running of the bail from the 0:27:50.440 --> 0:27:54.840 Atlanta Solidarity fun too, the National Bail Network been seamlessly 0:27:54.920 --> 0:27:59.520 that day so they were prepared. And then you know, 0:28:00.200 --> 0:28:02.359 someone who was talking to Marlin while he was in 0:28:02.440 --> 0:28:05.440 jail said, Marlon was pretty chill about the whole thing, 0:28:05.480 --> 0:28:08.760 which if you've ever interacted or seen Marlin, uh, that 0:28:08.880 --> 0:28:14.480 is that's that's pretty apt to describe him. But the 0:28:14.680 --> 0:28:19.120 actual charges are are insane, you know, the the charity 0:28:19.240 --> 0:28:23.280 fraud part of it. They're they're saying things like buying 0:28:23.560 --> 0:28:29.040 a cell phone, uh for for the bail fund is 0:28:29.160 --> 0:28:32.880 charity broad? Or reimbursing yourself or gas is charity broad? 0:28:33.000 --> 0:28:37.160 Or buying COVID tests is charity broad? Like all these 0:28:37.160 --> 0:28:40.040 things that that are just like overhead. 0:28:39.720 --> 0:28:43.080 Yeah, it was very very very standard like overhead costs 0:28:43.080 --> 0:28:48.600 for running an organization of this scale. Yeah, and as is, 0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:51.920 this was all on the website when people dot it 0:28:51.960 --> 0:28:54.800 anyway to talk to the various uses that these funds 0:28:54.800 --> 0:28:57.880 were going to have. All the charges are truly flimsy. 0:28:58.560 --> 0:29:01.240 There was a veil hearing a few few days later 0:29:01.280 --> 0:29:04.800 which I watched the whole thing, and the judge there 0:29:05.320 --> 0:29:09.960 did not think the charges had much much merit, which 0:29:10.000 --> 0:29:12.440 is the first time really during any kind of bail 0:29:12.480 --> 0:29:15.320 hearing associated with top cups standy stuff where the judge 0:29:15.400 --> 0:29:17.760 was like, okay, so this just seems very clearly fake 0:29:19.360 --> 0:29:21.920 and and and told the prosecution that they'll have to 0:29:22.040 --> 0:29:25.360 put put a much much stronger, stronger case together if 0:29:25.360 --> 0:29:27.840 they want this to go forward and at at any 0:29:27.880 --> 0:29:31.480 at any further stage. So all three got out on bail. 0:29:33.360 --> 0:29:35.960 It's it's pretty scary though. We like it's it's it 0:29:36.080 --> 0:29:40.600 fucking sucks. During the bail hearing, uh, the I believe, 0:29:40.600 --> 0:29:42.360 I believe it was it was it was the Assistant 0:29:42.400 --> 0:29:47.840 Attorney General who was there, Vowler. I believe he was 0:29:47.840 --> 0:29:50.240 talking about how police were going through the trash of 0:29:50.280 --> 0:29:57.160 Solidarity fund, how they're monitoring phone calls, other other communications. 0:29:57.640 --> 0:30:01.880 So just another another good reason to have a have 0:30:01.960 --> 0:30:04.680 a paper shutter and to have to have a burn 0:30:04.760 --> 0:30:09.240 pile in your backyard, because yeah, they're they're they're gonna, 0:30:09.240 --> 0:30:12.080 they're gonna go through your trash if they want to 0:30:12.320 --> 0:30:17.400 find things out about you. They they they they stole 0:30:17.600 --> 0:30:21.400 a journal from somebody. They were someone's someone's personal journal 0:30:22.680 --> 0:30:25.920 was was taken. And so yeah, a lot of a 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:29.520 lot of kind of very very standard, like very standard 0:30:29.560 --> 0:30:34.560 of this type of like shady investigation police stuff, which 0:30:34.600 --> 0:30:36.880 is just it's always good to have a reminder for 0:30:36.920 --> 0:30:39.160 people about what what the police are willing to do. 0:30:40.400 --> 0:30:42.880 But still, even even with all that, it seems like 0:30:42.880 --> 0:30:45.440 they were not able to get much at all, because 0:30:45.520 --> 0:30:50.560 the most they can put together is, oh, you you 0:30:50.560 --> 0:30:52.440 you use these funds in a way that you explicitly 0:30:52.440 --> 0:30:54.760 said that you could be used on your website, which 0:30:54.800 --> 0:30:58.440 is not probably not going to be a crime, So 0:30:59.280 --> 0:31:03.160 not compelling long term, but certainly a pretty large inconvenience 0:31:03.200 --> 0:31:05.240 in the short term, and still a very like chilling 0:31:05.800 --> 0:31:10.040 like display of police repression saying that we'll, we'll, well, 0:31:10.120 --> 0:31:13.400 we'll make your life incredibly difficult if if we don't 0:31:13.440 --> 0:31:13.680 like you. 0:31:14.720 --> 0:31:18.800 But you know, and as has happened every time there's 0:31:18.840 --> 0:31:24.080 been like this massive display of police repression, it utterly backfired, 0:31:24.560 --> 0:31:30.240 right like we national media is now just harping on 0:31:30.360 --> 0:31:34.280 the fact that these charges are overblown and they're attacking 0:31:34.800 --> 0:31:38.320 bail buds, which is inconceivable to let's say, like the 0:31:38.360 --> 0:31:41.120 liberal or the liberal left wing of things. And so 0:31:41.160 --> 0:31:46.360 you you've blown this issue into another sphere of awareness. 0:31:46.520 --> 0:31:49.080 You know, You've got Chris Hayes now on MSNBC doing 0:31:49.120 --> 0:31:52.600 an entire segment on some topsity, which is not something 0:31:52.960 --> 0:31:56.200 you know, we had before, even the domestic cares and charges. 0:31:56.200 --> 0:32:02.600 And I think this was just tactically a terrible decision 0:32:02.680 --> 0:32:06.080 by the Attorney General's Office to go through with this, 0:32:06.680 --> 0:32:10.680 because the pr side of it is a nightmare, and 0:32:10.760 --> 0:32:14.320 rightfully so, like this is an insane escalation. 0:32:15.480 --> 0:32:18.360 Is the bail fund still being operated by the National 0:32:18.400 --> 0:32:20.400 Bail Organization at this point? 0:32:21.240 --> 0:32:25.240 Yes, so the bail funds is still being run out 0:32:25.240 --> 0:32:28.680 of the national network at this point in time. So 0:32:28.840 --> 0:32:33.000 secure dot act, Blue dot com, Slash donate slash Atlanta 0:32:33.120 --> 0:32:38.680 Solidarity will get you a donate page continue to support 0:32:39.040 --> 0:32:42.320 bail you know in Atlanta, which again we've got a 0:32:42.320 --> 0:32:46.080 week of action coming up. Bail funds are highly probable 0:32:46.760 --> 0:32:47.920 in terms of being used. 0:32:48.600 --> 0:32:51.320 Yeah, I means as they were used to bail out 0:32:52.000 --> 0:32:54.320 the three people who are the veil who are part 0:32:54.320 --> 0:32:56.080 of the bail fund organizers, because I think I think 0:32:56.120 --> 0:32:58.520 they all got a fifteen thousand dollars spale, which is 0:32:58.880 --> 0:33:02.000 a relatively low in terms of what we've seen in 0:33:02.040 --> 0:33:03.200 relation to this movement. 0:33:03.920 --> 0:33:07.920 And I was looking through the December warrants and bail 0:33:08.040 --> 0:33:12.200 hearings a minute ago for another story and like then 0:33:12.240 --> 0:33:15.640 there were like ten thousand dollars. The cost has ballooned 0:33:15.760 --> 0:33:18.760 dramatically in the last months, so to go back down 0:33:18.760 --> 0:33:21.680 to fifteen thousand dollars bail is terrible and awful, but 0:33:22.200 --> 0:33:25.280 that seems way more in line with expectations. 0:33:25.520 --> 0:33:28.480 Yeah, well, so that is that is just a small 0:33:28.520 --> 0:33:31.400 glimpse of the many things that have been happening the 0:33:31.520 --> 0:33:35.000 past a month. Things do not seem to be slowing down. 0:33:35.080 --> 0:33:38.600 Things just seem to be changing in ways that makes 0:33:38.760 --> 0:33:44.160 h makes everything certainly certainly a tricky and not very 0:33:44.240 --> 0:33:46.000 not very clear, but that's kind of the way that 0:33:46.040 --> 0:33:50.040 these things go. People are still going to be showing up. 0:33:50.120 --> 0:33:53.920 There's the Week of Action happening on us starting on 0:33:53.960 --> 0:33:57.880 the twenty fourth, So that's that's going to be this month. 0:33:58.360 --> 0:34:00.680 So it's going to be a interesting lead up to 0:34:00.880 --> 0:34:01.680 July first. 0:34:02.400 --> 0:34:02.760 Uh. 0:34:03.120 --> 0:34:07.200 Yeah, the movement continues. Uh where can Where can people 0:34:07.520 --> 0:34:08.720 find your work? Matt? 0:34:10.040 --> 0:34:13.040 Yeah, you can follow a c pc uh at Atlanta 0:34:13.120 --> 0:34:16.160 otherspore Press on Twitter. You can follow me at Matt 0:34:16.280 --> 0:34:20.399 a CPC on Twitter, and our website is at l Press. 0:34:20.080 --> 0:34:26.040 Collective dot com. I assume yeah, I said, oh did 0:34:26.080 --> 0:34:27.799 I cut out you did cut out. I could not 0:34:27.840 --> 0:34:30.560 hear it at all. I said, I heard. I heard 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:31.760 at l Press Collective. 0:34:33.080 --> 0:34:36.280 Yeah, just you know, ATL Press Collection dot. 0:34:36.080 --> 0:34:39.239 Com dot com fantastic. Yeah you can. 0:34:39.320 --> 0:34:39.480 Uh. 0:34:39.880 --> 0:34:41.480 I'll put a link for the for the new for 0:34:41.520 --> 0:34:44.600 the new solidarity fund, uh secure dot ActBlue dot com 0:34:44.640 --> 0:34:46.759 slash don't slash a l n a solidarity because that 0:34:46.840 --> 0:34:49.160 is a long thing to type out. So I'll put 0:34:49.160 --> 0:34:51.239 a link for that in the description for the new 0:34:51.360 --> 0:34:55.520 for the new bail fund link and uh, yeah you can. 0:34:55.560 --> 0:34:56.000 You can. 0:34:56.160 --> 0:34:56.279 Uh. 0:34:56.400 --> 0:34:58.520 If you want to keep updated on plans for the 0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:01.640 Week of Action, I suppose you can look at stop 0:35:01.640 --> 0:35:04.640 cup City on Instagram and the Defending Line of Forest 0:35:04.640 --> 0:35:10.680 account on Twitter, along with the many many websites that 0:35:10.680 --> 0:35:14.640 that exists at this point. But yeah, so that's gonna 0:35:14.640 --> 0:35:17.560 be happening later. I don't know what will happen because 0:35:18.719 --> 0:35:23.319 I because I don't know, because I week, because I 0:35:23.360 --> 0:35:26.239 really have no idea what's going to happen. Because what 0:35:26.360 --> 0:35:29.440 happened to the last one was also quite quite surprising. 0:35:30.400 --> 0:35:33.239 So who who knows? Who knows what will what will 0:35:33.280 --> 0:35:36.239 what will go down? But thank you Matt for joining 0:35:36.280 --> 0:35:38.760 me to give me a give me and the listeners 0:35:38.800 --> 0:35:41.399 a bit of an update on the again, many many 0:35:41.440 --> 0:35:44.840 things that have been happening in Atlanta. I'll see you 0:35:44.880 --> 0:36:14.759 all on the other side. 0:36:01.200 --> 0:36:05.919 And welcome to a very special joint episode of two 0:36:05.960 --> 0:36:09.799 shows that you hopefully love, one the House of Pod. 0:36:10.000 --> 0:36:13.279 I'm Cave. I'm the host of that show, and it 0:36:13.320 --> 0:36:17.440 could happen here with my good friend James Stout. James, Hi, Hi, Kry. 0:36:17.680 --> 0:36:20.719 I'm very excited about this. This is a rare privilege. Yeah, 0:36:20.760 --> 0:36:23.960 I'm very excited too. We'll get straight to it. Just 0:36:24.000 --> 0:36:27.319 a quick reminder, if you're not following one of these 0:36:27.320 --> 0:36:29.759 shows and you're following the other, yeah, all of both. 0:36:29.960 --> 0:36:33.680 Why not and leave a nice review if you like 0:36:33.760 --> 0:36:37.120 the shows either way. But we're really excited, So let's 0:36:37.120 --> 0:36:39.080 get straight to the episode. How's that sound? 0:36:39.480 --> 0:36:39.719 Yep? 0:36:39.800 --> 0:36:40.320 Must get. 0:36:55.280 --> 0:36:56.200 And welcome back. 0:36:56.800 --> 0:36:57.280 Oh. 0:36:57.360 --> 0:37:00.200 I know. Every week I say this is a special episode, 0:37:00.239 --> 0:37:02.520 and I'm usually lying ninety nine percent of the time 0:37:02.600 --> 0:37:05.960 is not special. But this week is very special. It's 0:37:05.960 --> 0:37:09.520 special because I've never done this before. I'm very excited. 0:37:09.719 --> 0:37:12.120 It's a topic I really have wanted to cover for 0:37:12.160 --> 0:37:14.880 a while, but I'm going to be covering the topic 0:37:14.960 --> 0:37:18.200 with a good friend of mine who has an excellent show, 0:37:18.320 --> 0:37:21.399 and we're doing a joint show release thing and I've 0:37:21.440 --> 0:37:23.120 never done it. It's like a Marvel team up, and 0:37:23.160 --> 0:37:26.840 I'm very excited for it. James stout, James goa, introduce 0:37:26.880 --> 0:37:30.160 your first journalist podcaster host of it could happen here, which, 0:37:30.200 --> 0:37:32.600 if you're listening to this on it could happen here, 0:37:32.640 --> 0:37:35.479 you already knew that. James. Welcome to the show. 0:37:36.040 --> 0:37:36.560 Hi, thank you. 0:37:36.640 --> 0:37:39.120 Yeah, And I don't watch many Sweeper hero movies, so 0:37:39.239 --> 0:37:42.840 I'm now concerned as to which Marvel hero villain I 0:37:42.880 --> 0:37:43.200 would be. 0:37:44.640 --> 0:37:46.680 Well, I was thinking more of the comics. But if 0:37:46.719 --> 0:37:48.840 I have, if I have the pin you to a character, 0:37:48.880 --> 0:37:50.640 it's Moonnight. I think that's clear. 0:37:50.880 --> 0:37:53.440 Okay, it's gone straight past me, buddy, but I'm sure 0:37:53.920 --> 0:37:55.120 I hope that was take. 0:37:55.000 --> 0:37:56.960 My word for it. It's cool. It's cool, James. Can 0:37:57.000 --> 0:37:59.320 you tell us a little bit about what we're covering today. 0:37:59.640 --> 0:38:01.839 Let's talk talk to our people about what. Then we'll 0:38:01.840 --> 0:38:03.719 introduce our guests. But let's tell people kind of what 0:38:03.719 --> 0:38:04.960 we're trying to cover today. 0:38:05.280 --> 0:38:07.920 Yeah, of course, So we're talking about like healthcare and 0:38:07.960 --> 0:38:12.600 an Indigenous context and how we can both learn from 0:38:12.760 --> 0:38:15.880 and stand in solidarity within indigenous communities when it comes 0:38:15.880 --> 0:38:16.560 to healthcare. 0:38:16.560 --> 0:38:19.719 I guess excellent. And to help us with that, we 0:38:19.800 --> 0:38:22.160 have two guests. We have a medical student at a 0:38:22.160 --> 0:38:25.839 little school called Harvard I think it's a liberal arts 0:38:25.840 --> 0:38:29.560 school out in the east somewhere, named Victor Lopez Carmen. 0:38:29.800 --> 0:38:33.040 He was the prior elected co chair of the United 0:38:33.120 --> 0:38:36.319 Nations Global Indigenous Youth Caucus. He is a member of 0:38:36.360 --> 0:38:39.000 the Crow Creek Sooux tribe and also from the Yockey tribes. 0:38:39.000 --> 0:38:42.839 Is that correct, Victor? Yeah, okay, excellent, welcome to the shows. 0:38:43.560 --> 0:38:47.520 Thank you so much. I'm honestly props to pronouncing all 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:47.960 that right. 0:38:48.640 --> 0:38:51.759 Oh yeah, no, your stuff. I'm going to get right. 0:38:51.960 --> 0:38:54.600 Our next guest, whose name is Molly, I'm gonna probably 0:38:54.640 --> 0:38:56.560 destroy her name because that those are the names I 0:38:56.560 --> 0:38:59.320 have a hard time with. Doctor Molly Hollweaver. 0:38:59.600 --> 0:39:02.160 Is that correct? E r? 0:39:02.280 --> 0:39:05.120 Doctor at UC Davis, one of my favorite hospitals in 0:39:05.160 --> 0:39:07.080 the world. Is that also correct? 0:39:08.040 --> 0:39:10.120 That is correct? I work at you see Davis. 0:39:10.800 --> 0:39:13.600 So I guess maybe we should start, like. 0:39:16.320 --> 0:39:20.040 If we want to start out by explaining maybe how 0:39:20.160 --> 0:39:23.680 healthcare like what things that when we look at healthcare 0:39:23.680 --> 0:39:26.200 and indigenous context, what things we're looking at the differentiate 0:39:26.239 --> 0:39:28.080 it from healthcare in other context? 0:39:28.200 --> 0:39:28.359 Right? 0:39:28.400 --> 0:39:31.040 What will be the areas that both of you guys 0:39:31.080 --> 0:39:35.120 think that folks who aren't familiar with this, because sadly, 0:39:35.160 --> 0:39:37.560 I think a lot of the United States they either 0:39:37.560 --> 0:39:39.960 don't think they know Indigenous people or maybe they really 0:39:40.000 --> 0:39:44.160 don't like and we can explain that lots of Indigenous people, 0:39:44.239 --> 0:39:46.160 most Indigenous people live off res too. I think that 0:39:46.200 --> 0:39:49.920 would be very valuable. But what sort of topics will 0:39:50.000 --> 0:39:51.920 be be looking at when we're looking at healthcare from 0:39:51.920 --> 0:39:53.000 an indigenous perspective. 0:39:53.200 --> 0:39:55.920 I think, like when you look at indigenous peoples in 0:39:55.960 --> 0:40:01.400 the US, you think of our traditional health system as well, 0:40:01.560 --> 0:40:03.680 like that was what we always had, that was what 0:40:04.760 --> 0:40:08.279 we've had for thousands of years, and the efforts to 0:40:08.480 --> 0:40:12.359 maintain the traditional health, traditional healing practices. And then you 0:40:12.400 --> 0:40:16.600 look at the Western health system, the different systems we 0:40:16.640 --> 0:40:19.600 have access to today, including Indian Health Service, which is 0:40:19.719 --> 0:40:26.120 unique to US, tribal clinics, tribal operated clinics, and hospitals 0:40:26.320 --> 0:40:29.280 everyday hospitals that anyone else uses, because, like you said, 0:40:30.239 --> 0:40:33.520 the majority of Native Americans today in the US live 0:40:33.640 --> 0:40:35.759 in cities or urban contexts. 0:40:36.960 --> 0:40:41.000 Mollie, let me ask you because people may be wondering, 0:40:41.920 --> 0:40:46.440 how did you become involved with delivery of healthcare to 0:40:47.040 --> 0:40:48.360 the Native American population. 0:40:49.920 --> 0:40:53.120 Yeah. Thanks, I am, it's great to be here. Thanks 0:40:53.160 --> 0:40:53.880 for having us. 0:40:53.880 --> 0:40:57.320 I'm excited to chat with you all. 0:40:57.440 --> 0:40:59.239 I kind of had a unique opportunity. 0:40:59.280 --> 0:41:03.080 I've always been interested in Indian health service as like 0:41:03.120 --> 0:41:08.799 a healthcare delivery system and Indigenous peoples. And when I 0:41:08.800 --> 0:41:11.719 started fellowship, I did a Global Health Fellowship and I 0:41:11.760 --> 0:41:13.880 started in twenty twenty, so it was, you know, not 0:41:14.040 --> 0:41:17.640 a great year to be a Global Health Fellow for 0:41:17.719 --> 0:41:21.400 many reasons, and so I had very you know, obviously 0:41:21.440 --> 0:41:24.000 we were on lockdown and work was hard and stressful 0:41:24.680 --> 0:41:28.480 as an YEARDOC, and so we were trying to be 0:41:28.560 --> 0:41:32.600 creative and you know, how we can do this global 0:41:32.600 --> 0:41:35.760 health fellowship. And so I got in touch with a 0:41:35.760 --> 0:41:40.000 awesome physician, Don Maggio, who is the ed director at 0:41:40.080 --> 0:41:43.640 White River, which is Apacha Nation in Arizona. 0:41:43.760 --> 0:41:47.000 It's like three hours east of Phoenix. So he went 0:41:47.040 --> 0:41:47.799 to high He was. 0:41:47.800 --> 0:41:50.160 A Highland Alum, a Highland DM alum which is in 0:41:50.239 --> 0:41:53.719 Oakland and now works full time at White River. Anyways, 0:41:53.719 --> 0:41:56.879 got connected with him and everything that was going on 0:41:56.960 --> 0:42:00.400 during the pandemic, because, as I'm sure you guys are 0:42:00.400 --> 0:42:02.239 all aware and probably a lot of our listeners, that 0:42:02.400 --> 0:42:07.600 the Navajo and Apache tribes were had much higher rates 0:42:08.440 --> 0:42:12.480 of COVID and of severe COVID, and so I went 0:42:12.560 --> 0:42:15.840 as first for kind of public health outreach. So I 0:42:15.880 --> 0:42:19.080 went and did some contact tracing and helped do They 0:42:19.120 --> 0:42:22.480 did a really cool program of outreach in the community 0:42:22.760 --> 0:42:25.439 to go and check on the locals and we would 0:42:25.440 --> 0:42:27.520 go and check pull sox, so we'd see how high 0:42:27.520 --> 0:42:29.919 their oxygen saturation was and see how people were doing 0:42:29.960 --> 0:42:31.480 to try to catch disease early. 0:42:32.200 --> 0:42:33.120 So that's how I kind of. 0:42:33.080 --> 0:42:36.640 Got into doing it, and then I loved it there 0:42:37.000 --> 0:42:40.560 and wanted to keep working, and so I continued to moonlight, 0:42:40.640 --> 0:42:44.080 which means I worked kind of as a locomes. I 0:42:44.080 --> 0:42:45.760 don't know if I need to explain that for medical 0:42:45.840 --> 0:42:49.000 Dragon Cave, but I worked, you know, every one to 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:53.000 two months, I would fly to Arizona and work on 0:42:53.040 --> 0:42:53.839 the res for a week. 0:42:54.719 --> 0:42:58.520 Very very cool. So Victor getting back a little bit 0:42:58.960 --> 0:43:03.239 to where Native Americans are getting their health care? What 0:43:03.360 --> 0:43:07.080 is what is your interest once you're done and when 0:43:07.120 --> 0:43:10.120 you graduate from Where are you are you right now? 0:43:10.560 --> 0:43:12.200 I'm a fourth year, so I'm my last year. 0:43:12.440 --> 0:43:15.279 Oh my god, for you buddy. How are you liking it? 0:43:16.120 --> 0:43:23.719 I'm liking it less. I'm not like like I like medicine. 0:43:23.960 --> 0:43:27.920 I still maintain medical school. Like I'm ready to be 0:43:27.960 --> 0:43:30.560 done with school senioritis. 0:43:30.560 --> 0:43:31.160 Is that what you mean? 0:43:31.640 --> 0:43:32.160 Pretty much? 0:43:32.239 --> 0:43:36.239 Yeah, you're a rising fourth here or have you already matched? Uh? 0:43:36.360 --> 0:43:38.640 No, I'm a I'm a rising fourth here. I'm applying 0:43:38.680 --> 0:43:40.799 your residency now, so. 0:43:40.239 --> 0:43:42.400 So, so talk to us about where what you would 0:43:42.480 --> 0:43:44.640 like to where you like to go and what kind 0:43:44.680 --> 0:43:47.360 of medicine you'd like to practice. 0:43:48.719 --> 0:43:51.960 Honestly anywhere that will take me. 0:43:55.239 --> 0:43:55.600 Doctor. 0:43:55.719 --> 0:43:59.439 But yeah, I really I want to go into pediatrics. 0:43:59.640 --> 0:44:02.640 Always wanted to help and take care of Native kids. 0:44:03.040 --> 0:44:06.400 And back in the community for sure. I want to 0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:10.920 go back and be a community member again. I've been 0:44:10.920 --> 0:44:13.080 gone for so long. I feel like I've been only 0:44:13.120 --> 0:44:16.000 only able to go back for like you know, breaks 0:44:16.000 --> 0:44:18.920 and things like that, and it's it's it hasn't been 0:44:19.040 --> 0:44:23.120 enough for me as an Indigenous person. So I'm ready 0:44:23.200 --> 0:44:26.920 to go back, be a doctor, be part of the community, 0:44:28.120 --> 0:44:30.799 be there for ceremonies, be there to be patients. 0:44:31.200 --> 0:44:31.960 That's my ideal. 0:44:32.840 --> 0:44:35.040 I think one thing that's really interesting, especially and like 0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:36.799 we have this chance to talk to you, which we 0:44:36.960 --> 0:44:40.680 which we often don't have, is you mentioned like balancing 0:44:40.840 --> 0:44:44.920 like western medical technology with indigenous medical technologies, right, And 0:44:45.480 --> 0:44:48.960 I'm really interested in hearing how you would approach that 0:44:49.520 --> 0:44:52.160 for folks who aren't familiar or for folks who don't 0:44:52.200 --> 0:44:55.600 have the knowledge of indigenous medical technologies that you might 0:44:56.239 --> 0:44:57.880 you maybe have people who you go to for that. 0:44:58.800 --> 0:45:03.480 Yeah, yeah, well, well, I think it's important to just 0:45:03.960 --> 0:45:09.040 already start the conversation that so much indigenous medical technology 0:45:09.080 --> 0:45:14.000 has already been appropriated by western medicine as western medicine 0:45:14.200 --> 0:45:19.799 aspirin for instance, many traditional healing practices that were and 0:45:19.880 --> 0:45:23.200 are still find themselves seeping into the field of psychiatry 0:45:23.680 --> 0:45:30.520 or around parenting mental health. The way that, for instance, 0:45:30.560 --> 0:45:35.319 that Indigenous peoples. I think there's a growing understanding in 0:45:35.360 --> 0:45:38.080 the medical field about planetary health and the impacts of 0:45:38.120 --> 0:45:42.040 climate change on health, and a lot of that has 0:45:42.080 --> 0:45:45.480 already been said and fought for by Indigenous peoples for 0:45:45.480 --> 0:45:49.120 a very long time. And so there's already a lot 0:45:49.200 --> 0:45:52.640 of stuff there that we're working with, and I think 0:45:52.680 --> 0:45:56.319 it's important to give Indigenous peoples their flowers. But yeah, 0:45:56.360 --> 0:45:58.920 that I think when it comes to integrating on the 0:45:58.960 --> 0:46:02.320 clinical level, it's going to differ from community to community. 0:46:02.719 --> 0:46:06.279 You might know, but in the possible Yaki tribe, the 0:46:07.480 --> 0:46:12.000 health division employs a team of traditional healers that come 0:46:12.080 --> 0:46:15.840 up i think monthly from Sonora, Mexico, from the villages 0:46:16.239 --> 0:46:20.360 and Yacci patients can elect to see the traditional healers 0:46:20.719 --> 0:46:25.279 with or without a Western trained physician, and there's a 0:46:25.320 --> 0:46:28.600 whole room where they have all these herbs and plants 0:46:28.640 --> 0:46:31.360 that Yaki people have been using for thousands of years, 0:46:31.960 --> 0:46:34.480 and I think that's very beautiful. 0:46:35.200 --> 0:46:36.960 One reason we've been able to do that is. 0:46:36.880 --> 0:46:42.360 Because our tribe elected to run their own health division 0:46:42.600 --> 0:46:45.560 rather than having the Indian Health Service run it for them. 0:46:46.040 --> 0:46:49.400 We had the capability to do that at the time. 0:46:49.920 --> 0:46:53.040 Not all tribes do have the capability, yet we had it, 0:46:53.120 --> 0:46:55.680 and I think it's been beneficial for us because it's 0:46:55.680 --> 0:47:00.120 given us more freedom to bridge Western and traditional medicine 0:47:00.239 --> 0:47:01.680 in a way that works for us. 0:47:02.000 --> 0:47:04.759 The Yacki system is a really great one, like and. 0:47:06.520 --> 0:47:07.000 Like people. 0:47:07.040 --> 0:47:09.520 Probably that people won't be familiar with it. I guessing 0:47:09.560 --> 0:47:11.879 most people listening won't be familiar with it. But it's 0:47:11.880 --> 0:47:13.960 allowed the tribes to all kinds of cool things, like 0:47:14.000 --> 0:47:17.880 in I've been involved in a diabetes prevention cycling program 0:47:17.920 --> 0:47:22.560 there for ten years something a long time, but there 0:47:22.560 --> 0:47:25.200 are things that can be done because of that block 0:47:25.239 --> 0:47:28.319 grant or running their own system as opposed to having 0:47:28.400 --> 0:47:31.880 IOHS run the system. Could you like, because Marley, I 0:47:31.880 --> 0:47:35.160 think you're more familiar with like an IHS clinic model, right, 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:37.840 would one of you want to explain the difference between 0:47:37.880 --> 0:47:41.400 the two of those for people who aren't familiar IHS 0:47:41.520 --> 0:47:44.960 versus the tribe. The Pascuayaki tribe run their own system. 0:47:45.000 --> 0:47:47.400 I think they get a block grant, correct me if 0:47:47.400 --> 0:47:49.279 I'm wrong. Victory, they get a block grant for my HSS, 0:47:49.320 --> 0:47:50.640 and then they spend that as they see fit. 0:47:51.160 --> 0:47:54.520 Yeah, I can speak to the IHS side, but for 0:47:54.640 --> 0:47:57.479 me this in Victory. You can correct me if I'm wrong, 0:47:57.520 --> 0:48:00.560 But for me it was easy to It's kind of 0:48:00.600 --> 0:48:03.840 similar to the VA for just for medical doctors to 0:48:04.040 --> 0:48:08.000 understand in that it's a set of money that the 0:48:08.040 --> 0:48:12.080 government sets aside for a certain population and v veterans 0:48:12.080 --> 0:48:18.000 for the VA and IHS for natives, but there's obviously 0:48:18.040 --> 0:48:20.600 disparity between even those two, Like per captive spending is 0:48:20.640 --> 0:48:23.399 way higher in the VA than it is on IHS. 0:48:23.440 --> 0:48:29.520 But it's a yeah, Western system, and all of the 0:48:29.560 --> 0:48:33.400 staff on the hospital, like the Reservation hospital or the 0:48:33.400 --> 0:48:36.320 Indian Hospital are all employees of IHS, so they're actually 0:48:36.360 --> 0:48:40.080 kind of like federal employees. And we can kind of 0:48:40.080 --> 0:48:42.480 get into the weeds of it later, but there's you know, 0:48:42.520 --> 0:48:46.040 a lot of turnover because it's a sometimes it's hard 0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:48.200 places to live, so and they're young. They kind of 0:48:48.239 --> 0:48:50.360 recruit young doctors, and there's a lot of turnover for 0:48:50.440 --> 0:48:54.640 the for the primary care doctors. And then in the 0:48:54.920 --> 0:48:58.560 er where I work, there's very few board certified er doctors, 0:48:58.600 --> 0:49:02.960 so it's staffed by non em certified docs. 0:49:03.400 --> 0:49:06.080 That sounds right to me. The only other thing I 0:49:06.080 --> 0:49:10.719 would add is that the Indian Health Service it's predicated 0:49:10.760 --> 0:49:15.080 on what's called the Federal trust responsibility that's built over 0:49:15.760 --> 0:49:21.799 decades of Supreme Court precedent smaller court precedents over the 0:49:21.880 --> 0:49:24.000 years that I think a lot of them were based 0:49:24.040 --> 0:49:29.040 in treaties made with Indigenous peoples. And basically this means 0:49:29.040 --> 0:49:32.200 that the government, because of the harm, the oppression, the 0:49:32.200 --> 0:49:37.680 colonization that has been dealt upon Indigenous peoples across the 0:49:37.760 --> 0:49:43.280 United States, there's a trust responsibility for the federal government 0:49:43.719 --> 0:49:46.680 to sort of to do something about the lingering impacts. 0:49:46.680 --> 0:49:52.560 They have a responsibility to provide health services to Indigenous 0:49:52.560 --> 0:49:54.759 peoples in the US. That was also in many of 0:49:54.800 --> 0:49:58.640 the treaties that were made with Indigenous nations. And I 0:49:58.680 --> 0:50:02.719 think it does go over people's heads sometimes that this 0:50:02.920 --> 0:50:05.920 is not a favor, this is not a gift, It's 0:50:05.920 --> 0:50:11.759 a responsibility based on centuries of oppression, and that that 0:50:11.840 --> 0:50:14.600 responsibility is not fully being met right now because the 0:50:14.600 --> 0:50:18.480 Indian Health Service is severely underfunded. The way that the 0:50:19.040 --> 0:50:23.360 funds are appropriated is unique to government health care programs. 0:50:23.640 --> 0:50:27.960 The way the veterans, for instance, Veterans Affairs is appropriated 0:50:28.280 --> 0:50:30.600 is much more effective than the way Indian Health Service 0:50:30.680 --> 0:50:32.600 is appropriated at the federal level. 0:50:34.160 --> 0:50:38.480 It might be worth explaining here just briefly, that not 0:50:38.560 --> 0:50:41.640 all tribes are federally recognized right and not all Indigenous 0:50:41.640 --> 0:50:43.959 people are part of federally recognized tribes, and how would 0:50:44.000 --> 0:50:46.160 that impact their access to healthcare. 0:50:48.080 --> 0:50:51.920 Yeah, well, you know, federal recognition isn't perfect. It's a 0:50:51.960 --> 0:50:56.040 really arduous process, and not all tribes are federally recognized. 0:50:56.040 --> 0:50:59.080 For those tribes who aren't, they don't have access to 0:50:59.600 --> 0:51:03.720 those services like the Indian Health Service or the Bureau 0:51:03.760 --> 0:51:08.080 of Indian Education, for instance, and many other federal grants 0:51:08.160 --> 0:51:12.880 that Indigenous peoples and Indigenous nations can apply for or 0:51:12.920 --> 0:51:16.000 just automatically get. For instance, during COVID nineteen and there 0:51:16.000 --> 0:51:21.640 were specific funding allocated for tribal nations, those tribal nations 0:51:21.680 --> 0:51:24.960 who are not federally recognized, they wouldn't have that access 0:51:24.960 --> 0:51:25.640 to them. 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:29.240 Let me shift gears a little bit here and get 0:51:29.280 --> 0:51:32.000 to a question that is I think going to be 0:51:32.120 --> 0:51:34.640 very difficult to answer, and it's one of those impossible 0:51:34.680 --> 0:51:36.759 questions because there's so many parts to it, I'm sure, 0:51:36.760 --> 0:51:39.319 and it varies so much. But I'd like to talk 0:51:39.360 --> 0:51:42.239 a little bit about the major health issues that you 0:51:42.320 --> 0:51:46.200 guys feel are facing Native Americans right now, and whether 0:51:46.280 --> 0:51:48.160 or not if they are at all different from the 0:51:48.239 --> 0:51:50.799 rest of the US population, and then we could talk 0:51:50.800 --> 0:51:53.520 about what barriers there are to care in that regards. 0:51:53.560 --> 0:51:57.799 But we'll start with you, Molly can you tell us 0:51:57.800 --> 0:52:01.360 from your experience working there, what are the major health 0:52:01.480 --> 0:52:04.239 issues that you feel may or may not be the 0:52:04.280 --> 0:52:05.600 same as the general population. 0:52:06.600 --> 0:52:09.799 Yeah, I think at the end of the day is 0:52:09.880 --> 0:52:13.160 it's very similar. You're seeing the same the same disease 0:52:13.239 --> 0:52:14.680 processes that you're. 0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:18.520 Seeing in the general population, but you're. 0:52:18.400 --> 0:52:22.680 Seeing everything's a little bit more severe. I would say, 0:52:22.719 --> 0:52:28.320 like there's more there's higher rates of the chronic disorders 0:52:28.320 --> 0:52:31.080 like diabetes and hypertension, and it's kind of more severe 0:52:31.880 --> 0:52:34.879 long term effects of the diabetes and hypertension, and at 0:52:34.920 --> 0:52:37.040 younger ages. I think that was kind of what was 0:52:37.120 --> 0:52:40.600 most striking to me. You're seeing the long term, the 0:52:40.640 --> 0:52:43.960 bad effects, the long term bad effects at younger ages. 0:52:45.080 --> 0:52:48.360 You're seeing Alcoholic disorder is a problem everywhere in the 0:52:48.440 --> 0:52:50.879 United States, but on tribes alcoholics disorder. 0:52:50.560 --> 0:52:55.960 Is much higher. And again, like I was, it was shocked. 0:52:55.960 --> 0:52:59.920 It was honestly shocking to see thirty year olds who 0:53:00.120 --> 0:53:03.440 had n sage liver disease from alcohol use disorder. And 0:53:03.480 --> 0:53:05.680 I saw on some of the sickest people I've seen 0:53:05.760 --> 0:53:11.359 have been from my time there. So everything just is, 0:53:11.760 --> 0:53:13.960 you know, a little bit harder, and the reasons for 0:53:14.000 --> 0:53:17.680 that as we can talk about are like totally multifactorial, 0:53:17.840 --> 0:53:20.680 but in line with poverty. Funding is a huge like 0:53:20.880 --> 0:53:23.320 funding and poverty go hand in hand. 0:53:23.800 --> 0:53:25.920 Education and just the. 0:53:25.880 --> 0:53:31.879 Fact that yeah, they've been oppressed for centuries. But yeah, 0:53:31.920 --> 0:53:35.160 I think it's at the end of the day, it 0:53:35.200 --> 0:53:37.279 was the same. I was seeing the same things that 0:53:37.320 --> 0:53:39.840 I would see at UC Davis, but I was seeing 0:53:39.880 --> 0:53:42.720 it on a more extreme basis. 0:53:42.719 --> 0:53:46.440 I would say, Victor, Yeah, yeah, definitely. 0:53:46.480 --> 0:53:46.680 Yeah. 0:53:46.960 --> 0:53:52.080 I think it's important to note to sort of say 0:53:52.120 --> 0:53:55.600 that these problems exist all across the US, because there 0:53:55.600 --> 0:54:01.359 can be stereotypes associated with health concerns like that are 0:54:01.360 --> 0:54:04.280 attributed to the way that we live, or our culture, 0:54:04.440 --> 0:54:07.239 or just inherent to who we are. Like there's this 0:54:07.360 --> 0:54:11.360 prevailing I think notion that I don't know what came first, 0:54:11.360 --> 0:54:14.319 but I think in the medical field, I still hear 0:54:14.320 --> 0:54:17.919 about it. Like in class sometimes they'll say, like Native 0:54:17.920 --> 0:54:22.080 Americans have the highest rates of diabetes or heart disease, 0:54:22.160 --> 0:54:25.759 but they won't say why, and it makes people think that, oh, 0:54:25.920 --> 0:54:29.399 like are they just not catching on? Like are they 0:54:29.400 --> 0:54:32.759 just living badly? And when you don't say why, it 0:54:32.880 --> 0:54:37.360 kind of I think it creates a lot of ignorance 0:54:37.800 --> 0:54:41.319 and a lot of room for interpretation. So I think 0:54:41.360 --> 0:54:44.960 it's really important to talk about those background reasons. For instance, 0:54:44.960 --> 0:54:49.320 with diabetes, I think a lot on a lot of reservations, 0:54:49.400 --> 0:54:53.440 there's no access to one, traditional foods which have been 0:54:53.719 --> 0:54:58.279 you know, through policy, eradicated through government policies over the 0:54:58.719 --> 0:55:01.960 decades and centuries, and no access to healthy foods. These 0:55:01.960 --> 0:55:06.080 are food deserts. And at the same time, like doctor 0:55:06.120 --> 0:55:09.560 Hallweaver mentioned, there's poverty. So if you're trying to get 0:55:09.600 --> 0:55:12.319 healthy food you don't have number one, it's not in 0:55:12.320 --> 0:55:15.880 the reservation. You might not even be able to afford it. 0:55:15.920 --> 0:55:18.759 If you can get off the reservation. Not a lot 0:55:18.800 --> 0:55:21.240 of people have, you know, not everyone has a car 0:55:21.719 --> 0:55:24.920 or the ability to mobilize, you know, hour and a 0:55:24.960 --> 0:55:29.160 half to the health food store, and so you know, 0:55:29.360 --> 0:55:31.120 a lot of the that's just one example of like 0:55:31.160 --> 0:55:35.480 some of the systemic reasons why somebody could get diabetes 0:55:35.560 --> 0:55:39.200 quite early. And there's also a lot of lingering trauma 0:55:39.239 --> 0:55:42.360 and mental health impacts that I think play into the 0:55:42.440 --> 0:55:48.040 high rates of alcoholism. A lot of you know, in policy, 0:55:48.520 --> 0:55:50.920 there was there were some early efforts to try to 0:55:52.200 --> 0:55:56.279 I think, to try to limit alcohol on reservations that 0:55:56.320 --> 0:56:00.640 we still see today on some reservations, alcohols entirely illegal 0:56:01.160 --> 0:56:06.239 on the reservation, but you'll see you'll still see businesses 0:56:06.760 --> 0:56:10.960 right on the border of the reservation just camp themselves 0:56:11.000 --> 0:56:14.880 there right on the border, knowing that these that the 0:56:14.920 --> 0:56:18.320 population is vulnerable, maybe not knowing that it's because of 0:56:18.360 --> 0:56:22.239 the historical trauma and things, but there's there's something there, 0:56:22.320 --> 0:56:25.400 you know, so there's still an aspect of being targeted 0:56:25.440 --> 0:56:28.279 there by something that that you know, the community is 0:56:28.719 --> 0:56:31.239 highly vulnerable to still to this day. 0:56:31.880 --> 0:56:35.120 It's a really interesting point that you bring up because 0:56:35.200 --> 0:56:37.799 I remember being in medical school and you know, you 0:56:37.840 --> 0:56:41.080 see in these lecture halls and some they would bring 0:56:41.160 --> 0:56:43.759 up like Native Americans being a higher risk for all 0:56:43.760 --> 0:56:45.680 these It would be like one of these little footnotes 0:56:45.719 --> 0:56:47.160 that would be in a lot of our lectures and 0:56:47.160 --> 0:56:49.880 that sort of thing. They never explained why, I mean 0:56:50.000 --> 0:56:52.960 medical school particularly then, was I wouldn't want to touch 0:56:53.000 --> 0:56:56.200 anything that they might see as an even mildly political issue, 0:56:56.239 --> 0:57:00.840 even though not discussing it made it one. Really, do 0:57:00.960 --> 0:57:03.520 you must be annoyed by this? Does this happen to you? 0:57:03.960 --> 0:57:07.480 Like are you like sitting in your lecture class and 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:10.320 then like the teacher will mention some about naive Americans. 0:57:10.360 --> 0:57:12.120 Then all like the white students in your class just 0:57:12.120 --> 0:57:13.719 turned their heads and like look at you to see 0:57:13.760 --> 0:57:14.320 your response. 0:57:16.520 --> 0:57:23.360 Yeah, yeah, you're like what listen, I just like find 0:57:23.360 --> 0:57:27.800 a wall and I stare at it, just just anticipating it, 0:57:29.200 --> 0:57:31.520 just looking in deep thought until it passes. 0:57:32.040 --> 0:57:35.919 Right, smart student, Molly, you're going to add something. 0:57:36.440 --> 0:57:38.200 I was going to add to that victor that. 0:57:38.520 --> 0:57:44.360 Yeah, just to highlight the food desert example, during COVID, right, 0:57:44.640 --> 0:57:49.680 the White River Reservation had one grocery store and during 0:57:49.720 --> 0:57:54.240 the lockdown it was only open, you know, from nine 0:57:54.280 --> 0:57:56.840 am to three pm on Monday, Wednesday Friday, Like it 0:57:56.920 --> 0:58:00.640 had really limited hours, and that was the one grocery 0:58:00.640 --> 0:58:03.400 store for the entire oservation, and so it was just 0:58:03.560 --> 0:58:07.720 even you know, during the pandemic, everything got a little 0:58:07.720 --> 0:58:11.840 bit worse. But yeah, they're very limited access to healthy 0:58:11.840 --> 0:58:12.680 foods for sure. 0:58:13.240 --> 0:58:16.840 One thing that I was recently educated about during a 0:58:16.880 --> 0:58:22.800 discussion about diabetes prevention was epigenetics. And like, my I'm 0:58:22.800 --> 0:58:24.880 a doctor of modern European history. So if I go 0:58:24.920 --> 0:58:27.320 off the rails at any point, I'm going to lie 0:58:27.360 --> 0:58:29.760 on one of you three to gently guide me back. 0:58:30.560 --> 0:58:35.200 But I found that fascinating. The concept of like intergenerational 0:58:35.240 --> 0:58:39.000 trauma and epigenetics and how that can impact healthcare today. 0:58:39.960 --> 0:58:42.120 Is that something either if you could explain to listeners 0:58:42.120 --> 0:58:44.560 who like me a redatively ignorant on it. 0:58:45.040 --> 0:58:49.080 And that's the I can take this one actually because 0:58:50.640 --> 0:58:53.640 actually it's interesting because I did an episode recently about 0:58:53.880 --> 0:59:00.520 the intergenerational trauma of the Persian diaspora after the revolution 0:59:00.640 --> 0:59:04.560 and how this most recent set of protests sort of 0:59:04.800 --> 0:59:08.880 reignited this trauma. And excuse me, one of the guests 0:59:08.920 --> 0:59:12.040 mentioned that there was a study in mice in which 0:59:12.080 --> 0:59:15.680 they looked at sort of epigenetics of stress response, and 0:59:15.720 --> 0:59:19.600 they had pregnant mice and they like, they would give 0:59:19.600 --> 0:59:21.880 them the scent of rose blossom or something, and then 0:59:21.920 --> 0:59:25.680 they would shock them, and then the mouse would grow 0:59:25.800 --> 0:59:29.440 to be really fearful of those shocks that were associated 0:59:29.480 --> 0:59:32.400 with the rose blossom. And then what they noticed was 0:59:32.440 --> 0:59:36.600 that like the children of the mice would also respond 0:59:36.960 --> 0:59:40.400 poor ly to like that same rose blossom scent even 0:59:40.400 --> 0:59:43.400 though they didn't have the exposure to it. And I 0:59:43.440 --> 0:59:45.720 looked into it, I mean, because the truth of it 0:59:45.800 --> 0:59:49.440 is I don't think you can inherit specific phobias. That 0:59:49.520 --> 0:59:51.800 just doesn't happen. But I kind of pushed back on 0:59:51.840 --> 0:59:53.480 that point a little bit, and I got a lot 0:59:53.520 --> 0:59:58.040 of messages from molecular pathologists who were like, so you 0:59:58.160 --> 1:00:02.280 can't stress during pregnancy. It can be it can affect 1:00:02.280 --> 1:00:04.920 the DNA. It can affect the DNA, and that can 1:00:05.000 --> 1:00:07.760 be passed down changes in the DNA, disruption of the DNA. 1:00:08.000 --> 1:00:13.400 You can't inherit specific phobias or or fears or stresses 1:00:13.560 --> 1:00:17.520 per se, but it can clearly cause genetic damage when 1:00:17.560 --> 1:00:19.760 you have that much stress. And then on top of that, 1:00:19.800 --> 1:00:25.000 of course we're talking about the psychological impact it has 1:00:25.040 --> 1:00:28.320 on someone and then how they raise their children and 1:00:28.360 --> 1:00:30.919 how their children grow up. So it is I agree, 1:00:30.960 --> 1:00:33.920 it's a very interesting subject, but I don't want to 1:00:33.920 --> 1:00:37.520 get any more molecular pathologists emails. Molly. 1:00:38.000 --> 1:00:39.960 I was going to say, I'm glad you took this 1:00:40.120 --> 1:00:41.520 epigenetics question from me. 1:00:43.080 --> 1:00:45.560 You know, one thing about your going back to what 1:00:45.600 --> 1:00:49.919 you were saying, victor about the situations that have sort 1:00:49.960 --> 1:00:52.160 of predicated this. Correct me if I'm wrong. But my 1:00:52.240 --> 1:00:55.160 understanding is most of the land that these Indian reservations 1:00:55.200 --> 1:00:57.080 are on in the United States, Like there's three hundred 1:00:57.080 --> 1:01:00.320 and twenty six if I've read that correctly, isn't on 1:01:00.400 --> 1:01:04.200 great land. It's like land that's close to like mines 1:01:04.560 --> 1:01:07.040 or places where there's some sort of radiation or there's 1:01:07.080 --> 1:01:11.000 some sort of issues not great like for growing food 1:01:11.240 --> 1:01:14.240 itself directly there is that? Is that correct? Is that 1:01:14.280 --> 1:01:16.000 part of this correct? 1:01:16.080 --> 1:01:16.320 Yeah? 1:01:16.360 --> 1:01:20.160 I think a lot of it was. The intention was 1:01:20.200 --> 1:01:23.760 to put indigenous peoples on land that wasn't as fertile, 1:01:24.640 --> 1:01:27.000 and that that's kind of goes back into what I 1:01:27.040 --> 1:01:31.040 was talking about traditional foods and how it's difficult. But 1:01:31.160 --> 1:01:33.000 I think, you know, I don't know if this science 1:01:33.080 --> 1:01:36.400 was all there at the time, and I think now 1:01:37.400 --> 1:01:42.200 a lot of indigenous land, a lot of reservations actually 1:01:42.360 --> 1:01:44.320 they found out that they're yeah, they're on like on 1:01:44.400 --> 1:01:48.480 top of big mines and like things that the Western 1:01:48.480 --> 1:01:53.560 world funds really valuable. And so there's a shift almost 1:01:53.680 --> 1:01:57.600 to almost you see it in like policies and lawsuits 1:01:57.640 --> 1:02:02.280 today to start trying to grab more minerals from the 1:02:02.360 --> 1:02:05.320 land that that that they had actually put us on, 1:02:05.480 --> 1:02:07.880 which they didn't think was valuable. And now they're like, wait, 1:02:08.320 --> 1:02:09.600 there's like copper under there. 1:02:10.920 --> 1:02:18.080 Yeah, that's a good example of that, right exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:02:17.280 --> 1:02:22.479 Well, you know the podcaster and the rapper propaganda prop 1:02:22.560 --> 1:02:25.280 I'm James. You probably have met him, you know. He 1:02:25.880 --> 1:02:30.080 speaks about how initially they put the African Americans in 1:02:30.200 --> 1:02:33.080 the waterfront. They said, here, you're gonna live in these 1:02:33.120 --> 1:02:35.760 places by the by the the ocean where you can't 1:02:35.800 --> 1:02:38.440 really grow things that well. And then after a while 1:02:38.480 --> 1:02:41.120 they realized, oh no, that's really valuable property, and then 1:02:41.120 --> 1:02:42.800 they started trying to find ways to get them out 1:02:42.800 --> 1:02:48.440 of there. Seems to be our national m O. Can 1:02:48.520 --> 1:02:50.560 we get back to the IHS a little bit? So 1:02:50.560 --> 1:02:52.720 you guys have mentioned Indian Health Services. It's come up 1:02:52.720 --> 1:02:54.720 a couple of times. And James, I'd also want to 1:02:54.800 --> 1:02:57.080 hear your because you worked there as well. I'd like 1:02:57.160 --> 1:02:59.600 to hear like, what are some things that the IHS 1:02:59.680 --> 1:03:03.040 is doing well? What are some things that need work 1:03:03.360 --> 1:03:04.040 and how. 1:03:04.960 --> 1:03:09.400 I just want to say the IHS, I think they 1:03:10.120 --> 1:03:12.720 they they're doing what they can't a lot of it. 1:03:13.160 --> 1:03:15.000 They're doing what they well with what they have. 1:03:16.040 --> 1:03:18.280 I would say like a lot of the issues are 1:03:18.360 --> 1:03:22.320 underfunding and we don't exactly know how well, like we 1:03:22.360 --> 1:03:24.800 don't really know the potential quite yet because they just 1:03:24.840 --> 1:03:28.160 don't have enough funding. So I think, like I would 1:03:28.160 --> 1:03:31.600 just like to insert that caveat into the conversation first. 1:03:32.240 --> 1:03:35.240 Ye yeah, yeah, And I you know, I only have 1:03:35.440 --> 1:03:39.600 experience on one reservation and they're you know, every everyone 1:03:39.680 --> 1:03:40.600 is different, for sure. 1:03:41.040 --> 1:03:42.960 I think someone might know more than me. 1:03:43.080 --> 1:03:46.480 But the Alaska Health System Indian Health System is still 1:03:46.520 --> 1:03:48.280 part of the AHS, but it's like kind of its 1:03:48.280 --> 1:03:51.479 own thing, and they are the kind of the gold 1:03:51.520 --> 1:03:54.720 standard or they're they're kind of the they are doing 1:03:54.720 --> 1:03:57.040 the best with what they have. And I don't know, 1:03:57.200 --> 1:04:00.240 maybe you guys know, James or Victor that if they 1:04:00.320 --> 1:04:02.400 had more funding is probably a big part of it. 1:04:02.440 --> 1:04:05.520 If they just have more funding, But they are kind 1:04:05.520 --> 1:04:08.600 of touted as the leader in IHS right now. 1:04:09.280 --> 1:04:12.440 I know, but less about this in either of you, 1:04:12.560 --> 1:04:15.440 I'm sure. But I know I worked on an ih 1:04:15.480 --> 1:04:19.920 grant years ago with someone who'd worked with Alaska Native 1:04:19.960 --> 1:04:24.040 people and they were talking about this Promodores de Salul model, 1:04:24.360 --> 1:04:26.160 which I don't know if you guys are familiar with 1:04:26.200 --> 1:04:29.120 that it came from Oakland actually, but like it's a 1:04:29.120 --> 1:04:33.120 p mental model for health education that they had implemented there, 1:04:33.360 --> 1:04:35.920 and we were trying to get money to implement that 1:04:35.960 --> 1:04:41.480 and the Yaki Reservation didn't work shockingly, but that model 1:04:41.520 --> 1:04:43.880 that they used of like using people from the community 1:04:43.920 --> 1:04:47.320 to educate people from the community rather than like, I 1:04:47.320 --> 1:04:49.560 guess you could call it like white men and white coats, 1:04:50.400 --> 1:04:54.360 worked very well for them, and I think it's a 1:04:54.480 --> 1:04:58.240 very desirable model to replicate. It's not that expensive either, 1:04:59.160 --> 1:05:01.360 and we were doing it with beat its Prevention, right. So, like, 1:05:02.120 --> 1:05:05.920 chiefly my thing is riding bikes has been my whole life, 1:05:06.000 --> 1:05:09.640 and so it is, yeah, just a big old bike 1:05:09.760 --> 1:05:13.520 riding hippie, but like, riding bike is very good for you, 1:05:13.560 --> 1:05:17.600 as it turns out, which is which. So the thing 1:05:17.760 --> 1:05:20.240 that we've been doing with a lot of my friends 1:05:20.280 --> 1:05:24.440 on the Yaki Reservation is getting folks helping them out 1:05:24.440 --> 1:05:26.720 with a bike and helmet and lights and all the 1:05:26.760 --> 1:05:29.040 things that you need, teasing them to fix the bike right, 1:05:29.080 --> 1:05:31.760 and then having them go ahead and ride the bike, 1:05:31.800 --> 1:05:35.240 and then like it, having them bring friends and family 1:05:35.240 --> 1:05:37.360 members to come back and ride the bike and and 1:05:37.560 --> 1:05:39.560 have a goal event as part of that. And that's 1:05:39.560 --> 1:05:42.520 worked very well for us too, So that model that 1:05:42.800 --> 1:05:46.640 they implemented has been super successful within this very small 1:05:46.680 --> 1:05:50.000 context of getting Yaki folks to ride bikes. 1:05:50.880 --> 1:05:53.240 Yeah, just going off of that, I mean, that sounds awesome. 1:05:54.400 --> 1:05:56.920 And I think one of the limitations of the IHS 1:05:57.000 --> 1:05:59.560 is that it's this huge bureaucracy, so it's hard to 1:05:59.600 --> 1:06:02.720 do stuff like that, Like for instance, at the Yaqui tribe. 1:06:02.720 --> 1:06:05.360 I'm sure you know, we're not the easiest chribe to 1:06:05.400 --> 1:06:07.680 work with, but but. 1:06:07.720 --> 1:06:09.400 We're probably easier than the IHS. 1:06:09.480 --> 1:06:10.360 Yeah, because. 1:06:13.840 --> 1:06:17.000 And and I think that that's a huge limitation. Like 1:06:17.400 --> 1:06:20.480 even if you want to do a study on the IHS, 1:06:20.640 --> 1:06:23.120 it has to be approved by like all of these 1:06:23.160 --> 1:06:27.920 government officials and bureaucrats and uh and I think that 1:06:27.920 --> 1:06:31.560 that makes it really difficult. And especially because you know, 1:06:31.720 --> 1:06:34.640 and there's so many branches at the government that the 1:06:34.680 --> 1:06:37.560 Indian Health Service is just one small. 1:06:37.560 --> 1:06:38.600 You know, piece of it. 1:06:39.480 --> 1:06:43.240 H and it's not necessarily one that's like heavily prioritized 1:06:43.440 --> 1:06:47.160 by the government. But there are improvements that are being made. 1:06:47.320 --> 1:06:50.760 I think in this last appropriations bill, the Indian Health 1:06:50.800 --> 1:06:54.680 Service got like funded a lot more than it had previously. 1:06:55.120 --> 1:06:58.120 So hopefully we'll see some improvements. I think they're doing 1:06:58.160 --> 1:07:01.040 really well when it comes to digital health, the integration 1:07:01.200 --> 1:07:06.720 of electronic medical systems. I think that made a significant 1:07:06.720 --> 1:07:11.960 impact when that was introduced. And then you know, I 1:07:12.000 --> 1:07:15.680 think the Indian Health Service, like the model does well 1:07:15.880 --> 1:07:19.400 in giving a lot of freedom to tribes to choose 1:07:19.800 --> 1:07:22.200 do we want to continue with the Indian Health Service 1:07:23.000 --> 1:07:25.439 or do we want to take our health system over 1:07:25.720 --> 1:07:29.120 and run it ourselves, but still use them same money 1:07:29.120 --> 1:07:31.440 that would have been used anyways. I think that's what 1:07:31.480 --> 1:07:35.360 a lot of the clinics in Alaska did in terms 1:07:35.360 --> 1:07:38.120 of having like it's called six thirty eight clinic or 1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:41.800 six thirty eight clinics or tribal health systems. It's really 1:07:41.800 --> 1:07:43.800 cool what they did in Alaska because those are some 1:07:43.840 --> 1:07:47.240 of the most remote, remote villages you know, in the US, 1:07:47.920 --> 1:07:51.240 and I think that is something that we should be 1:07:51.240 --> 1:07:55.439 paying more attention to, especially you know, when we're talking 1:07:55.480 --> 1:07:58.920 about you know, we talked about Alaska that they're remote, 1:07:59.000 --> 1:08:00.840 but a lot of tribes the parts of the US 1:08:01.040 --> 1:08:05.240 or maybe not as remote, but they're in very similar 1:08:05.240 --> 1:08:09.320 situations and that they're kind of disconnected, like on food deserts. 1:08:10.600 --> 1:08:13.520 And I think the same model can be used, but not. 1:08:13.560 --> 1:08:17.160 Every tribe is at the place where they're capable yet 1:08:17.520 --> 1:08:21.600 of taking over like the operations, the staff. There's a 1:08:21.600 --> 1:08:23.320 lot of work that needs to be done, and every 1:08:23.320 --> 1:08:24.880 tribe is kind of in a different place. 1:08:26.400 --> 1:08:28.960 I'm interesting, I'm interested. I think you were mostly tongue 1:08:28.960 --> 1:08:30.920 in cheek. But when you when you mentioned the yacky 1:08:30.960 --> 1:08:33.200 tribe is not that easy to work with? What what 1:08:33.200 --> 1:08:36.400 what do you mean? Like is it is? Is there 1:08:36.400 --> 1:08:38.400 a lot of different opinions? Is that? Why is there? 1:08:39.120 --> 1:08:40.960 Is it hard to why is it hard to manage? 1:08:41.040 --> 1:08:42.720 Or why would that be difficult? 1:08:44.040 --> 1:08:49.280 We're just very militant, and I think I think we're 1:08:49.320 --> 1:08:52.120 just you know, we're just do our own thing and. 1:08:52.200 --> 1:08:55.799 Uh, very independent and. 1:08:55.320 --> 1:08:58.160 Yeah, yeah, we're just kind of like I think I 1:08:58.160 --> 1:08:59.800 think we're just kind of a very. 1:09:01.120 --> 1:09:05.920 Rebellious nature in us, like sort of yeah. 1:09:05.840 --> 1:09:09.640 Just really had strong and like we don't work the 1:09:09.680 --> 1:09:11.639 same on the same timeline. 1:09:11.680 --> 1:09:13.719 I think sometimes it's like, for. 1:09:13.640 --> 1:09:17.000 Instance, like like I'll tell you a story, there was 1:09:17.000 --> 1:09:20.840 this this shrimp farmer dude, our traditional one of our 1:09:20.960 --> 1:09:24.120 traditional spiritual leaders political leaders. 1:09:24.120 --> 1:09:26.759 He passed away in early two thousands. 1:09:26.800 --> 1:09:30.960 His name was on Selmo Valencia, and they were bringing 1:09:31.000 --> 1:09:34.280 down there trying to introduce shrimp farming in the traditional 1:09:34.360 --> 1:09:37.559 villages in Sonoda, Mexico. So they brought this guy all 1:09:37.560 --> 1:09:40.720 the way down. He's this businessman and you know, he's 1:09:40.800 --> 1:09:45.320 running on time, and they bounded down to the traditional 1:09:45.479 --> 1:09:48.880 authorities in one of the pueblos and then all of 1:09:48.920 --> 1:09:52.680 a sudden, right in the middle of the meeting, the 1:09:52.760 --> 1:09:56.599 snake you see this snake on the floor go by. 1:09:57.240 --> 1:10:01.400 And then also Valencia, he's like stop, wait for a second, 1:10:01.840 --> 1:10:04.320 and he grabs a snake and then he looks at 1:10:04.320 --> 1:10:06.759 it and he says, we have to stop the meeting. 1:10:06.840 --> 1:10:08.360 I have to go back to Tucson. 1:10:08.920 --> 1:10:11.200 And this business guy is like, what the hell you know, 1:10:11.320 --> 1:10:13.920 I just came from like Manhattan, and I flew all 1:10:13.960 --> 1:10:17.439 the way up in this village, like and they stopped 1:10:17.439 --> 1:10:20.920 the meeting, and this guy's like confused. 1:10:20.960 --> 1:10:22.560 I think he got really angry. 1:10:22.720 --> 1:10:25.280 Uh, and that never happened to him in a business 1:10:25.280 --> 1:10:29.479 meeting before. But there was a traditional aspect that I 1:10:29.479 --> 1:10:33.040 think we just put that above everything else, Like during 1:10:33.080 --> 1:10:37.120 even today, during time to ceremony, like no one's answering emails, 1:10:37.240 --> 1:10:39.280 no travel government official is going to get back to 1:10:39.280 --> 1:10:42.720 you within that those like three four weeks because they're 1:10:42.720 --> 1:10:46.400 doing spiritual practices and honoring that. 1:10:46.560 --> 1:10:48.559 So yeah, yeah, I get it. 1:10:48.920 --> 1:10:52.799 From my perspective, everyone is lovely and like it's nice 1:10:52.880 --> 1:10:55.200 to have a community where everyone cares about each other 1:10:55.240 --> 1:10:58.599 and like wants everyone else to be healthy, and like 1:10:58.840 --> 1:11:01.320 that's great. There are times when recently we did a 1:11:01.320 --> 1:11:03.600 live show to raise money to buy more bikes and 1:11:03.680 --> 1:11:05.639 someone from iHeart was trying to get a W nine 1:11:05.680 --> 1:11:07.200 out of us, and I was like, no, it's it's 1:11:07.280 --> 1:11:11.599 like Eastern weeks. It's not it's not gonna happen, like 1:11:11.640 --> 1:11:13.800 it's just I did. But it's fine, you explain it. 1:11:13.840 --> 1:11:18.639 And like I always attribute like I'm not fully culturally fluent, right, 1:11:18.720 --> 1:11:21.719 Like I'm a guy from England, Like it was different 1:11:21.760 --> 1:11:28.599 where I grew up, so like things you can't tell 1:11:28.680 --> 1:11:31.000 ye stout is that it's right up there with Valencia. 1:11:31.600 --> 1:11:34.320 But yeah, like I'm obviously I don't have full cultural effluency, 1:11:34.360 --> 1:11:36.000 so it's on me to kind of listen and learn 1:11:36.360 --> 1:11:38.920 at a time rather than be frustrated and build those. 1:11:38.800 --> 1:11:42.200 Ship when you're I mean obviously you're you're very good 1:11:42.240 --> 1:11:44.400 at that. In my opinion, what I've seen from you 1:11:44.439 --> 1:11:47.080 so far, but I'm very curious actually from both James 1:11:47.080 --> 1:11:50.080 and Molly, Like when you guys first started going to 1:11:50.920 --> 1:11:55.559 the reservation, what surprised you, What was different than you 1:11:55.640 --> 1:11:59.000 had envisioned? What you know, because I'm assuming you got 1:11:59.040 --> 1:12:02.800 all your knowledge of what reservations were like like from Hollywood, Like, 1:12:02.840 --> 1:12:05.880 I did you know what what was fact? What was fiction? 1:12:07.000 --> 1:12:09.760 Yeah, it was my first time like on a reservation, 1:12:11.200 --> 1:12:14.040 and I think it was. 1:12:15.920 --> 1:12:15.960 It. 1:12:17.080 --> 1:12:19.080 It sort of felt like a little bit of a 1:12:19.120 --> 1:12:22.479 different country, almost like you're in Arizona and you drive 1:12:22.520 --> 1:12:24.040 three hours and you feel like you're in a really 1:12:24.080 --> 1:12:27.880 different place. It feels just a little bit different, and 1:12:28.280 --> 1:12:32.000 just it's beautiful a the one I'm on was, or 1:12:32.040 --> 1:12:34.559 the one that I went to is in White River, Arizona. 1:12:34.600 --> 1:12:36.800 It really is beautiful in the mountains. 1:12:36.960 --> 1:12:39.479 Along a river, but it's you know, a lot of 1:12:39.920 --> 1:12:44.200 single story housing that are all kind of government cookie 1:12:44.240 --> 1:12:49.439 cutter housing. And I got to kind of go into 1:12:49.479 --> 1:12:51.439 the homes too when we were doing house visits, So 1:12:51.479 --> 1:12:54.000 that felt I felt very like privileged and it felt 1:12:54.000 --> 1:12:57.000 special to be able to do that as a very 1:12:57.040 --> 1:13:00.000 foreign person, right, I felt I felt like an outside 1:13:01.720 --> 1:13:04.479 and yeah, I mean a lot there isn't They're not 1:13:04.640 --> 1:13:07.400 central heat for these house Some of these houses, lots 1:13:07.400 --> 1:13:12.000 of the floors were dirt, like not actual flooring on 1:13:12.080 --> 1:13:12.639 the houses. 1:13:13.840 --> 1:13:16.600 So that was I think surprising to me because it 1:13:16.680 --> 1:13:19.479 seems like that is not something you think of when 1:13:19.479 --> 1:13:24.000 you think of America. But that was that probably was 1:13:24.040 --> 1:13:24.839 like the most surprising. 1:13:24.920 --> 1:13:27.479 But then like the street dogs running around everywhere, it 1:13:27.560 --> 1:13:29.680 was kind of classic. I think that my first my 1:13:29.720 --> 1:13:32.120 first drive down, I like had to stop because like 1:13:32.320 --> 1:13:34.800 a pack of dogs went by, and that was kind 1:13:34.800 --> 1:13:36.480 of out of a out of a movie. 1:13:36.800 --> 1:13:39.920 Yeah, I didn't know, Like obviously I'm not American either, 1:13:40.400 --> 1:13:42.479 so yeah, it's shocking. 1:13:42.720 --> 1:13:44.400 I actually am from Texas. 1:13:44.400 --> 1:13:47.680 I just watched the Harry Potter films on repeating that's 1:13:47.680 --> 1:13:48.799 how I learned to be a turf. 1:13:49.680 --> 1:13:52.280 No, I am not a turf. 1:13:52.920 --> 1:13:54.560 I I don't think that. 1:13:55.040 --> 1:14:00.080 I don't think that, yeah, there's people should go away. 1:14:00.760 --> 1:14:04.000 I so like I didn't maybe receive a lot of 1:14:04.040 --> 1:14:07.960 that like sort of ingrained kind of British for we 1:14:08.080 --> 1:14:09.880 fucking did settle colonialism everywhere. 1:14:09.880 --> 1:14:10.360 I don't want to. 1:14:10.360 --> 1:14:15.160 Erase that for a second, but I you know, so 1:14:15.280 --> 1:14:17.479 I just go to the restaurant by bike through it. 1:14:18.320 --> 1:14:21.840 Pascal yaki Ros has nice rose lovely bike lanes and 1:14:21.880 --> 1:14:25.559 it's much smaller than like the Tohorn Autumn Rears, which 1:14:25.600 --> 1:14:28.320 is next door. That's the sides of Connecticut for people 1:14:28.320 --> 1:14:33.280 who aren't familiar, and I know, I'm from a part 1:14:33.280 --> 1:14:36.240 of England that's very rural where people talk to each other. 1:14:36.920 --> 1:14:40.240 And that's the thing that I don't like about living 1:14:40.280 --> 1:14:42.599 in a town in California is that everyone just kind 1:14:42.640 --> 1:14:44.599 of lives in a little box and kind of moves 1:14:44.640 --> 1:14:48.200 around and doesn't talk to each other. And at least 1:14:48.240 --> 1:14:52.439 in my experience on the reservation, everyone is friendly and nice. 1:14:53.720 --> 1:14:55.200 Most of the people I run into it with friendly 1:14:55.240 --> 1:15:00.720 and nice, and so I really like that guy I 1:15:00.800 --> 1:15:05.800 ran into as a traditional artist, David Moreno, who does 1:15:05.920 --> 1:15:08.160 he runs an art program there. He's very lovely guy, 1:15:09.200 --> 1:15:13.600 and we just were chatting, I think, and I was 1:15:13.640 --> 1:15:15.559 trying to encourage. I think I was trying to encourage 1:15:15.600 --> 1:15:17.760 him to come on a bike ride with me, and like, 1:15:17.800 --> 1:15:19.519 you didn't have a bike, so then I was just 1:15:19.520 --> 1:15:21.920 trying to encourage, Like I was like, maybe I could 1:15:21.920 --> 1:15:23.720 get some bikes and come back. And I spoke to 1:15:23.720 --> 1:15:26.800 some people and diabetes prevention and we got some bikes 1:15:26.800 --> 1:15:31.000 and came back. But it like, obviously people's houses aren't 1:15:31.040 --> 1:15:33.160 super duper fancy, but they're fine. Like people have some 1:15:33.240 --> 1:15:36.840 nice houses on the res like you know, I didn't 1:15:36.840 --> 1:15:40.040 grow up in a super fancy house, and like the 1:15:40.080 --> 1:15:42.160 houses that are not that distinct from those that I 1:15:42.160 --> 1:15:47.439 see in San Diego. It's beautiful too, like especially down 1:15:48.160 --> 1:15:51.519 if you go on the Autumn Reservation further down. We 1:15:51.560 --> 1:15:55.120 did a ride there in twenty nineteen, and we went 1:15:55.120 --> 1:15:58.040 out the night before from the Yaki Reservation with the 1:15:58.040 --> 1:15:59.800 group of us and we did like a big camp 1:16:00.040 --> 1:16:03.160 out and then we did it right the next day. 1:16:03.240 --> 1:16:05.920 Their roads are not quite as nice as the yucky 1:16:06.000 --> 1:16:07.760 roads we all got. We ran out of innertube because 1:16:07.760 --> 1:16:12.240 everyone got so many punctures, like it's it's yeah, it's 1:16:12.320 --> 1:16:13.400 beautiful landscape. 1:16:13.439 --> 1:16:16.400 It's really gorgeous. I think the biggest shot to me 1:16:16.600 --> 1:16:17.360 was the donkeys. 1:16:17.760 --> 1:16:20.320 The donkeys on the outun roads or something else, like 1:16:20.479 --> 1:16:24.680 just just wild ass donkeys that like at night it 1:16:24.760 --> 1:16:28.720 sounds like there is a murder occurring. It just makes 1:16:28.760 --> 1:16:31.639 these horrendous noises and like you puncture on your bike 1:16:31.680 --> 1:16:32.880 and you go for a little bit of shade because 1:16:32.880 --> 1:16:35.400 it's very hot, and suddenly you realize like ten buddles 1:16:35.479 --> 1:16:40.240 like just chilling there too. So that was the weirdest thing. 1:16:40.439 --> 1:16:43.720 But like I know, people shouldn't just walk onto reservations 1:16:43.720 --> 1:16:46.040 and start like trying to have their cultural immersion experience 1:16:46.120 --> 1:16:46.400 or whatever. 1:16:46.479 --> 1:16:48.479 That's that's a bit cringe. 1:16:48.520 --> 1:16:51.800 But yeah, like people equally shouldn't think that it's a 1:16:51.840 --> 1:16:55.800 scary or different or dangerous, like Arizona feels foreign to me, 1:16:56.120 --> 1:16:58.960 Like I go to Phoenix and that is that is 1:16:58.960 --> 1:17:04.559 a scary experience for other reasons, but like I I've 1:17:04.560 --> 1:17:07.240 always felt very welcome and comfortable there. 1:17:07.920 --> 1:17:10.040 Yeah, I can just add one more thing. Oh sorry, 1:17:10.200 --> 1:17:13.719 just I think the other that's a great point, James. 1:17:13.720 --> 1:17:15.559 But like the striking part for me too was that 1:17:15.600 --> 1:17:19.200 I felt very Yeah, I felt very welcomed when I 1:17:19.240 --> 1:17:22.040 was there, And they like have a very soft way 1:17:22.080 --> 1:17:25.080 of speaking, and I'm like a loud, annoying American and 1:17:25.160 --> 1:17:28.439 so like have are obviously they're American as well, but 1:17:28.960 --> 1:17:30.920 I have kind of a loud voice, and they're very 1:17:30.920 --> 1:17:35.280 soft spoken and so gentle and so just like appreciative 1:17:35.320 --> 1:17:37.599 and I kind of For me, I was like, wow, 1:17:37.720 --> 1:17:40.240 this is like amazing that you have resiliency to feel 1:17:40.240 --> 1:17:43.160 appreciative when like I don't feel like you should you know, 1:17:43.240 --> 1:17:46.519 feel grateful or appreciative to me, I thought that was 1:17:46.560 --> 1:17:48.280 like my the most streaking. 1:17:48.000 --> 1:17:48.759 That I felt. 1:17:49.479 --> 1:17:52.719 Mollie's so nice. She's like trying to apologize for being Listen, 1:17:52.720 --> 1:17:56.360 you're talking to two podcasters like obnoxiouses are nature, It's 1:17:56.400 --> 1:18:03.280 like part of our You don't need to lay yourself there, Victor, 1:18:03.960 --> 1:18:05.720 You've already touched on this a little bit, But do 1:18:05.800 --> 1:18:10.960 you find yourself still still dispelling myths and stereotypes about 1:18:11.040 --> 1:18:13.000 Native Americans even at medical school? 1:18:14.280 --> 1:18:15.360 Yeah, yeah, all the time. 1:18:17.000 --> 1:18:21.519 You know, we talked about the medical misconceptions and and 1:18:21.520 --> 1:18:26.759 and those things. But I think there it's it's like, 1:18:26.760 --> 1:18:29.719 like I said, I feel like the American educational system 1:18:29.800 --> 1:18:32.840 it left so much room for interpretation and what it 1:18:32.920 --> 1:18:35.280 did give was and a lot of it wasn't true. 1:18:35.360 --> 1:18:39.200 But I think what I'm really battling is that people 1:18:39.400 --> 1:18:43.960 just the level of exposure they have is so minimal 1:18:44.400 --> 1:18:49.040 that they're coming into these conversations and discussions with pretty 1:18:49.080 --> 1:18:54.160 much almost nothing. And so the average American knows very 1:18:54.320 --> 1:18:58.400 very little about Native Americans. And when I say that, 1:18:58.479 --> 1:19:01.240 I don't mean Native American could culture because I don't 1:19:01.240 --> 1:19:04.200 think anyone, any Native American really cares if they know 1:19:04.760 --> 1:19:08.240 our culture or not. In fact, they might even protect it. 1:19:09.000 --> 1:19:13.920 But we're talking about what is the experience of Native 1:19:13.920 --> 1:19:17.720 Americans in this country, what happened, what were the policies, 1:19:18.520 --> 1:19:20.479 what are the issues that are still going on today. 1:19:21.040 --> 1:19:25.400 You know, there's the level of education. It's just not 1:19:25.600 --> 1:19:28.439 to the point where I find we can even have 1:19:28.640 --> 1:19:32.160 these discussions, discussions that we need to have. So I 1:19:32.200 --> 1:19:35.120 think the most taxing thing on me is that whenever 1:19:35.200 --> 1:19:39.759 I talk about Indigenous experiences or anything related to Indigenous health, 1:19:40.160 --> 1:19:44.280 I have to give so much background that every time 1:19:44.479 --> 1:19:47.680 I have to educate someone on you know, what is colonization, 1:19:47.880 --> 1:19:53.080 what happened, and the very basics of I think that 1:19:53.160 --> 1:19:57.479 should be basic in this country, all these basics, and 1:19:57.520 --> 1:20:02.280 by that time, you know, I think people have gotten 1:20:02.320 --> 1:20:04.400 so much information that maybe they didn't know before. 1:20:04.439 --> 1:20:05.600 They get overwhelmed. 1:20:06.200 --> 1:20:10.240 And these things can also be very touchy subjects, I 1:20:10.240 --> 1:20:13.240 think because we haven't been bold enough in the US 1:20:13.280 --> 1:20:16.040 to actually just talk about them. 1:20:16.640 --> 1:20:17.360 And I think. 1:20:17.160 --> 1:20:22.600 People, you know, might be a little afraid to acknowledge 1:20:22.600 --> 1:20:26.160 these things and somewhere inside. And I think what would 1:20:26.160 --> 1:20:29.240 have helped with that is if they were exposed to 1:20:29.320 --> 1:20:34.160 it in you know, starting in elementary school history, starting 1:20:34.200 --> 1:20:37.240 in middle school, high school, all of these things I 1:20:37.240 --> 1:20:39.760 think will make well, we need to start doing that 1:20:40.200 --> 1:20:43.360 in the educational system if we're really going to make progress. 1:20:43.800 --> 1:20:47.360 Yeah, as like someone who teaches history, oh, it has 1:20:47.360 --> 1:20:50.639 tour history. I think that's very true, and sadly it's 1:20:50.840 --> 1:20:54.880 only getting worse, like places like Florida, right and making 1:20:54.920 --> 1:20:57.640 it harder and harder to talk about that. But I 1:20:57.680 --> 1:21:01.160 think when people come to need so like I teach 1:21:01.720 --> 1:21:04.559 a community college course, an American history course, and I 1:21:04.560 --> 1:21:07.840 think when people come to that course, I mean California, 1:21:08.040 --> 1:21:11.120 like many of them, for instance, could not name the 1:21:11.160 --> 1:21:14.280 tribe who's the cancestral and current homelands they are sitting 1:21:14.360 --> 1:21:19.080 in and learning. And then obviously to understand those experiences, 1:21:19.200 --> 1:21:21.200 you have to have a name for them, right, And 1:21:21.240 --> 1:21:23.000 if you don't have a name for the people, then 1:21:23.920 --> 1:21:26.719 you're a long way from understanding, I guess. But it's 1:21:26.760 --> 1:21:31.240 something that's still desperately lacking in the American education system. 1:21:31.840 --> 1:21:36.240 And it doesn't seem like people are pushing hard enough 1:21:36.280 --> 1:21:41.000 to get that rectified. Like it's yeah, it's a very 1:21:41.040 --> 1:21:44.360 big gap even in places, you know, like you could 1:21:44.400 --> 1:21:48.559 be at school in Arizona, like you could be an 1:21:48.560 --> 1:21:52.439 hour from some of the biggest reservations in the United States, 1:21:52.520 --> 1:21:56.160 right the Art tim and the Navajo, and maybe not 1:21:56.200 --> 1:21:58.840 an hour. Everything's a long way away in Arizona. But 1:21:59.120 --> 1:22:02.800 and and not understand anything about those people who lived 1:22:02.800 --> 1:22:08.800 experience if you're in Scottsdale. 1:22:06.680 --> 1:22:08.559 In the Bay Area. I've grown up in the San 1:22:08.600 --> 1:22:11.679 Francisco Bay Area and I didn't I knew very little 1:22:11.840 --> 1:22:15.000 about the Native people that were here until my one 1:22:15.040 --> 1:22:17.280 of my oldest son had to do a project here 1:22:17.320 --> 1:22:21.320 in San Francisco on the Miwalk tribe. And then only 1:22:21.360 --> 1:22:22.800 then did I learn. I'm like, oh my god, they 1:22:22.840 --> 1:22:26.120 were everywhere here. You know, there's so much the lonely tribe. 1:22:26.479 --> 1:22:30.160 So even here, you know, which is a relatively progressive, 1:22:30.360 --> 1:22:34.960 not Floridian system, you know, did I not learn a 1:22:35.000 --> 1:22:38.200 lot about that? But I also, Victor, I also hear you, like, 1:22:38.439 --> 1:22:42.000 I know it must be exhausting, and we appreciate you 1:22:42.040 --> 1:22:43.760 coming on to talk to us about it. James and 1:22:43.800 --> 1:22:46.040 I have talked about this before. It's it's something that 1:22:46.080 --> 1:22:48.519 I at least grapple with sometimes, like in terms of 1:22:48.560 --> 1:22:50.840 like bringing on guests, you know, like I want people 1:22:50.880 --> 1:22:55.120 to talk about these things that are difficult and sometimes 1:22:55.160 --> 1:22:57.439 maybe even a little traumatic to like talk about. But 1:22:57.479 --> 1:22:59.760 there's this balance of like, well, I want the people 1:22:59.800 --> 1:23:01.920 who experience it know the most about it to speak 1:23:01.960 --> 1:23:04.400 about it, but also the one to keep re exposing 1:23:04.439 --> 1:23:08.800 people to like the same exhausting trauma every time, you know, 1:23:09.080 --> 1:23:11.760 it becomes a tough thing for me at least to 1:23:11.800 --> 1:23:13.360 figure out in balance, you know. 1:23:14.640 --> 1:23:18.639 Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I think you know, these podcasts are 1:23:18.760 --> 1:23:21.640 a great way to do that, to have these discussions 1:23:21.960 --> 1:23:25.160 because it actually I think it takes away from the 1:23:25.200 --> 1:23:29.120 taxation because it hits a lot of people at once, 1:23:29.240 --> 1:23:34.400 you know, and. 1:23:33.160 --> 1:23:35.479 Listeners in the tens. We have listeners in the. 1:23:37.720 --> 1:23:38.760 Yeah, that's better. 1:23:40.320 --> 1:23:43.160 We'll do a QR code so you can just be like, hey, hey, 1:23:43.240 --> 1:23:43.920 check this out. 1:23:47.960 --> 1:23:50.040 So so bit I'm sorry I have I have one 1:23:50.120 --> 1:23:52.519 last question for you. You know, you mentioned that you 1:23:52.560 --> 1:23:56.200 want to go back and practice on the reservation and 1:23:56.280 --> 1:23:59.400 be a part of the community again. Do you plan 1:23:59.479 --> 1:24:03.800 on bringing in traditional healing components to your practice, and 1:24:03.840 --> 1:24:06.240 if so, are you going to do specialty training? Is 1:24:06.240 --> 1:24:08.880 there like a version of a fellowship that you'll do 1:24:08.960 --> 1:24:09.200 for that. 1:24:11.000 --> 1:24:14.040 Yeah, I really want to do traditional practices. I'm not 1:24:14.080 --> 1:24:19.120 a traditional healer myself, but I want to partner with them. 1:24:19.600 --> 1:24:23.080 I feel like I have the connections to traditional people 1:24:23.320 --> 1:24:26.160 to do stuff like that. One of the things like 1:24:26.200 --> 1:24:30.280 I really want to do is try to do a 1:24:30.280 --> 1:24:34.320 lot of public health initiatives out of my practice, Like, 1:24:34.360 --> 1:24:37.440 for instance, I want to try to find ways to 1:24:37.479 --> 1:24:40.840 help people grow their own food, start their own gardens, 1:24:41.120 --> 1:24:44.440 do community gardens. I really want to get our traditional 1:24:44.479 --> 1:24:47.439 foods up and running again. And there's a lot of 1:24:47.479 --> 1:24:50.879 people are already working on this, you know, which is amazing. 1:24:51.400 --> 1:24:53.679 I just want to be of service to that effort, 1:24:54.200 --> 1:24:56.559 and I think I think that is one of the 1:24:56.560 --> 1:24:59.120 most important things right now. I also really want to 1:24:59.160 --> 1:25:03.120 do like public health initiatives around language revitalization. I think 1:25:03.240 --> 1:25:07.040 language is so important when it comes to the mental 1:25:07.040 --> 1:25:11.160 health of Indigenous youth uh Indigenous. I believe that Indigenous 1:25:11.200 --> 1:25:14.200 youth who know how to speak their language are more 1:25:14.240 --> 1:25:19.800 mentally strong during the continuing tides of colonization that they 1:25:19.800 --> 1:25:23.520 face in this Western world. If they have their language, 1:25:24.000 --> 1:25:27.479 I think that that's huge in terms of resilience as 1:25:27.720 --> 1:25:32.720 culture as well. I think, you know, finding ways to 1:25:32.720 --> 1:25:37.679 to sort of support culture as medicine, culture as prevention, 1:25:38.520 --> 1:25:43.000 participating in ceremonies, as you know, making it you know, 1:25:43.160 --> 1:25:46.880 very apparent that to to your audience and to the 1:25:46.880 --> 1:25:51.200 world that that that is protective of Indigenous health, indigenous 1:25:51.240 --> 1:25:53.960 mental health, and so that you know, there's all these 1:25:54.280 --> 1:25:57.120 facets of traditional traditional ways of life that we're all 1:25:57.240 --> 1:25:59.800 very healthy to us. And I think a huge part 1:25:59.840 --> 1:26:03.519 of the battle is that we're still having right now 1:26:03.560 --> 1:26:09.240 because the colonization is revitalizing those things, and then those things, 1:26:09.280 --> 1:26:11.439 you know, the more that they're revitalized, the more that 1:26:11.479 --> 1:26:14.320 we decolonize, the healthier we're going to be. But at 1:26:14.320 --> 1:26:18.080 the same time, recognizing that western medicine can also be 1:26:18.200 --> 1:26:22.280 very effective too, if it's just properly funded and if 1:26:22.320 --> 1:26:25.160 the service is effective. And so that's the other the 1:26:25.200 --> 1:26:27.160 other side of the coin that I want to be 1:26:27.240 --> 1:26:28.360 working on as well. 1:26:29.720 --> 1:26:30.599 Oh excellent, man. 1:26:31.320 --> 1:26:33.960 Yeah, one thing I wanted to touch on before we 1:26:34.040 --> 1:26:38.320 finish is because it seems relatively current and newsy right is. 1:26:39.120 --> 1:26:41.920 And I think Victor my next one point that like 1:26:42.080 --> 1:26:45.160 colonization isn't a thing that stopped. It's a thing that 1:26:45.200 --> 1:26:50.600 we keep doing like we not we including Victor, but 1:26:50.840 --> 1:26:52.320 you know, like we people like me. 1:26:53.280 --> 1:26:53.439 Like. 1:26:55.080 --> 1:26:56.920 The Indian Chaid Welfare Act. 1:26:57.000 --> 1:27:00.479 Right, EQUA is a thing that the Zippering Court is 1:27:00.880 --> 1:27:05.160 like set up to take a swing at. And I 1:27:05.240 --> 1:27:07.600 know that that is an area of great concern to 1:27:07.680 --> 1:27:10.240 many people. And I was just in a tribal building 1:27:10.479 --> 1:27:14.560 last week looking at books for Yaki children right to 1:27:14.600 --> 1:27:17.439 help them stay connected with their culture if they're in 1:27:17.680 --> 1:27:20.760 a family which is not a tribal family. Can you, 1:27:21.200 --> 1:27:25.840 if you feel comfortable, explain what IQUA is and then 1:27:26.120 --> 1:27:28.439 the damage it does to young people to be pulled 1:27:28.479 --> 1:27:33.200 away from their culture and sort of get this little 1:27:33.200 --> 1:27:35.680 active conversation that happens every time that happens. 1:27:36.360 --> 1:27:38.680 Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because colonization is 1:27:38.720 --> 1:27:42.320 definitely continuing. For instance, we think about the Black Hills 1:27:42.320 --> 1:27:45.679 in South Dakota and the gold mining, the gold rush there, Well, 1:27:45.760 --> 1:27:51.479 there's still dozens of gold mining permits that are pending 1:27:51.560 --> 1:27:54.240 right now in the Black Hills. There are dozens of 1:27:54.240 --> 1:27:57.240 gold mines still operating there, and then La Coda and 1:27:57.320 --> 1:28:01.200 Dakota are still fighting for the Black Hills. Uh it's 1:28:01.240 --> 1:28:04.240 just one instance. We see that all across the United States. 1:28:04.760 --> 1:28:07.240 And I think when it comes to the Indian Child 1:28:07.280 --> 1:28:09.840 Wealth for ACT, that's another really good example. Uh So, 1:28:09.960 --> 1:28:14.960 basically the Indian Child Wealth for ACT if if a 1:28:15.080 --> 1:28:21.680 Native child is in the foster care system, and basically 1:28:21.760 --> 1:28:27.800 it helps to uh to support those children to find 1:28:27.800 --> 1:28:30.840 a placement with a family who is either who is 1:28:30.880 --> 1:28:36.400 from their tribe, from their cultural background. And the reasoning 1:28:36.439 --> 1:28:41.840 behind that is because they to number one to to 1:28:42.080 --> 1:28:46.880 stop the history of assimilation when it comes to taking 1:28:47.080 --> 1:28:51.920 Native children from their families. And we know about that, 1:28:52.120 --> 1:28:55.240 you know, through the US boarding school system. That was 1:28:55.320 --> 1:28:58.519 one example, but it kind of transitioned at a point 1:28:58.560 --> 1:29:03.240 once once boarding schools were terminated, those forced boarding schools, 1:29:03.280 --> 1:29:07.479 it kind of transitioned into the foster care system. And 1:29:07.560 --> 1:29:11.360 at one point a huge proportion of Native children were 1:29:11.400 --> 1:29:15.280 in foster care and they were being placed with white families, 1:29:15.920 --> 1:29:19.320 and those white families were not exposing them to their 1:29:19.360 --> 1:29:26.000 cultural background, and that in itself was potentiating assimilation because 1:29:26.640 --> 1:29:31.360 that's another Native child dozens of Native children, thousands of 1:29:31.400 --> 1:29:34.920 Native children who don't know their language, their culture because 1:29:34.920 --> 1:29:38.960 they've been removed from community due to systemic factors. Right, 1:29:39.560 --> 1:29:42.559 And so this bill it doesn't say, oh, you can 1:29:42.640 --> 1:29:46.519 only go with a Native family. It helps to ensure 1:29:46.560 --> 1:29:51.200 that if there is a suitable Native family from their tribe, 1:29:51.600 --> 1:29:54.479 that they will get first priority because they know that 1:29:54.560 --> 1:29:59.040 culture is also very important to Indigenous child wellbeing as well. 1:30:00.080 --> 1:30:03.920 The battle right now is being brought on by this 1:30:04.479 --> 1:30:09.200 lawsuit that primarily handles like mining and oil companies, but 1:30:09.280 --> 1:30:13.280 they're taking this Indian Child Welfare Act lawsuit pro bono 1:30:14.120 --> 1:30:17.040 because if you can get rid of the Indian Child 1:30:17.479 --> 1:30:22.920 Welfare Act on the basis that they're claiming, it's racism, right, 1:30:23.240 --> 1:30:29.840 they're claiming that Native people are getting some unjust preferential 1:30:30.280 --> 1:30:34.360 treatment when it comes to adopting Native children over white 1:30:34.360 --> 1:30:38.920 people on the basis of race. Where that falls short 1:30:39.040 --> 1:30:41.960 is that the basis of the Indian Child Welfare Act 1:30:42.040 --> 1:30:47.479 is that Indigenous peoples are not a race. They're sovereign nations. 1:30:47.520 --> 1:30:51.280 They have a political status distinct from all any other 1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:54.800 race in the US. And that is the basis that 1:30:54.880 --> 1:30:57.960 tribes are arguing for that, Hey, we have this political status. 1:30:57.960 --> 1:31:01.439 We're a tribal government. We have the rights to raise 1:31:01.479 --> 1:31:04.519 our children, we have the rights to teach our children 1:31:04.840 --> 1:31:07.240 to make sure they grow up in community with our culture. 1:31:07.560 --> 1:31:10.599 That's not a race issue. That's a political issue. That's 1:31:10.600 --> 1:31:13.360 a that that relates to our political status as a 1:31:13.360 --> 1:31:16.559 tribal nation, as a sovereign nation. And so they're going 1:31:16.640 --> 1:31:19.839 to be battling that in court. But if the Supreme 1:31:19.880 --> 1:31:25.000 Court decides that this Indian Child Welfare Act is you know, 1:31:25.280 --> 1:31:29.920 racist or discriminatory based on race, it means that a 1:31:30.040 --> 1:31:34.800 number of other bills, another under of other things in 1:31:34.840 --> 1:31:40.640 the law that that, for instance, that exist due to 1:31:41.120 --> 1:31:45.080 the political status of Indigenous nations have the potential to 1:31:45.120 --> 1:31:48.920 also be thrown out on the basis of racial discrimination. 1:31:49.640 --> 1:31:51.240 And that I. 1:31:51.200 --> 1:31:53.000 Think, will you know, will lead to a lot of 1:31:53.000 --> 1:31:56.200 a lot more land grabs, a lot more a lot 1:31:56.240 --> 1:31:59.360 less services being provided, for instance, like the Indian Health 1:31:59.439 --> 1:32:02.160 Service for ants. They might say, oh, why do Native 1:32:02.200 --> 1:32:03.439 Americans get this healthcare? 1:32:04.400 --> 1:32:04.920 Yeah, they might. 1:32:05.160 --> 1:32:08.559 They might start taking down a whole bunch of other 1:32:08.600 --> 1:32:11.400 things that are really important to us. So it's really 1:32:12.280 --> 1:32:13.639 it's a huge issue right now. 1:32:13.880 --> 1:32:16.920 It's a troubling time, and I could see how people 1:32:16.960 --> 1:32:19.040 in the past might have said, oh, don't worry, that 1:32:19.080 --> 1:32:22.000 won't happen. I think it's pretty clear that these things 1:32:22.040 --> 1:32:24.040 can happen pretty quickly, pretty aggressively. 1:32:24.120 --> 1:32:24.360 Now. 1:32:24.560 --> 1:32:26.840 I think the last couple of years I've showed a 1:32:26.880 --> 1:32:30.760 lot of people that things can get worse somehow, you know, 1:32:31.160 --> 1:32:34.040 and that these things can be taken more and more 1:32:34.120 --> 1:32:36.680 can be taken from people that have already had so 1:32:36.840 --> 1:32:38.080 much taken from them. 1:32:38.120 --> 1:32:42.240 So I guess I like to finish off normally instead 1:32:42.240 --> 1:32:44.600 of just being like, here is some sad shit and 1:32:44.680 --> 1:32:47.120 just pointing to it and then kind of like dropping 1:32:47.200 --> 1:32:50.800 the mic, asking people how they can do something to 1:32:50.840 --> 1:32:53.920 stand in solidarity. So like, if either of you want 1:32:53.960 --> 1:32:56.400 to mention, I know this pass is flat. There are 1:32:56.439 --> 1:33:00.479 other attempts to appropriate and colonize indigenous land sake, it's based, 1:33:00.479 --> 1:33:03.880 it's a fucking border wall, it's bulldozing Kumii graveyards. 1:33:03.920 --> 1:33:05.559 Like, as I'm talking to you. 1:33:06.880 --> 1:33:09.200 Are there ways that people can stand the solidarity with 1:33:09.240 --> 1:33:10.280 indigenous communities. 1:33:10.880 --> 1:33:13.000 I'll go first because Victor will have a better answer 1:33:13.000 --> 1:33:15.200 than me, and he can. He can. You can jump 1:33:15.240 --> 1:33:15.879 in after. 1:33:15.760 --> 1:33:20.679 Me, but I think as like a low level entry thing. 1:33:20.600 --> 1:33:23.560 That people can do, and it kind of touches. 1:33:23.280 --> 1:33:26.559 On how trying to remove the burden on asking for 1:33:26.720 --> 1:33:30.400 education and doing the education yourself. For that what people 1:33:30.400 --> 1:33:33.360 can do is just you can read books by Native 1:33:33.400 --> 1:33:35.640 authors and that teaches you a lot of history. And 1:33:35.640 --> 1:33:39.760 there's like some incredible Native authors who are writing beautiful 1:33:40.000 --> 1:33:44.479 stories that are weaved with fact and fiction, but books, 1:33:44.520 --> 1:33:50.200 and then like Native Medias Reservation Dogs is like a 1:33:50.200 --> 1:33:51.800 TV show on Hulu that is. 1:33:51.760 --> 1:33:54.479 A really great show that everyone should watch. 1:33:55.520 --> 1:33:57.479 So I think you can do some like easy things 1:33:57.520 --> 1:34:01.960 that just takes remove some of the needing to be 1:34:02.080 --> 1:34:05.000 taught to on yourselves and you can just learn about 1:34:05.040 --> 1:34:05.759 what we're missing. 1:34:06.160 --> 1:34:07.599 So those are like very very easy. 1:34:07.640 --> 1:34:11.000 And then in terms of like just from my point 1:34:11.040 --> 1:34:13.280 of view as a as an MD, there are a 1:34:13.280 --> 1:34:18.200 lot of ways to get involved because these the reservations 1:34:18.200 --> 1:34:22.240 are chronically understaffed. They're just like rural medicine IHS or 1:34:22.280 --> 1:34:26.160 not IHS. Royal medicine is very under understaffed in in 1:34:26.240 --> 1:34:31.040 our country, and so there's always opportunities for doctors to 1:34:31.080 --> 1:34:35.080 go and work and it's like valuable and amazing for 1:34:35.200 --> 1:34:35.719 us and. 1:34:35.600 --> 1:34:38.400 For the community to be able to do so. 1:34:38.439 --> 1:34:40.600 There are ways to do that through local companies and 1:34:40.680 --> 1:34:43.759 directly through the through the IHS sites. 1:34:45.240 --> 1:34:51.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think conversation. You know, 1:34:51.960 --> 1:34:57.840 I would love if white allies would talk to their 1:34:57.840 --> 1:35:01.519 family members and their friends. And I think there are 1:35:01.560 --> 1:35:05.400 a lot of moments where in these day to day 1:35:05.439 --> 1:35:11.320 personal interactions when Natives might come up to stand up, 1:35:11.400 --> 1:35:15.160 like if you hear something that is ignorant, you hear 1:35:15.240 --> 1:35:18.160 something that might be racist, to stand up to the 1:35:18.200 --> 1:35:22.320 people that you know in your own circles and say, hey, 1:35:22.400 --> 1:35:25.559 no that's not correct. To talk to your friends and 1:35:25.640 --> 1:35:30.320 family about what you learned with regard to colonization. Are 1:35:30.320 --> 1:35:33.840 the issues that Native American people face because I think 1:35:33.880 --> 1:35:35.960 some of the people that we listen to the most 1:35:36.000 --> 1:35:39.719 are the people that we love, our friends and our family, 1:35:39.760 --> 1:35:41.080 and I think there needs to be a lot more 1:35:41.120 --> 1:35:45.599 conversation in those spaces, a lot more accountability, because I 1:35:45.720 --> 1:35:49.080 know that it can be very hard when difficult things 1:35:49.160 --> 1:35:54.320 come up in those personal interactions to challenge someone. But 1:35:54.400 --> 1:35:57.120 I think that is where that sort of thing can 1:35:57.240 --> 1:36:00.400 really move the needle in the long run. And I 1:36:00.439 --> 1:36:03.840 think that sometimes people just choose to stay silent, and 1:36:04.040 --> 1:36:05.280 I would like that to change this. 1:36:06.560 --> 1:36:09.759 Yeah, very well said. That seems like a fantastic place 1:36:09.840 --> 1:36:13.920 to close it here. Thank you both so much for 1:36:14.040 --> 1:36:18.120 coming on and hanging out with us. You've been listening 1:36:18.160 --> 1:36:20.840 to the House of Pod and it could happen here. 1:36:21.680 --> 1:36:23.840 Let's get some plugs in for you guys. Can you 1:36:24.360 --> 1:36:26.680 Let's start with you, Victor. Tell us where people can 1:36:26.680 --> 1:36:29.120 find you or plug anything you want to plug. 1:36:29.960 --> 1:36:32.040 Come to the rest. Just ask for me. 1:36:35.800 --> 1:36:36.840 Original Facebook. 1:36:38.520 --> 1:36:43.360 Yeah, my Instagram and Twitter are VLO Carmen v l 1:36:43.439 --> 1:36:44.439 O c. 1:36:44.280 --> 1:36:47.200 A R M E N very cool and Molly. 1:36:47.840 --> 1:36:50.840 I exited the Twitter sphere after Elon Musk took over, 1:36:50.960 --> 1:36:54.360 so I'm off, but you can find me in Sacramento. 1:36:56.520 --> 1:36:59.880 All right. You guys have been so awesome. Thank you 1:37:00.240 --> 1:37:02.519 for coming on. We hope to talk again sometime. 1:37:03.280 --> 1:37:17.520 Thank you. 1:37:19.120 --> 1:37:20.439 Welcome Dick, it happened here. 1:37:21.000 --> 1:37:23.760 I'm your host, Na Wong, and today we're going to 1:37:23.840 --> 1:37:26.760 be talking about something a little bit different. In the 1:37:26.880 --> 1:37:30.479 last half decade, a growing political focus on China has 1:37:30.479 --> 1:37:34.720 transformed a cottage industry of American China watchers into a 1:37:34.800 --> 1:37:39.519 sprawling metropolis of pseudoanalysis, A veritable machine that turns out 1:37:39.600 --> 1:37:43.479 racialized fear of the Chinese other and transforms it into 1:37:43.520 --> 1:37:47.719 economic papers that close with quote unquote policy solutions about 1:37:47.720 --> 1:37:51.720 the so called China problem. In these circles, a consensus 1:37:51.760 --> 1:37:55.160 is emerging about what they call Chinese state capitalism and 1:37:55.200 --> 1:37:59.800 its supposed risk of the United States. China's economy, they are, 1:38:00.520 --> 1:38:02.400 is not a free market economy like that of the 1:38:02.479 --> 1:38:06.960 United States. Instead, China's large array of state owned industries 1:38:07.000 --> 1:38:10.679 and its willingness to use investments to incentivize specific kinds 1:38:10.680 --> 1:38:15.439 of research while protecting companies from pure market competition means 1:38:15.520 --> 1:38:18.799 that the state, and not the market, dictates the course 1:38:18.840 --> 1:38:23.000 of the Chinese economy. Under these assumptions, the Chinese economy 1:38:23.040 --> 1:38:26.040 poses two major threats to American companies in the American 1:38:26.120 --> 1:38:30.479 security state. First, state owned industries subsidized by the state 1:38:30.560 --> 1:38:34.920 will inevitably outcompete American companies because American companies can't match 1:38:34.960 --> 1:38:37.639 the sheer quantity of capital held by the Chinese state, 1:38:38.080 --> 1:38:41.040 which violates the fairness and competitiveness of the free market 1:38:41.080 --> 1:38:45.559 by making companies compete on unequal grounds. Second, the close 1:38:45.600 --> 1:38:48.960 ties between the Chinese government and state owned industries and 1:38:49.000 --> 1:38:52.519 even private Chinese companies means that their technology will be 1:38:52.600 --> 1:38:55.759 used by the CCP to strengthen its military by stealing 1:38:55.800 --> 1:39:00.560 American technology. The problem with this consensus at a fundamental 1:39:00.680 --> 1:39:04.400 level is that it's utterly uninterested in how Chinese state 1:39:04.439 --> 1:39:09.320 oued enterprise is known as SOEs, actually functioned. And this 1:39:09.360 --> 1:39:12.639 is a real problem because Chinese soos are not what 1:39:12.720 --> 1:39:16.320 you or the people writing American forum policy think they are. 1:39:17.320 --> 1:39:19.360 So today, we're going to take a dive into the 1:39:19.400 --> 1:39:22.240 belly of the state and figure out how soos actually 1:39:22.280 --> 1:39:27.040 function and determine what this actually does to the prevailing 1:39:27.080 --> 1:39:30.559 theories about how Chinese economy works and what it means 1:39:30.560 --> 1:39:34.400 for both the American and Chinese working classes. But before 1:39:34.400 --> 1:39:36.840 we get into the structure of the SOE, we need 1:39:36.840 --> 1:39:42.040 to talk about state capitalism. State capitalism is an old term. 1:39:42.240 --> 1:39:44.280 Most of the people writing about it will trace it 1:39:44.320 --> 1:39:48.400 back to Lenin's New Economic Policy, a massive shift towards 1:39:48.479 --> 1:39:51.879 the market in the Soviet economy of the early twenties. 1:39:52.880 --> 1:39:57.519 The New Economic policy relegalized private capitalist firms, albeit in 1:39:57.560 --> 1:40:01.000 a much reduced capacity, with a a very large state 1:40:01.080 --> 1:40:04.599 sector driving the economy as a whole. A condition Lenin 1:40:04.680 --> 1:40:09.320 dubbed state capitalism, but even using state capitalism to describe 1:40:09.360 --> 1:40:11.920 both the New Economic Plan and the current situation in 1:40:12.000 --> 1:40:17.040 China reveals a profound misunderstanding of both Lenin's NEP and 1:40:17.080 --> 1:40:21.719 the modern Chinese economy. For one thing, during the NEP, 1:40:22.400 --> 1:40:25.120 state owned industries accounted for at least seventy percent of 1:40:25.200 --> 1:40:28.760 Soviet industrial output, increasing to seventy seven percent by the 1:40:28.840 --> 1:40:32.759 end of the policy. Meanwhile, despite the height behind Chinese 1:40:32.800 --> 1:40:37.000 state capitalism, china state sector represents a measly forty percent 1:40:37.040 --> 1:40:41.200 of China's economy, uniquely high for a capitalist economy, but 1:40:41.280 --> 1:40:44.559 quite literally the inverse of the relationship between capitalist frames 1:40:44.600 --> 1:40:48.479 and the state. In the USSR that sixty percent of 1:40:48.560 --> 1:40:51.400 China's GDP is private and only forty percent is generated 1:40:51.400 --> 1:40:53.280 by the state. And don't look too closely at that 1:40:53.320 --> 1:40:55.760 forty percent, because only thirty percent of it is from 1:40:55.800 --> 1:40:58.920 actual state industries. The other ten percent resulting from the 1:40:58.920 --> 1:41:03.080 regular function of the state itself. Shows what actually drives 1:41:03.120 --> 1:41:06.559 a Chinese economy, not the state at all, but the market. 1:41:08.040 --> 1:41:10.439 This is very important because the story of the Chinese 1:41:10.479 --> 1:41:13.439 economy in the last forty years is not simply the 1:41:13.439 --> 1:41:16.160 story of a state run command economy transforming into a 1:41:16.200 --> 1:41:22.200 market economy. It is also, and arguably primarily, the story 1:41:22.240 --> 1:41:25.040 of the market consuming the state from the inside out. 1:41:26.160 --> 1:41:28.599 This becomes more clear the closer you look at how 1:41:28.640 --> 1:41:32.360 state owned enterprises are actually structured, and it is here 1:41:32.479 --> 1:41:35.679 the weakness of the very term state owned enterprise comes 1:41:35.720 --> 1:41:40.160 into focus. Academics and journalists write about state owned enterprises 1:41:40.160 --> 1:41:44.040 as if the word means one specific thing, but the 1:41:44.080 --> 1:41:46.759 reality is that there are an enormous number of different 1:41:46.840 --> 1:41:50.200 kinds of sos, with different structures and different relationships to 1:41:50.240 --> 1:41:54.240 the state. When regular people think about state ownership, it 1:41:54.280 --> 1:41:57.920 tends to invoke the specter of the USSR in a 1:41:57.960 --> 1:42:00.760 Soviet style SOE, and will take as an example of 1:42:00.840 --> 1:42:05.360 Chinese SOE the Socialist period, which functions similarly. The firm 1:42:05.520 --> 1:42:10.080 is literally a government department. For example, in nineteen seventy nine, 1:42:10.240 --> 1:42:14.680 China established the Bureau of Non ferest Metals and this 1:42:14.760 --> 1:42:16.160 is the best name you're going to get out of 1:42:16.160 --> 1:42:20.120 the CCP. In this entire episode, that bureau was in 1:42:20.200 --> 1:42:23.559 charge of running a luninium production. The government ministry simply 1:42:23.640 --> 1:42:26.479 ran the mines and the refineries and the factories directly 1:42:26.520 --> 1:42:30.200 and everyone working in the factory was a direct government 1:42:30.280 --> 1:42:34.240 employee paid by the state. This is also pretty close 1:42:34.280 --> 1:42:37.679 to how the American post office is structured. But Soviet 1:42:37.840 --> 1:42:41.800 SOEs crucially were not firms that competed for money in 1:42:41.840 --> 1:42:44.840 the market. They worked towards a production plan and were 1:42:44.840 --> 1:42:48.360 assigned resources based on their output. In this way, they 1:42:48.439 --> 1:42:51.559 closer to a municipal water service than most modern SOEs. 1:42:52.160 --> 1:42:54.560 Their job, in theory was to make a thing or 1:42:54.600 --> 1:42:59.679 a service, not make money. Modern Chinese soez, despite sharing 1:42:59.720 --> 1:43:04.040 the same name as or socialist period predecessors, are very different. 1:43:05.080 --> 1:43:08.640 For one thing, modern Chinese SOEs, as well as a 1:43:08.680 --> 1:43:11.400 lot of other state owned companies like the Saudi government's 1:43:11.439 --> 1:43:14.760 oil companies Saudi A Ramco, are not directly part of 1:43:14.800 --> 1:43:18.840 the government at all. Instead, they're structured as regular corporations 1:43:18.840 --> 1:43:22.320 whose stock happens to be owned by the governments. This 1:43:22.439 --> 1:43:25.360 shareholding relationship is one of the most common kinds of 1:43:25.400 --> 1:43:29.280 modern SOEs, but as we'll see, they make ownership and 1:43:29.360 --> 1:43:34.200 management structures increasingly complex. The other major difference from Soviet 1:43:34.280 --> 1:43:37.240 firms is that companies like Saudi A Ramco and modern 1:43:37.320 --> 1:43:40.840 Chinese soz are for profit companies. I don't exist to 1:43:40.840 --> 1:43:44.000 provide a service. They exist to make money. This gets 1:43:44.120 --> 1:43:47.880 very weird very quickly. For one thing, while we tend 1:43:47.920 --> 1:43:50.280 to think of state owned enterprises as belonging to the 1:43:50.360 --> 1:43:56.799 national governments, municipal, provincial, and even disher and county governments 1:43:56.800 --> 1:44:00.400 in China have their own SOEs. On a conception level, 1:44:00.439 --> 1:44:03.519 this makes sense. China's economy is the size of a continent, 1:44:03.680 --> 1:44:08.040 and individual provinces have a geographic size, population, natural resources, 1:44:08.080 --> 1:44:11.479 and economy of entire nations, which means that provincial soees 1:44:11.520 --> 1:44:15.439 can rival national firms. But this also means that state 1:44:15.479 --> 1:44:19.040 owned industries from different levels of government are directly competing 1:44:19.080 --> 1:44:22.360 with each other on the market. This is something beyond 1:44:22.400 --> 1:44:25.560 the experience of previous theorists of the state and capitalism. 1:44:26.120 --> 1:44:29.400 Frederick Engels, the close friend of Karl Marx, was able 1:44:29.439 --> 1:44:33.879 to predict the rise of capitalist state owned industries, writing quote. 1:44:34.000 --> 1:44:37.560 At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. 1:44:37.960 --> 1:44:41.040 The official representative of the capitalist state will ultimately have 1:44:41.080 --> 1:44:45.400 to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion 1:44:45.439 --> 1:44:48.280 into state property is felt first in the great institutions 1:44:48.320 --> 1:44:53.040 for intercourse and communication, the Post office, the telegrams the railways. 1:44:53.720 --> 1:44:56.800 If the crisis demonstrates the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for 1:44:56.920 --> 1:45:00.960 managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the 1:45:00.960 --> 1:45:04.400 great establishment for production and distribution into joint stock companies 1:45:04.400 --> 1:45:08.000 and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for 1:45:08.040 --> 1:45:11.120 that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalists are 1:45:11.120 --> 1:45:15.360 now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no social 1:45:15.400 --> 1:45:19.960 function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and 1:45:20.000 --> 1:45:23.280 gambling at the stock exchange with the different capitalists to 1:45:23.320 --> 1:45:26.959 spoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalist 1:45:27.000 --> 1:45:30.240 mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces 1:45:30.240 --> 1:45:32.840 out the capitalists and reduces them, just as it reduced 1:45:32.840 --> 1:45:36.160 the workers to the ranks of the surflus population, although 1:45:36.200 --> 1:45:39.600 not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army. But 1:45:39.680 --> 1:45:42.800 angles imagined the state as a collective capitalist replacing the 1:45:42.800 --> 1:45:46.440 individual capitalist. What no one could have foreseen was capitalists 1:45:46.439 --> 1:45:49.280 break was capitalism breaking the collective nature of the state 1:45:49.439 --> 1:45:53.080 entirely hollowing it out until its chunks competed with each 1:45:53.120 --> 1:45:56.040 other on the market. This is the state of modern 1:45:56.120 --> 1:46:01.360 Chinese soees. These SOEs are capitalist firms to market discipline. 1:46:01.479 --> 1:46:04.040 They can and will fail and go under if they 1:46:04.040 --> 1:46:07.519 aren't making enough money, and the government can and will 1:46:07.720 --> 1:46:10.439 tear them apart and force the still state owned pieces 1:46:10.439 --> 1:46:14.080 to compete against each other. These state owned industries also 1:46:14.200 --> 1:46:17.000 largely are not supposed to be monopolies. Firms that get 1:46:17.040 --> 1:46:20.439 too large and powerful can and will be broken up 1:46:20.479 --> 1:46:23.280 and the parts once again set to compete against each other. 1:46:24.720 --> 1:46:29.240 Weirder still, these soees are also listed on the stock markets, 1:46:29.600 --> 1:46:33.040 meeting individual capitalists, and as we'll see later, even foreign 1:46:33.080 --> 1:46:36.519 firms can buy forty nine percent stakes and nominally state 1:46:36.520 --> 1:46:41.679 owned industries. Now, if the state doing market competition against 1:46:41.720 --> 1:46:45.920 itself wasn't weird enough for you, let me introduce another complication, 1:46:46.800 --> 1:46:50.880 the State Owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission of the 1:46:50.880 --> 1:46:54.519 State Council. And know, the State Owned Asset Supervision and 1:46:54.600 --> 1:46:57.240 Administration Commission of the State Council is not a name 1:46:57.240 --> 1:46:59.040 that sounds any better in Chinese. 1:46:59.120 --> 1:46:59.599 If you have a. 1:46:59.560 --> 1:47:03.680 Bureaucer rooted in Leninism, the product is a veritable corucopia 1:47:03.720 --> 1:47:06.360 of the most absolutely dogshit name you've ever heard in 1:47:06.400 --> 1:47:10.960 your entire life. This commission is better owned for obvious reasons, 1:47:11.000 --> 1:47:14.400 as Sassak, and it is the government body that owns 1:47:14.439 --> 1:47:17.160 the shares of most of the largest firms in China, 1:47:17.200 --> 1:47:21.400 which are known as the national champions. Now you could 1:47:21.439 --> 1:47:24.000 be forgiven for thinking you now understand the structure of 1:47:24.080 --> 1:47:27.719 Chinese soez. Sasak, which is a part of the state, 1:47:28.000 --> 1:47:31.280 owns the SOEs. Bob's your uncle, Everyone goes home for 1:47:31.320 --> 1:47:32.800 the night, and the episode ends right here. 1:47:34.600 --> 1:47:35.760 Unfortunately, it is. 1:47:35.760 --> 1:47:39.200 Way more convoluted than that. When I said Sasak owns 1:47:39.200 --> 1:47:42.120 the shares of the largest firms in China, that's only 1:47:42.160 --> 1:47:45.880 true in a technical sense. What Sasak actually owns are 1:47:45.920 --> 1:47:49.280 the shares of massive holding companies, companies that exist on 1:47:49.360 --> 1:47:52.479 paper but whose existence is purely dedicated to owning the 1:47:52.520 --> 1:47:56.599 shares of other companies. These holding companies own the shares 1:47:56.640 --> 1:47:58.960 of the publicly traded companies you might have heard of, 1:47:59.040 --> 1:48:02.640 like Sinopek China state owned oil companies. And this is 1:48:02.680 --> 1:48:05.559 where the simplistic narrative of the Chinese soe, a single 1:48:05.600 --> 1:48:09.080 firm owned by the state under its direct political control, 1:48:09.240 --> 1:48:13.080 completely falls apart, because again, the state doesn't really own 1:48:13.160 --> 1:48:16.280 these firms directly. What they own is a holding company 1:48:16.600 --> 1:48:22.280 that owns the stock of the soees. That holding company, however, 1:48:22.640 --> 1:48:26.000 is the actual basis of the organization of Chinese state ownership. 1:48:26.560 --> 1:48:29.479 The building blocks of the Chinese state economy aren't single 1:48:29.520 --> 1:48:33.320 state owned enterprises at all. The economy is actually composed 1:48:33.360 --> 1:48:37.120 of what are called business groups. American listeners may not 1:48:37.200 --> 1:48:39.240 be very familiar with business groups, but there are a 1:48:39.240 --> 1:48:41.960 common sight in what became known as the Tiger economies, 1:48:42.439 --> 1:48:45.560 a series of economies that's all rabid industrial development in 1:48:45.600 --> 1:48:48.439 the post World War two era, largely fueled by the 1:48:48.479 --> 1:48:51.600 demands of American military supply lines for its wars in 1:48:51.680 --> 1:48:56.440 Korea and Vietnam. The two most infamous are the Japanese Keretsu, 1:48:56.880 --> 1:48:59.840 the successor to the old Japanese Zaibatsu that dominated the 1:49:00.240 --> 1:49:03.880 word Japanese economy and which were to some extent broken 1:49:03.960 --> 1:49:08.320 up after the war, and Korean Chabel conglomerates. These massive 1:49:08.360 --> 1:49:11.479 groups of businesses are either owned by the same people 1:49:11.560 --> 1:49:14.599 or families in the case of the chabel, or linked 1:49:14.600 --> 1:49:20.000 by mutual shareholding of each other's companies. Like Keatsu, the 1:49:20.040 --> 1:49:23.719 groups cooperate and coordinate the business strategy instead of competing 1:49:23.720 --> 1:49:26.280 against each other, which allows them to carry out a 1:49:26.360 --> 1:49:29.520 level of long term planning that's sometimes difficult for individual 1:49:29.560 --> 1:49:33.759 for profit companies. Chinese economists sent to Japan to study 1:49:33.800 --> 1:49:37.360 keatsu in the seventies and eighties returned with policy in hand, 1:49:37.760 --> 1:49:40.639 but the business groups that eventually emerged in the Chinese 1:49:40.680 --> 1:49:43.840 economy after an extended process of trial and error are 1:49:43.880 --> 1:49:47.559 different than their Korean or Japanese counterparts. Where chabel are 1:49:47.640 --> 1:49:50.919 organized around families, and keatsu are organized around a commercial 1:49:50.960 --> 1:49:53.800 bank that provides financing for the companies and the group, 1:49:54.600 --> 1:49:58.040 Chinese businesses are organized by those holding companies one hundred 1:49:58.040 --> 1:50:01.920 percent owned by Sassak and therefore the Chinese State. Those 1:50:01.960 --> 1:50:06.280 holding companies, also sometimes called core companies, own the majority 1:50:06.320 --> 1:50:09.200 of the stock of a variety of public betraded companies. 1:50:09.520 --> 1:50:13.000 They also own a finance company which finances the companies 1:50:13.360 --> 1:50:16.680 and work with research institutes which carry out scientific and 1:50:16.720 --> 1:50:20.920 research development for the entire group. These research institutes, which 1:50:20.960 --> 1:50:24.519 are often university affiliated, are technically nonprofit, but take money 1:50:24.600 --> 1:50:27.719 from the core companies in exchange for the research development 1:50:27.720 --> 1:50:33.400 they do. Chinese business groups are often massive, organizing hundreds 1:50:33.400 --> 1:50:36.720 of companies who also maintain trade and supply relations with 1:50:36.840 --> 1:50:40.800 hundreds more companies. Technically outside the group. These groups are 1:50:40.840 --> 1:50:44.120 organized by what's called articles of grouping, which the core 1:50:44.160 --> 1:50:46.800 holding company who owns the stock, and the rest of 1:50:46.800 --> 1:50:50.960 the companies get those companies to sign. These articles form 1:50:51.000 --> 1:50:53.400 a top down structure for the entire group that also 1:50:53.439 --> 1:50:56.920 includes council and management bodies for the entire group, with 1:50:57.000 --> 1:50:59.640 representatives from each of the companies in the group. This 1:50:59.680 --> 1:51:03.240 truck sure in theory, is how the CCP transmits policy 1:51:03.320 --> 1:51:06.080 down from single holding companies to all of their downstream 1:51:06.120 --> 1:51:10.559 subsidiaries and allies. And this is important because, at least 1:51:10.560 --> 1:51:13.639 in theory, business groups are supposed to carry out government 1:51:13.680 --> 1:51:17.439 industrial policy and economic developments. But in the real world 1:51:17.680 --> 1:51:22.040 this is a significant challenge because again, even individual business 1:51:22.040 --> 1:51:24.840 groups comprise hundreds of companies, and the states grasp on 1:51:24.880 --> 1:51:27.720 them as often tenuous, as seen by a wave of 1:51:27.720 --> 1:51:30.559 state owned companies that theoretically are supposed to make things 1:51:31.000 --> 1:51:34.160 getting into real estate speculation a problem the CCP has 1:51:34.160 --> 1:51:36.160 been attempting to deal with since two thousand and eight 1:51:36.240 --> 1:51:38.320 and only really has gotten under control in the last 1:51:38.320 --> 1:51:42.960 two years. But you know who will not do housing 1:51:43.080 --> 1:51:47.800 speculation instead of making ads for you? It is the 1:51:47.880 --> 1:51:51.040 companies and the products and services that support this podcast, 1:51:52.680 --> 1:51:55.960 and we're back. So confronted with the enormity of the 1:51:56.000 --> 1:51:59.519 scale of Chinese business groups, how does state control over 1:51:59.600 --> 1:52:04.599 these groups actually work? In theory, regulation operates around two channels. 1:52:06.040 --> 1:52:09.519 SASAK owns the holding companies, which allows it, in theory, 1:52:09.560 --> 1:52:11.800 to make decisions that a shareholder would be able to 1:52:11.960 --> 1:52:15.599 make it a private corporation. There's also a parallel corpus 1:52:15.600 --> 1:52:18.759 structure directly run by the party, and high ranking people 1:52:18.800 --> 1:52:21.280 in the corpus structure become party members and are sent 1:52:21.320 --> 1:52:24.000 to cadre trainings at places like the Central Party School 1:52:24.040 --> 1:52:28.360 in Beijing. Meanwhile, people swap between SASSAK and high level 1:52:28.400 --> 1:52:32.120 manager positions, and the heads of large soees also have 1:52:32.240 --> 1:52:35.680 positions in the Chinese government itself. Trying to explain all 1:52:35.720 --> 1:52:37.800 of the positions they have and the councils they're on 1:52:37.920 --> 1:52:41.800 and their technical ministerial ranks is a disaster, because, oh boy, 1:52:41.840 --> 1:52:44.439 if you think the American government is confusing, try sorting 1:52:44.439 --> 1:52:47.559 out who does what in a party state. The moral 1:52:47.600 --> 1:52:49.800 of the story is that the CCP tries to keep 1:52:49.840 --> 1:52:52.920 control over the enormous number of companies it technically owns 1:52:53.080 --> 1:52:55.200 through control of who gets appointed as the head of 1:52:55.320 --> 1:52:58.439 soees through Sassak, which is directly a part of the state, 1:52:58.920 --> 1:53:03.000 and by integrating SOE heads into various government and party bodies. 1:53:03.920 --> 1:53:07.599 They also are somewhat embarrassingly given that they owe these 1:53:07.640 --> 1:53:10.120 companies forced to directly go after them through the law 1:53:10.680 --> 1:53:14.120 and through the court system, which works sometimes and also 1:53:14.200 --> 1:53:21.240 doesn't work other times, but this relationship is multidirectional. Leewen 1:53:21.360 --> 1:53:25.720 Lynn and Curtis J. Milhoft, two scholars who've written extensively 1:53:25.720 --> 1:53:29.559 about Chinese corporate structure, argue convincingly that the deep integration 1:53:29.680 --> 1:53:33.400 of the Party into soees after state owned industries have 1:53:33.479 --> 1:53:38.080 been corporatized, that is, turned from direct state industries run 1:53:38.160 --> 1:53:42.280 by state employees to profit seeking market corporations own through shares, 1:53:43.479 --> 1:53:45.599 was a way to buy the Party off and allow 1:53:45.680 --> 1:53:48.400 these firms to become more capitalists in ways that wouldn't 1:53:48.439 --> 1:53:51.080 have worked if the Party wasn't also getting rich off 1:53:51.080 --> 1:53:54.360 of it. It's not just that China has state owned industries, 1:53:54.640 --> 1:53:57.240 It's that the corportization of state owned industries has made 1:53:57.720 --> 1:54:02.519 the Party and the Chinese state increasingly capitalists, and this 1:54:02.600 --> 1:54:06.440 raises another question. As the Chinese state grows more capitalists 1:54:07.160 --> 1:54:10.040 are public and private Chinese firms. Even all that different, 1:54:11.040 --> 1:54:13.919 private firms also have links to the state through equity 1:54:14.040 --> 1:54:17.920 have joint ventures with soees, where private companies will own 1:54:17.920 --> 1:54:19.880 a part of a company and an SOE will own 1:54:19.880 --> 1:54:23.400 another part of a company. Private companies expand and get 1:54:23.439 --> 1:54:27.679 access to credit through partnering with local sos. In essence, 1:54:27.840 --> 1:54:30.000 many of the things that are supposed to make sos 1:54:30.040 --> 1:54:32.960 different from private companies are shared by both. From the 1:54:33.000 --> 1:54:39.200 profit motive to state affiliation as milhop to put it quote, functionally, 1:54:39.640 --> 1:54:43.960 SOEs and large pos private enterprises in China share many 1:54:43.960 --> 1:54:47.240 similarities in the areas commonly thought to distinguish state owned 1:54:47.280 --> 1:54:51.440 firms from privately owned firms. Market access received of state subsidies, 1:54:51.480 --> 1:54:55.440 proximity state power, and execution of the government's policy objectives. 1:54:56.240 --> 1:54:58.760 A complete account of Chinese state capitalists and much explain 1:54:58.840 --> 1:55:04.440 these similarities. Even figuring out what legally is an SOE 1:55:04.880 --> 1:55:08.440 and what's technically still a private firm gets very weird, 1:55:08.600 --> 1:55:09.600 very fast. 1:55:10.920 --> 1:55:11.440 ZTE. 1:55:11.640 --> 1:55:16.040 For example, a giant Chinese telecom telecom company is owned 1:55:16.040 --> 1:55:18.920 by a bewildering array of shell and holding companies, which 1:55:18.960 --> 1:55:21.240 are in turn owned by other companies, some of which 1:55:21.240 --> 1:55:25.080 are state owned. This is the level of ownership confusion 1:55:25.080 --> 1:55:28.040 we're working at here. If the largest stake of a 1:55:28.120 --> 1:55:31.280 company is owned by a holding company that's owned in 1:55:31.320 --> 1:55:34.160 turn by a combination of two soees who own fifty 1:55:34.200 --> 1:55:37.120 one percent of the stock and a private investors company 1:55:37.160 --> 1:55:39.600 who owns forty nine percent of the stock, is the 1:55:39.640 --> 1:55:43.440 company state owned? And it gets worse in CTEs case 1:55:43.520 --> 1:55:46.760 because even if you assume, okay, the majority stake in 1:55:46.800 --> 1:55:49.720 this company is owned by an SOE, therefore it's state owned, 1:55:50.120 --> 1:55:52.280 you would assume that the state or a state owned 1:55:52.320 --> 1:55:54.040 company would manage the corporation. 1:55:54.200 --> 1:55:54.440 Right. 1:55:55.040 --> 1:55:59.560 Wrong. In Zte's case, the soees worked out in agreement 1:55:59.600 --> 1:56:02.920 with the other investor such that ZT is technically state 1:56:02.960 --> 1:56:07.520 owned but privately managed. And this, it turns out, is 1:56:07.560 --> 1:56:11.360 a very common arrangement. Because of laws about foreign ownership 1:56:11.400 --> 1:56:14.360 of companies operating in China, many state owned enterprises are 1:56:14.360 --> 1:56:18.600 actually joint partnerships between SOEs and foreign corporations, where the 1:56:18.680 --> 1:56:20.880 SOE owns fifty one percent of the stock and the 1:56:20.920 --> 1:56:23.800 foreign corporation owns forty nine percent of the stock while 1:56:23.880 --> 1:56:27.760 running the actual company in extracting profits from it even 1:56:27.840 --> 1:56:31.560 one hundred percent. Chinese firms, of which there are many, 1:56:32.160 --> 1:56:35.000 pose a challenge to the traditional conception of sos is 1:56:35.120 --> 1:56:36.760 run by the state for the good of the state 1:56:36.800 --> 1:56:40.440 and its political objectives. This goes back to their structure 1:56:40.520 --> 1:56:45.000 as corporations the state owns by shareholding. This means, as 1:56:45.000 --> 1:56:49.160 I've emphasized, that these sos aren't government ministries, their companies 1:56:49.200 --> 1:56:51.240 trying to make a profit and are run by their 1:56:51.240 --> 1:56:54.960 own managers. These firms have a total workforce of seventy 1:56:55.080 --> 1:56:59.760 million people, which makes direct regulation very difficult in practice. 1:57:00.000 --> 1:57:02.280 This means soez are a lot more autonomous in direct 1:57:02.320 --> 1:57:05.840 state control, even with all the state guards put in 1:57:05.880 --> 1:57:08.800 place than you'd think just from the word state owned industry. 1:57:10.080 --> 1:57:13.000 Another thing that makes soez more like private companies is 1:57:13.000 --> 1:57:15.720 that money from soez goes back to the company and 1:57:15.760 --> 1:57:18.480 not to the state, to which it pays dividends but 1:57:18.520 --> 1:57:21.560 not much else. This means that soees have their own 1:57:21.600 --> 1:57:25.800 revenue stream that's not dependent on state budget allocations. Meanwhile, 1:57:26.000 --> 1:57:30.280 private firms like soos are operated by members of symbolic 1:57:30.400 --> 1:57:34.480 party congresses, and private firms also get state subsidies and 1:57:34.560 --> 1:57:38.520 access to loans from state banks. A common canard about 1:57:38.560 --> 1:57:41.720 the unfairness of anti competitive Chinese soez it applies to 1:57:41.760 --> 1:57:44.840 private firms as well, and at this point I must 1:57:44.880 --> 1:57:47.920 point out that any company anywhere in the world can 1:57:48.000 --> 1:57:50.560 make money by allying with the state and getting access 1:57:50.560 --> 1:57:53.760 to state resources. The US does this too, especially state 1:57:53.760 --> 1:57:55.680 and local governments, who are all too happy to give 1:57:55.800 --> 1:58:00.919 enormous tax breaks and even provide prison labor to private companies. Meanwhile, 1:58:01.000 --> 1:58:03.240 tech companies like Amazon and Google are kept a float 1:58:03.240 --> 1:58:05.800 by massive government contract to say nothing of the American 1:58:05.840 --> 1:58:09.160 defense industry. In the US, we call this corruption, or 1:58:09.160 --> 1:58:11.280 at least we used to, until it became legal to 1:58:11.320 --> 1:58:14.400 literally buy senators, a thing that nat Sek dipshits always 1:58:14.440 --> 1:58:16.400 seem to forget when they talk about the uniqueness of 1:58:16.400 --> 1:58:19.680 the Chinese economy and its relation to subsidies. There are 1:58:19.680 --> 1:58:22.640 obviously differences between the US and Chinese economies, but arguing 1:58:22.680 --> 1:58:26.000 that businesses having ties to the state which they extract 1:58:26.000 --> 1:58:30.120 benefits from constitutes a unique form of capitalism as incomprehensibly absurd. 1:58:31.160 --> 1:58:33.440 None does this have stopped China watchers from the most 1:58:33.520 --> 1:58:37.680 rabid reactionaries and the most stalwart or self described style 1:58:37.760 --> 1:58:41.200 wart communists to declare that China carries out something called 1:58:41.240 --> 1:58:44.360 industrial policy through its soees, which makes it different from 1:58:44.360 --> 1:58:49.600 other neoliberal states. So what is industrial policy? In theory, 1:58:50.120 --> 1:58:53.240 industrial policy refers to the state giving subsidies and funding 1:58:53.240 --> 1:58:57.560 to specific corporations in order to pursue specific economic objectives 1:58:57.560 --> 1:59:02.200 the market wouldn't normally have pursued. These writers point the 1:59:02.280 --> 1:59:06.280 preferential treatment that Chinese SOEs have to credit and subsidies 1:59:06.280 --> 1:59:08.400 that they receive from the government as evidence of the 1:59:08.400 --> 1:59:12.880 subordination of the market to the political which they also 1:59:12.920 --> 1:59:17.040 claim is essentially a form of socialist state planning. My 1:59:17.120 --> 1:59:19.200 response to this is that I will accept that an 1:59:19.240 --> 1:59:23.160 soe getting a subsidy is socialist state planning the moment 1:59:23.240 --> 1:59:25.360 they agree that the US as a socialist state because 1:59:25.400 --> 1:59:29.320 of its coren subsidies, despite writing about China somehow turning 1:59:29.320 --> 1:59:32.440 everyone into an archical capitalist's. State subsidies in the form 1:59:32.480 --> 1:59:36.320 of direct cash transfers, tax breaks, preferential legal treatment, technology transfers, 1:59:36.320 --> 1:59:38.480 and a thousand other forms of state aid are as 1:59:38.480 --> 1:59:42.520 old as capitalism itself and are pretty normal even under neoliberalism. 1:59:43.400 --> 1:59:47.200 People describe these measures as industrial policy using state favor 1:59:47.320 --> 1:59:51.000 to promote certain industries. But corn subsidies put lie to 1:59:51.080 --> 1:59:54.080 the claim that industrial policy is some unique thing of 1:59:54.120 --> 1:59:57.400 a new era emerging in capitalism that I totally disappeared 1:59:57.400 --> 2:00:01.560 with neoliberalism. American and other agricultural subsidies are one of 2:00:01.600 --> 2:00:05.240 the largest and most expensive industrial policy regimes in the world, 2:00:05.640 --> 2:00:08.920 constituting half a trillion dollars spent since nineteen fifty five. 2:00:09.640 --> 2:00:12.000 They are also written in as exceptions to most of 2:00:12.000 --> 2:00:15.920 the world's major free trade agreements. We also need to 2:00:16.000 --> 2:00:20.320 ask what is the difference between industrial policy, which is 2:00:20.360 --> 2:00:23.440 state strategic investment in certain sectors to develop their economy, 2:00:23.680 --> 2:00:27.000 and regulatory capture, where control over agencies or even the 2:00:27.080 --> 2:00:32.120 legislature itself is taken over by specialistist groups. This question 2:00:32.240 --> 2:00:35.080 sounds silly, but the results a company in a sector 2:00:35.080 --> 2:00:37.400 getting handed a pile of money in various forms by 2:00:37.400 --> 2:00:42.440 the state looks exactly the same. Those corn subsidies arguably 2:00:42.480 --> 2:00:45.600 are industrial policy. They were technically originally designed to ensure 2:00:45.640 --> 2:00:48.280 that the US would always have a supply of cheap food, 2:00:48.520 --> 2:00:50.680 But on the other hand, the real reason they exist 2:00:50.720 --> 2:00:53.520 has nothing to do with planning whatsoever. They exist because 2:00:53.520 --> 2:00:56.240 the copala of legislatures from farming states have enough power 2:00:56.280 --> 2:00:58.040 to shut down both the House and the Senate if 2:00:58.080 --> 2:01:00.880 their demands aren't met. So every year the state bows 2:01:00.880 --> 2:01:03.120 to the corn lobby and pays them billions of dollars. 2:01:04.480 --> 2:01:08.040 So is this industrial policy or is it regulatory capture? 2:01:08.600 --> 2:01:11.680 And can the two even be distinguished? In capitalist countries? 2:01:12.760 --> 2:01:14.879 This is a question we need to take very seriously. 2:01:14.920 --> 2:01:16.960 In the Chinese case. At the same time, we ask 2:01:17.000 --> 2:01:21.040 ourselves what is the actual objective of the Chinese state? 2:01:21.720 --> 2:01:24.400 Is it decoupling in retrenchment from the West or is 2:01:24.400 --> 2:01:27.640 it making money? There is significant evidence that it's the latter. 2:01:28.160 --> 2:01:31.240 For one thing, China receives an enormous amount of foreign 2:01:31.280 --> 2:01:35.240 direct investments, something that everyone seems to conveniently forgets, even 2:01:35.280 --> 2:01:37.080 though it was one of the key elements that fueled 2:01:37.120 --> 2:01:39.600 Chinese industrialization and plays a major role in the Chinese 2:01:39.600 --> 2:01:44.160 economy to this day. Meanwhile, US affiliates in China alone 2:01:44.400 --> 2:01:46.960 had over half a trillion dollars of sales just in 2:01:47.040 --> 2:01:50.800 twenty eighteen. While the focus of most analysis has been 2:01:50.920 --> 2:01:53.680 in flashy disputes between the US and China over their 2:01:53.680 --> 2:01:57.560 attempts to produce their own semiconductors. China has also liberalized 2:01:57.600 --> 2:02:00.400 its foreign investment laws in the last few years and 2:02:00.520 --> 2:02:04.120 allowed foreign companies and industries like insurance to operate directly 2:02:04.120 --> 2:02:08.440 instead of running through joint partnerships with Chinese stakeholders. Even 2:02:08.480 --> 2:02:10.920 the chairman of Sassak gave a speech in February about 2:02:10.960 --> 2:02:14.000 how his goal was to increase the profitability of Chinese soees. 2:02:15.160 --> 2:02:18.720 China is and will remain deeply enmeshed in the global 2:02:18.720 --> 2:02:23.240 capitalist economy, and this, I think is as much as 2:02:23.280 --> 2:02:27.080 their unwillingness to grasp how sooes actually work. The fatal 2:02:27.160 --> 2:02:30.839 flaw of analysis of the Chinese economy and its obsession 2:02:30.960 --> 2:02:34.800 with formal state ownership. These analyzes are not a serious 2:02:34.840 --> 2:02:37.839 attempt to look at the actual structure of the economic 2:02:37.920 --> 2:02:41.880 system the entire world, including China, lives under. There are 2:02:41.920 --> 2:02:44.400 several kinds of arguments that we need to look beyond 2:02:44.440 --> 2:02:48.640 formal ownership to understand capitalism. More broadly, there is a 2:02:48.680 --> 2:02:52.120 somewhat complicated Marxist argument which holds that while we talk 2:02:52.120 --> 2:02:54.720 about capitalism as a system where the ruling class owns 2:02:54.720 --> 2:02:57.200 the means of production, of the working class, which owns nothing, 2:02:57.560 --> 2:03:00.440 is forced to work for them that's not all capitalists is. 2:03:01.360 --> 2:03:04.840 Capitalism is also a series of commodity production, in which 2:03:04.880 --> 2:03:08.320 objects confront each other in the market and appear as 2:03:08.360 --> 2:03:12.480 commodities with their own discrete values based on abstract labor time. 2:03:13.440 --> 2:03:17.080 Generalize commodity production, which is people producing commodities from market 2:03:17.120 --> 2:03:19.680 exchange and not for other purposes, is the other core 2:03:19.760 --> 2:03:24.200 component of capitalism. And when you're dealing with generalized commodity production, 2:03:24.320 --> 2:03:27.120 it doesn't really matter whether the company that owns the 2:03:27.160 --> 2:03:29.840 holding company that owns the company that makes the commodity 2:03:30.320 --> 2:03:32.720 is owned by the state or a hedge fund or 2:03:32.760 --> 2:03:35.600 a bank or a softeign wealth fund. It still reproduces 2:03:35.600 --> 2:03:39.160 commodity production, which means it's still just capitalism, but with 2:03:39.280 --> 2:03:44.520 more complex formal ownership mechanisms. There's also the David Graeber argument, 2:03:44.600 --> 2:03:47.560 which goes, Okay, sure, state owned property is technically the 2:03:47.600 --> 2:03:51.080 property of the people TM, but try and actually go 2:03:51.200 --> 2:03:53.360 there and see how fast the cops show up and 2:03:53.400 --> 2:03:57.400 take you away. Just like private ownership, you still don't 2:03:57.480 --> 2:04:01.480 own public property any substantive sense. It's just controlled by 2:04:01.520 --> 2:04:04.080 a different group of bureaucrats with guns and focusing purely 2:04:04.120 --> 2:04:06.680 on ownership to define an economic system gets you nowhere. 2:04:07.400 --> 2:04:10.440 And then there's my argument, which is that people are 2:04:10.480 --> 2:04:14.080 absolutely obsessed with looking at capitalism from the perspective of capital, 2:04:14.360 --> 2:04:16.600 which means that they are absolutely obsessed with the question 2:04:16.640 --> 2:04:19.480 of ownership. But what happens if you look at so 2:04:19.560 --> 2:04:22.320 called state capitalism and the nature of state ownership from 2:04:22.320 --> 2:04:25.800 the perspective of the working class, Everything suddenly becomes a 2:04:25.840 --> 2:04:29.880 lot clearer. Soe workers are a bit better off than 2:04:29.960 --> 2:04:33.040 not as we counterparts, but their jobs suck ass, their 2:04:33.040 --> 2:04:35.680 hours are long, and they don't make that much money. 2:04:36.200 --> 2:04:38.480 They are fully dependent on selling their labor to the 2:04:38.520 --> 2:04:41.800 market to survive. And all of these companies have hundreds 2:04:41.840 --> 2:04:44.640 of subsidiaries and suppliers with a variety of levels of 2:04:44.680 --> 2:04:48.120 state ownership, and people who work for those companies' lives 2:04:48.120 --> 2:04:51.360 are even shittier. Meanwhile, the means of production and the 2:04:51.360 --> 2:04:55.520 physical infrastructure of so called state capitalism was built by 2:04:55.520 --> 2:04:58.240 workers who were left with nothing but silicosis. After turning 2:04:58.240 --> 2:05:00.880 places like Shenzhen from fishingville is to a city with 2:05:00.920 --> 2:05:03.960 a population of over ten million people in less than 2:05:03.960 --> 2:05:09.080 thirty years. This is the ultimate truth of the Chinese economy, 2:05:09.360 --> 2:05:11.960 just as it is the ultimate truth of the American economy. 2:05:13.320 --> 2:05:16.360 We sell our lives for nothing, and our only reward 2:05:16.440 --> 2:05:17.680 in the end is to. 2:05:17.680 --> 2:05:31.280 Die amidst the wonders of the world that was never ours. 2:05:36.240 --> 2:05:40.280 Ah, welcome back to it could happen here a podcast. 2:05:41.760 --> 2:05:46.640 It's a podcast. I'm Robert Evans, and with me today 2:05:46.800 --> 2:05:50.480 is Garrison Davis and James Stout. 2:05:51.080 --> 2:05:55.520 Hello, a Canadian, a British woman and a text and 2:05:55.640 --> 2:05:56.840 walk into a podcast. 2:05:57.040 --> 2:06:02.120 Yeah, into a podcast. Only two of them can drink 2:06:02.160 --> 2:06:02.560 in a bar. 2:06:03.960 --> 2:06:05.920 That's not true in Canada. We can all. 2:06:05.840 --> 2:06:09.720 Drink in a bar now, Garrison. A moment ago, you 2:06:09.760 --> 2:06:12.440 were holding your hand above a lit candle in a 2:06:12.480 --> 2:06:15.520 way that reminded me of g. Gordon Litty, the Nazi 2:06:15.560 --> 2:06:19.200 who masterminded the Watergate breaking, and in order to convince 2:06:19.240 --> 2:06:21.880 people that he was a hard man, would regularly burn 2:06:21.960 --> 2:06:24.400 the palm with his hand on a candle while staring 2:06:24.440 --> 2:06:24.760 at them. 2:06:28.320 --> 2:06:35.640 Gender, Great, g Gordon Letty, you don't know enough about 2:06:35.640 --> 2:06:36.240 We'll talk about g. 2:06:36.320 --> 2:06:40.360 Gordon Litty, but today we're talking about something else, problematic 2:06:41.000 --> 2:06:46.120 artificial intelligence, which is not a thing that exists anywhere. 2:06:46.400 --> 2:06:51.040 It is instead a terrible, terrible error. Going back to 2:06:51.120 --> 2:06:55.600 like the sixties. In case of terminology, when we talk 2:06:55.640 --> 2:06:58.880 about all of the things that people are like, you know, 2:06:58.920 --> 2:07:02.240 flipping out as AI is chat GPT and stable diffusion 2:07:02.360 --> 2:07:07.880 and fucking all all these other sort of like different programs. 2:07:07.920 --> 2:07:11.800 They're not intelligences. They're you know, the chat GPT is 2:07:11.840 --> 2:07:15.839 like a large language model. They're all essentially like bots 2:07:15.960 --> 2:07:20.240 that you train to understand kind of like what the 2:07:20.480 --> 2:07:24.800 likeliest thing that what the likeliest appropriate response is to 2:07:24.920 --> 2:07:29.280 like a given prompt. That's kind of like the broadest 2:07:29.320 --> 2:07:32.040 way to explain it. It's complicated, and they're you know, 2:07:32.200 --> 2:07:35.200 very useful, but obviously if you've been paying attention to 2:07:35.240 --> 2:07:38.040 the world right now, there's just a whole bunch of 2:07:38.080 --> 2:07:40.360 bullshit about them. And I think to kind of make 2:07:40.480 --> 2:07:44.680 sense of why we're seeing some of the shit around 2:07:44.720 --> 2:07:47.600 AI that we're seeing. And for a little bit of specificity, 2:07:48.640 --> 2:07:50.800 there have been like this kind of endless series of 2:07:51.360 --> 2:07:54.320 articles around this open letter signed by a bunch of 2:07:54.520 --> 2:07:57.440 luminaries in the AI feel talking about how you know, 2:07:57.480 --> 2:07:59.480 there need to be laws put in place to stop 2:07:59.480 --> 2:08:03.040 it from in the world. You know, you've seen articles 2:08:03.040 --> 2:08:06.920 about like oh x percentage of AI researchers think that 2:08:07.000 --> 2:08:09.680 it could. It could destroy the planet, destroy the human 2:08:09.760 --> 2:08:13.560 race kind of. Most recently, the biggest article, the biggest 2:08:13.680 --> 2:08:17.840 like viral hype article, was that the Pentagon had supposedly 2:08:17.920 --> 2:08:23.360 been testing an AI like missile system that blew up 2:08:23.400 --> 2:08:27.320 its operator in a simulation because the operator was trying 2:08:27.360 --> 2:08:31.000 to stop it from from firing or whatever. It was bullshit, 2:08:31.120 --> 2:08:33.400 like what was that? What actually had? Like vice ran 2:08:33.440 --> 2:08:35.720 with the article. It was very breakthive advice would do 2:08:35.800 --> 2:08:38.880 this flipping out about how horrifying, you know, our AI 2:08:38.960 --> 2:08:41.800 weapons future is and like, yeah, we shouldn't give AI 2:08:41.920 --> 2:08:44.120 the ability to like kill people, But that's not at 2:08:44.120 --> 2:08:47.040 all what happened. Basically, a bunch of army nerds or 2:08:47.080 --> 2:08:49.480 air force nerds were sitting around a table doing the 2:08:49.560 --> 2:08:53.160 D and D version of like military planning, where you say, 2:08:53.400 --> 2:08:55.840 what if we did this, what kinds of things could 2:08:55.880 --> 2:08:59.040 happen if we did this system? And another guy around 2:08:59.120 --> 2:09:01.160 the table said, oh, well, if we build the system 2:09:01.200 --> 2:09:04.680 this way, it might conceivably attack its operator, you know, 2:09:04.760 --> 2:09:07.760 in order to optimize for this kind of result, which 2:09:07.800 --> 2:09:12.680 is like not scary, Like it's just people talking through 2:09:12.880 --> 2:09:15.680 pot like a flow chart of possibilities around a fucking table. 2:09:15.680 --> 2:09:17.440 You don't need to worry about that. There's so many 2:09:17.440 --> 2:09:20.480 other things to worry about. New York City is blanketed 2:09:20.520 --> 2:09:22.520 in a layer of smogs so thick you could cut 2:09:22.520 --> 2:09:25.120 it with a butter knife. Like, don't flip out about 2:09:25.200 --> 2:09:29.920 AI weapons just yet, folks. But I wanted to kind 2:09:29.920 --> 2:09:32.480 of talk about why this shit is happening, And a 2:09:32.480 --> 2:09:35.320 lot of it comes down to the fact that when 2:09:35.360 --> 2:09:37.920 we're talking about the aspects of like the tech industry 2:09:38.040 --> 2:09:41.480 that have an impact on outside of the tech industry. Right, 2:09:41.560 --> 2:09:45.000 there's basically three jobs in big tech. One job is 2:09:45.080 --> 2:09:48.840 creating iterative improvements on existing products. These would be the 2:09:48.880 --> 2:09:51.440 teams of folks who are responsible for designing a new 2:09:51.440 --> 2:09:54.800 iPhone every year, Right, every couple of years. Lenovo puts 2:09:54.800 --> 2:09:57.160 out a new series of think pads and idea pads 2:09:57.200 --> 2:09:59.200 every couple of years. You know, you get a new 2:09:59.240 --> 2:10:03.080 MacBook every couple of years. Razor puts out a new blade. 2:10:04.080 --> 2:10:06.000 This is you know, these are the folks who kind 2:10:06.000 --> 2:10:10.440 of move along technology at a relatively like steady pace 2:10:10.560 --> 2:10:14.280 for consumer devices. And then you have the people who 2:10:14.320 --> 2:10:17.920 are responsible for kind of what you might call the 2:10:17.960 --> 2:10:21.720 moonshot products. This is a mix of the next big 2:10:21.760 --> 2:10:25.720 thing and doomed failures, and it's often pretty hard to 2:10:25.720 --> 2:10:27.760 tell you know what's going to be what ahead of time. 2:10:28.120 --> 2:10:30.560 A very good example would be back in the nineties, 2:10:30.600 --> 2:10:32.920 Apple put a bunch of resources into launching an early 2:10:32.960 --> 2:10:36.280 tablet computer called the Newton that was a fabulous disaster. 2:10:36.760 --> 2:10:38.400 And then in the mid oughts they put a bunch 2:10:38.400 --> 2:10:41.240 of resources into launching the iPad, which was a huge success. 2:10:42.840 --> 2:10:45.400 And when you kind of think about like the folks 2:10:45.480 --> 2:10:50.400 doing this, like working on the moonshot products. The most 2:10:50.440 --> 2:10:52.680 recent example would be whatever team at Apple, the team 2:10:52.720 --> 2:10:55.760 at Apple that was behind putting together these new Apple goggles, 2:10:55.800 --> 2:10:58.280 which I don't think are going to be a wildly 2:10:58.360 --> 2:11:00.800 successful product in the way that they need it to be, 2:11:01.000 --> 2:11:04.160 like a smartphone scale success. But this is an example 2:11:04.160 --> 2:11:06.120 of like a thing that didn't exist and a bunch 2:11:06.160 --> 2:11:08.920 of people had to invent new technologies or new ways 2:11:08.920 --> 2:11:12.200 to combine technologies in order to make it exist. The 2:11:12.320 --> 2:11:16.640 third kind of job that the tech industry has, broadly speaking, 2:11:17.120 --> 2:11:20.920 are conmen right. And the state that we are in 2:11:20.920 --> 2:11:23.560 in the industry right now is that every major tech 2:11:23.600 --> 2:11:26.400 company is run by some form of con man, right, 2:11:27.280 --> 2:11:31.400 Tim Cook is, you know, kind of the least conniest 2:11:31.480 --> 2:11:34.960 of the conman among them, But like Mark Zuckerberg obviously 2:11:35.560 --> 2:11:38.680 is a fucking flim flam artist, you know. And you 2:11:38.720 --> 2:11:41.280 can see this with the huge amount of money, like 2:11:41.320 --> 2:11:43.800 it's something like eleven billion dollars at least that Facebook 2:11:43.880 --> 2:11:47.839 pumped into this bullshit metaverse scheme that like Apple barely 2:11:47.880 --> 2:11:52.840 even talked about during their event unveiling, like a headset 2:11:52.880 --> 2:11:56.480 that has VR potential in it. I'm getting away from 2:11:56.480 --> 2:11:58.240 myself here. Kind of the point that I'm making is 2:11:58.280 --> 2:12:02.240 that you can often have real products. There's actual technology 2:12:02.280 --> 2:12:08.200 going into the Apple glasses marketed by conman flimflam artist. 2:12:08.240 --> 2:12:10.240 This is not always like a bad thing, right. Steve 2:12:10.320 --> 2:12:12.960 Jobs was a con man, and it worked out pretty 2:12:12.960 --> 2:12:15.880 well for him because it just so happened that the 2:12:15.920 --> 2:12:18.160 tech not he had a decent enough idea of what 2:12:18.200 --> 2:12:20.960 the tech was capable of that it was able to 2:12:21.040 --> 2:12:24.320 kind of meet the promises he was making in more 2:12:24.400 --> 2:12:27.200 or less real time. An example of what happens, you know, 2:12:27.240 --> 2:12:29.640 pretty spectacularly when that's not the case is what we 2:12:29.680 --> 2:12:34.000 saw with Therehos and Elizabeth Holmes who started prison last week. Right, 2:12:34.040 --> 2:12:36.240 You've got these promises being made by the con man 2:12:36.320 --> 2:12:39.000 and the people who are responsible for the moonshots can't 2:12:39.080 --> 2:12:42.760 make it work. I'm bringing this up right now because 2:12:43.600 --> 2:12:45.840 there's a lot of folks, I think, who believe that 2:12:46.320 --> 2:12:50.520 the nate like the actual potential of AI has been 2:12:50.560 --> 2:12:53.840 proven in a spectacular way because the tools that have 2:12:53.920 --> 2:12:57.360 been released are able to do cool things. And I 2:12:57.400 --> 2:13:01.720 think those people are missing some key aspect, like some 2:13:01.840 --> 2:13:05.360 key things that like might cause one to think more 2:13:05.400 --> 2:13:08.320 critically about the actual potential the industry has and also 2:13:08.360 --> 2:13:12.240 might cause one to think more critically about how earth 2:13:12.320 --> 2:13:14.760 shattering it's all going to be. It's being taken kind 2:13:14.760 --> 2:13:17.600 of as red right now by a lot of particularly 2:13:18.160 --> 2:13:22.360 journalists and media analysts outside of the tech and or 2:13:22.400 --> 2:13:25.200 like outside of of you know, the dogged tech press 2:13:25.680 --> 2:13:28.240 that like, well, this is going to upend huge numbers 2:13:28.240 --> 2:13:30.720 of industries and put massive numbers of people out of work. 2:13:30.800 --> 2:13:33.520 And you know, that may seem if you sat down 2:13:33.560 --> 2:13:35.720 in front of this chatbot and had like a mind 2:13:35.760 --> 2:13:40.040 blowing experience, that may seem credible. There's not the evidence 2:13:40.400 --> 2:13:43.280 behind that yet if you actually look at the numbers 2:13:43.320 --> 2:13:46.560 behind some of these different companies and like how their 2:13:46.680 --> 2:13:49.680 usership has grown and how it's fallen off. One of 2:13:49.680 --> 2:13:51.280 the things you've seen is that a lot of these 2:13:51.320 --> 2:13:55.920 tools had this kind of massive surge peak in terms 2:13:55.920 --> 2:13:57.720 of the number of people adopting them and in terms 2:13:57.760 --> 2:14:00.640 of their profitability. You saw this with like stable Fusion, right, 2:14:01.120 --> 2:14:06.240 and then this kind of fairly rapid fall afterwards, not 2:14:06.360 --> 2:14:09.160 because people are like giving it up forever or whatever, 2:14:09.240 --> 2:14:12.040 but because, like, once you fucked around with it and 2:14:12.160 --> 2:14:14.960 generated some images or generated some stories, there's not a 2:14:15.160 --> 2:14:18.400 huge amount to do unless you're someone who's specifically going 2:14:18.440 --> 2:14:20.760 to be using this for your job. And most of 2:14:20.800 --> 2:14:22.960 the people that wanted to fuck around with a lot 2:14:22.960 --> 2:14:26.400 of these apps didn't have long term use cases for them. 2:14:26.880 --> 2:14:30.200 This is why while you've got like, for example, Stability, 2:14:30.240 --> 2:14:33.160 which is the company or at least the main company 2:14:33.160 --> 2:14:37.320 behind Stable Diffusion, has been valued at like four billion 2:14:37.360 --> 2:14:40.800 dollars I think last it was checked, but their annualized 2:14:40.800 --> 2:14:44.520 revenue is only about ten million dollars. So that's a 2:14:44.560 --> 2:14:48.800 pretty significant gap. And it's a pretty significant gap because 2:14:49.240 --> 2:14:52.600 the actual money in AI so far isn't with the 2:14:52.680 --> 2:14:55.640 service providers. Really, like you've got some that have made 2:14:55.680 --> 2:14:58.280 in like thee hundred million dollar range, although it's not 2:14:58.480 --> 2:15:01.480 entirely clear what their margins are are or what the 2:15:01.560 --> 2:15:04.360 kind of the long term reliability of that profit is. 2:15:04.600 --> 2:15:07.600 But the vast majority of money in AI, like almost 2:15:07.640 --> 2:15:09.800 all of it has been made by companies like in Nvidia, 2:15:10.240 --> 2:15:12.480 and Vidia jumped up to become like a trillion dollar 2:15:12.520 --> 2:15:18.440 company as a result of this, because the hardware needs 2:15:18.480 --> 2:15:23.440 of these products are so intense, and obviously that shows 2:15:23.480 --> 2:15:26.040 there's money here for somebody. But the fact that like 2:15:26.120 --> 2:15:29.680 a shitload of people got curious about these apps and 2:15:30.000 --> 2:15:33.240 use them in quick succession and then kind of dropped 2:15:33.240 --> 2:15:37.880 off is an evidence that, like we're seeing entire industries 2:15:37.920 --> 2:15:40.120 replaced as much of it as it is evidence that 2:15:40.280 --> 2:15:43.520 like a lot of people thought this was interesting briefly, 2:15:44.560 --> 2:15:47.520 and so I think kind of when you look at 2:15:47.560 --> 2:15:49.360 the data, one of the things that suggests is that 2:15:49.400 --> 2:15:52.920 we're heading towards a point in AI, and I think 2:15:52.960 --> 2:15:54.760 we're probably going to hit it within the next six 2:15:54.800 --> 2:15:57.160 months to a year. That is broadly referred to as 2:15:57.200 --> 2:16:00.440 like the trow of disappointment, And this is what happens 2:16:00.480 --> 2:16:04.000 when kind of the promises of a new technology that 2:16:04.040 --> 2:16:06.360 are being made by the hypemen or con men, as 2:16:06.400 --> 2:16:08.919 I tend to call them, meet with like the actual 2:16:08.960 --> 2:16:12.480 reality of its execution, which in some areas is going 2:16:12.480 --> 2:16:15.520 to be significant. There are places, I think medical research 2:16:15.680 --> 2:16:17.600 maybe one of them. We'll talk about that in a bit, 2:16:17.960 --> 2:16:20.040 where a lot of the promises people are making about 2:16:20.080 --> 2:16:23.560 AI will be fairly quickly realized, and then there are 2:16:23.600 --> 2:16:26.640 areas where it won't be. I think content generation is 2:16:26.680 --> 2:16:29.920 one of those things. But yeah, so that's kind of 2:16:29.960 --> 2:16:32.560 like what I'm seeing when I'm looking at the broad 2:16:32.600 --> 2:16:35.720 strokes of where this technology is here and kind of 2:16:35.720 --> 2:16:38.240 the gap between how people are talking about it and 2:16:38.600 --> 2:16:42.000 what we're actually seeing in terms of monetization. I want 2:16:42.040 --> 2:16:43.920 to talk a little bit now about kind of one 2:16:43.959 --> 2:16:46.400 of the guys I would call him kind of a 2:16:46.440 --> 2:16:49.600 con man who's been a big driver of the current 2:16:49.680 --> 2:16:53.600 AI push. He's a dude named Amad Mustock, and he's 2:16:53.640 --> 2:16:56.720 the founder of Stable Diffusion right, which is a text 2:16:56.720 --> 2:16:59.960 to image generator that was kind of like before chatscheep 2:17:00.080 --> 2:17:03.199 pt hit. This was like the first really really big 2:17:03.320 --> 2:17:07.840 mainstream AI thing. Chat GPT was was a lot larger, 2:17:07.920 --> 2:17:12.240 but Stable deviusion came first, and you know, was critical behind, 2:17:12.240 --> 2:17:14.680 among other things, a lot of the silliest n f 2:17:14.760 --> 2:17:20.080 T bullshit. And he's he's a really interesting dude. Like 2:17:20.120 --> 2:17:21.960 if you look at kind of his own claims about 2:17:21.959 --> 2:17:25.039 his background. Uh, he says that he's got an Oxford 2:17:25.160 --> 2:17:28.640 master's degree, that he was like the behind an award 2:17:28.640 --> 2:17:31.840 winning hedge fund, that he like worked for the United 2:17:31.920 --> 2:17:35.360 Nations and a really important capacity, and also that he 2:17:35.400 --> 2:17:39.120 obviously founded this this a I bought. None of that's true. 2:17:39.400 --> 2:17:42.520 He has a bachelor's degree from Oxford, not a master's 2:17:42.520 --> 2:17:43.560 degree he did. 2:17:43.640 --> 2:17:46.760 Well, that's what he's playing off a thing that happens 2:17:46.800 --> 2:17:49.400 there where like you can you you can get if 2:17:49.400 --> 2:17:51.560 you have a BA Oxen and you can you can 2:17:51.600 --> 2:17:53.280 get it to be an MA. Doesn't mean you did 2:17:53.320 --> 2:17:58.600 a master's it's just a wealthy people flex. Yeah, it's 2:17:58.640 --> 2:18:00.840 it's not a master's degree. You should if you're recording 2:18:00.879 --> 2:18:01.800 it now, you're taking the pace. 2:18:02.320 --> 2:18:02.520 Yeah. 2:18:02.600 --> 2:18:04.640 Yeah, he's taken the piss knowing no one's gonna call 2:18:04.720 --> 2:18:07.000 him on it, or at least knowing that people wouldn't 2:18:07.080 --> 2:18:09.800 like at large, like loudly enough for it to matter 2:18:09.879 --> 2:18:13.360 for him. Yeah, he hasn't worked with the un in 2:18:13.680 --> 2:18:16.720 quite some time and never did in a major capacity. 2:18:17.000 --> 2:18:19.640 He did run a hedge fund that was successful in 2:18:19.680 --> 2:18:21.600 its first year but then got shut down in its 2:18:21.640 --> 2:18:25.640 second year because he lost everybody's money. So like this 2:18:25.720 --> 2:18:27.360 is this is but you see with this guy, if 2:18:27.400 --> 2:18:29.480 you go through his like history, he's like he's like 2:18:29.560 --> 2:18:33.320 chasing hedge funds in the early aughts. He first gets 2:18:33.360 --> 2:18:36.480 in with stable diffusion after COVID, and he's kind of 2:18:36.520 --> 2:18:38.280 like billing it as this is gonna help with like 2:18:38.400 --> 2:18:41.400 research into trying to like you know, fight the COVID 2:18:41.480 --> 2:18:45.680 nineteen pandemic, and then he kind of pivots to like, oh, 2:18:45.800 --> 2:18:48.160 this is a great way to like make NFTs and shit, 2:18:48.280 --> 2:18:50.119 you know when that hit, Like he's he's just sort 2:18:50.160 --> 2:18:53.720 of like chasing where the money is any way he 2:18:53.879 --> 2:18:56.600 kind of can. And he's not, by the way, he's 2:18:56.600 --> 2:18:58.360 not the guy who wrote any of the source code 2:18:58.360 --> 2:19:01.080 for this. That was done by like a group of researchers, 2:19:01.680 --> 2:19:05.320 and he you know, he essentially like acquired it, which 2:19:05.360 --> 2:19:07.520 is usually what happens here. Now, none of this has 2:19:07.560 --> 2:19:10.160 stopped him from getting one hundred million dollars or so 2:19:10.320 --> 2:19:15.680 in investments from various venture partners and hasn't stopped his 2:19:15.760 --> 2:19:18.280 company from getting this massive violation. It hasn't stopped the 2:19:18.280 --> 2:19:22.800 White House from inviting him to talk as part of 2:19:22.840 --> 2:19:26.600 like a federal AI safety initiative. But it is one 2:19:26.600 --> 2:19:28.520 of those like when I kind of look into this 2:19:28.600 --> 2:19:31.440 guy and kind of the gap between his claims and 2:19:31.440 --> 2:19:34.760 what's actually happened and the claims that are being made 2:19:34.760 --> 2:19:37.200 about the value of his company and what it's actually 2:19:37.640 --> 2:19:39.600 like proved to be worth so far. I think a 2:19:39.600 --> 2:19:42.480 lot about Sam Bankman Freed because a lot of like 2:19:42.520 --> 2:19:45.560 the early writing around this guy was similar, and a 2:19:45.600 --> 2:19:48.880 lot of the kind of shit that he's claiming is similar. 2:19:49.440 --> 2:19:51.720 And yeah, I'm not sure if this is a case 2:19:51.720 --> 2:19:54.240 where because Bankment Freed is one of these people who, 2:19:54.520 --> 2:19:59.440 like Elizabeth Holmes, I think backed the wrong technology because 2:19:59.480 --> 2:20:03.160 it's fine in Silicon Valley. It's fine, generally speaking in 2:20:03.200 --> 2:20:06.360 capitalism to lie about what a product can do if 2:20:06.400 --> 2:20:08.720 you can, you know, fake it till you make it. 2:20:09.160 --> 2:20:11.560 And maybe AI is there. He may have this guy 2:20:11.640 --> 2:20:14.480 may have made a good bet as to the future, 2:20:14.840 --> 2:20:17.720 but that's kind of far from certain yet, and it's 2:20:17.800 --> 2:20:21.920 it's just really clear how much of this industry is 2:20:21.959 --> 2:20:24.760 being built on or is being built by how much 2:20:24.760 --> 2:20:27.400 of like the people running sort of these AI companies 2:20:27.879 --> 2:20:30.760 are dudes who managed one way or another, either through 2:20:30.800 --> 2:20:34.520 access to VC funding or kind of like you know, 2:20:34.640 --> 2:20:36.360 just being in the right place at the right time 2:20:37.000 --> 2:20:40.320 to jump in on the bandwagon in the hopes that 2:20:40.320 --> 2:20:42.400 they'll be able to cash out very very quickly. I 2:20:42.440 --> 2:20:45.480 found a good quote from a Forbes article talking about 2:20:45.520 --> 2:20:50.160 like a big part of why guys like Mustok are 2:20:50.240 --> 2:20:53.480 so interested in AI right now from a financial perspective, 2:20:54.400 --> 2:20:56.400 And this is true, not just this was true about 2:20:56.440 --> 2:21:00.600 like crypto before, but AI because there's more to the techechnology. 2:21:01.720 --> 2:21:06.320 This is kind of even more so valid quote. Venture 2:21:06.360 --> 2:21:09.720 capitalists historically spend months performing due diligence, a process that 2:21:09.760 --> 2:21:12.520 involves analyzing the market, vetting the founder, and speaking to 2:21:12.520 --> 2:21:15.400 customers to check for red flags before investing in a startup, 2:21:15.760 --> 2:21:18.240 but start to finish my Stock told Forbes he needed 2:21:18.280 --> 2:21:20.480 just six days to secure one hundred million dollars from 2:21:20.560 --> 2:21:23.760 leading investment firms Coach You and light Speed once Stable 2:21:23.800 --> 2:21:26.560 Diffusion went viral. The extent of due diligence at the 2:21:26.560 --> 2:21:29.280 firms performed is unclear given the speed of the investment. 2:21:29.680 --> 2:21:31.800 The investment thesis we had is that we don't know 2:21:31.879 --> 2:21:34.120 exactly what all the use cases will be, but we 2:21:34.160 --> 2:21:36.760 know that this technology is truly transformative and has reached 2:21:36.760 --> 2:21:38.520 a tipping point in terms of what it can do. 2:21:38.879 --> 2:21:41.440 Garav Gupta, the light Speed partner who led the investment, 2:21:41.480 --> 2:21:43.280 told Forbes in a January interview. 2:21:43.640 --> 2:21:44.560 So again they're being. 2:21:44.520 --> 2:21:46.720 Like, yeah, we're pumping tens of million dollars of dollars 2:21:47.040 --> 2:21:49.879 into this. We don't know how it'll make money. It 2:21:50.000 --> 2:21:52.519 just seems so impressive that it has to be profitable. 2:21:53.080 --> 2:21:56.480 Now that line is particularly funny, maybe the wrong word, 2:21:56.920 --> 2:22:01.840 when compared alongside this paragraph from later in the article. 2:22:02.280 --> 2:22:05.680 In an open letter last September, Democratic Representative Anna Essue 2:22:05.760 --> 2:22:08.320 urged action in Washington against the open source nature of 2:22:08.320 --> 2:22:10.720 stable Diffusion. The model, she wrote, had been used to 2:22:10.720 --> 2:22:14.240 generate images of violently beaten Asian women and pornography, some 2:22:14.280 --> 2:22:17.440 of which portrays real people. Bashara said new versions of 2:22:17.440 --> 2:22:21.600 stable Diffusion filtered data for potentially unsafe content, helping to 2:22:21.640 --> 2:22:24.600 prevent users from generating harmful images in the first place. 2:22:25.400 --> 2:22:32.000 So it's like, part of what's happening here is you've 2:22:32.040 --> 2:22:35.640 got this thing that seems really impressive, and that is 2:22:35.720 --> 2:22:37.920 to some extent because it's able to like remix stuff 2:22:37.959 --> 2:22:41.360 that exists in a way that you haven't done automatically before. 2:22:42.480 --> 2:22:45.280 But all of these kind of valuations are based number one, 2:22:45.280 --> 2:22:49.560 and ignoring the problems with monetizing this stuff, including like 2:22:49.680 --> 2:22:52.440 the still very much unsorted nature of how copyright's going 2:22:52.480 --> 2:22:55.640 to affect this, and also like the question of is 2:22:55.680 --> 2:23:00.320 this really worth that much money? Like is is this 2:23:00.440 --> 2:23:04.760 actually is being able to generate kind of weird, slightly 2:23:04.800 --> 2:23:11.280 off putting AI images a huge business, like how much 2:23:11.360 --> 2:23:13.360 of because like from where I'm seeing, one of two 2:23:13.360 --> 2:23:17.000 things is possible. Number one, this replaces all art everywhere 2:23:17.120 --> 2:23:19.120 and so there's a shitload of money in it. Or 2:23:19.200 --> 2:23:22.320 number two, this remains a way that like low quality 2:23:22.360 --> 2:23:27.360 websites and like Amazon dropship scammers who are like putting 2:23:27.400 --> 2:23:31.039 up fake books on Kindle and whatnot to trick people 2:23:31.160 --> 2:23:34.280 using keywords like that this is just like a way 2:23:34.320 --> 2:23:37.080 to fill that shit out. Like I don't see a 2:23:37.080 --> 2:23:39.120 whole lot of room in the middle there. You know, 2:23:39.160 --> 2:23:43.000 maybe I'm being like overly pessimistic there, but that's that's 2:23:43.040 --> 2:23:43.760 where I'm sitting. 2:23:44.360 --> 2:23:47.400 I mean, some of the models we've seen used is 2:23:47.560 --> 2:23:52.199 selling like subscription packs for like access to these tools 2:23:52.240 --> 2:23:55.320 and access to use them for like commercial reasons. The 2:23:55.360 --> 2:23:58.440 other thing we can see is just like corporations selling 2:23:58.440 --> 2:24:02.320 to other corporations like Base having Disney and Warner Brothers 2:24:02.360 --> 2:24:04.640 be able to use this to generate concept art and 2:24:04.720 --> 2:24:07.039 now they don't need to pay concept artists and instead 2:24:07.120 --> 2:24:11.160 they just have like pretty pretty uh pretty like nicely 2:24:11.240 --> 2:24:14.840 curated tools for them to generate this type of yeah 2:24:15.200 --> 2:24:18.119 AI imagining. Those are kind of two of the biggest 2:24:18.240 --> 2:24:21.240 use cases that at least I'm seeing right now from 2:24:21.560 --> 2:24:26.040 slightly more on like the creative filmmaking art side of things, 2:24:26.560 --> 2:24:28.320 because I mean, I don't think it's gonna replace all 2:24:29.360 --> 2:24:33.200 all art. I think nobody nobody is actually uh is 2:24:33.240 --> 2:24:35.440 actually thinking it's just going to replace all all art, 2:24:35.520 --> 2:24:37.920 just like photography did not replace all art. It just 2:24:38.160 --> 2:24:41.280 it changes the paradigm. And because this this tool does 2:24:41.320 --> 2:24:45.879 seem like specifically useful for the for the way that 2:24:45.920 --> 2:24:49.320 we're seeing, like corporations make the same a movie every 2:24:49.360 --> 2:24:51.640 five years, like it's all it's it's it's it's all 2:24:51.640 --> 2:24:54.240 built on all of the same stuff. And I think 2:24:54.240 --> 2:24:55.920 that that's how a lot of a lot of it's 2:24:55.920 --> 2:24:57.600 gonna get used. It's gonna be a lot of weird 2:24:57.600 --> 2:25:01.840 scam artists people just mess around for fun, and then 2:25:02.080 --> 2:25:05.160 people not paying like illustrators as much. 2:25:05.360 --> 2:25:08.800 Like yeah, and I think that's kind of like I 2:25:08.840 --> 2:25:11.520 see this being adopted widely, but that's not the same 2:25:11.800 --> 2:25:16.160 as it like being a huge success. Like right now 2:25:16.160 --> 2:25:18.880 I'm looking at an article that's estimating the current value 2:25:18.879 --> 2:25:20.760 of AI in the US is at one hundred billion 2:25:20.800 --> 2:25:23.560 dollars and that by twenty thirty it'll be worth two 2:25:23.560 --> 2:25:27.160 trillion US dollars, And it's like, I don't know, man, 2:25:27.280 --> 2:25:28.119 like is. 2:25:28.160 --> 2:25:30.680 I mean the AI is more than just like mid 2:25:30.720 --> 2:25:34.480 journey image creation right there, is just like open AI 2:25:34.600 --> 2:25:37.760 and chat GPT, and like AI is in everything we 2:25:37.920 --> 2:25:40.280 use now, like like yeah, like AI is in your smartphone. 2:25:40.280 --> 2:25:42.640 AI is going to be in your refrigerator soon. It's 2:25:42.640 --> 2:25:45.360 like it's not just image generation by any means. 2:25:45.520 --> 2:25:47.360 That kind of gets to what I'm saying, because that's 2:25:47.520 --> 2:25:50.879 that's when you look at AI as a tool. Is 2:25:50.920 --> 2:25:52.560 more of like a paint brush than a painter. Is 2:25:52.600 --> 2:25:54.959 a tool that will like augment or be used in 2:25:55.000 --> 2:25:56.720 because I think a lot of a number of times 2:25:57.080 --> 2:25:58.560 it may be used in a way that makes the 2:25:58.600 --> 2:26:02.760 product worse and a lot of existing technologies. Well that's 2:26:02.800 --> 2:26:06.280 really different from kind of number one, the doom and gloom, 2:26:06.360 --> 2:26:09.200 like this is an intelligence on its own that could 2:26:09.240 --> 2:26:12.800 like overtake humanity. I think the worry is more like 2:26:13.560 --> 2:26:16.240 this could make get adopted on such a large scale 2:26:16.280 --> 2:26:18.000 that it like makes a lot of shit worse. Like 2:26:18.160 --> 2:26:20.800 my biggest fear with AI is that it kind of 2:26:20.879 --> 2:26:24.160 hypercharges the SEO industry and the way that that has 2:26:24.200 --> 2:26:27.480 worked to destroy search and destroy so much of Internet content. 2:26:27.800 --> 2:26:30.320 Yeah, I think that is very possible. Like if I 2:26:30.360 --> 2:26:33.320 look at chat GPT, like, I don't think that's going 2:26:33.360 --> 2:26:36.440 to be writing features for Rolling Stone anytime soon, but 2:26:36.840 --> 2:26:41.480 what it can probably do because SEO max copy is derivative, right, 2:26:41.520 --> 2:26:44.840 Like it's predictable, it's derivative, it's based on other stuff. 2:26:44.560 --> 2:26:45.240 It's supposed to be. 2:26:45.600 --> 2:26:48.359 Yeah, and so it can do that SEO max copy 2:26:48.520 --> 2:26:52.120 and some of that ad copy like very well, and yeah, 2:26:52.320 --> 2:26:55.439 i'd have really fuck up searches, which is quite possible, 2:26:55.600 --> 2:26:59.400 and also make the lowest kind of acceptable tier of 2:26:59.440 --> 2:27:03.680 that kind of copy. What it can generate and sort 2:27:03.680 --> 2:27:05.280 of because you can just shove that copy in front 2:27:05.320 --> 2:27:07.360 of people with seomax and then have shitty agg copy 2:27:07.360 --> 2:27:12.280 written by church GBT. Like that will change how it's 2:27:12.280 --> 2:27:14.360 certainly how we buy stuff on the internet, right, but 2:27:14.360 --> 2:27:14.920 also how we. 2:27:14.920 --> 2:27:16.600 Read news, etc. Yeah. 2:27:16.640 --> 2:27:21.160 Absolutely, And I already see that, Like I've written for 2:27:21.240 --> 2:27:25.760 some big publications. You have like essentially a side. Do 2:27:25.800 --> 2:27:30.480 people know what content driven commerce is? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 2:27:30.520 --> 2:27:32.879 it's why every article about stuff is now the best 2:27:32.920 --> 2:27:34.720 five x right yeah, Like. 2:27:34.680 --> 2:27:38.480 They have affiliate links and the publication will profit if 2:27:38.520 --> 2:27:40.199 you buy stuff after clicking the link. 2:27:40.280 --> 2:27:44.880 Yeah yeah, So like in the probably twenty sixteen era, 2:27:46.240 --> 2:27:48.680 all of the stuff. So I did a lot of 2:27:48.680 --> 2:27:52.080 previously outdoor journalism right right about climbing gear, bikes, that 2:27:52.160 --> 2:27:55.520 kind of thing, and like that whole industry went to 2:27:55.720 --> 2:27:58.720 just AFCM, like just affiliate links, and they kind of 2:27:58.760 --> 2:28:03.480 trashed any quality review stuff. And I can see like 2:28:03.600 --> 2:28:07.280 a similar change to that happening with this right where 2:28:07.320 --> 2:28:10.680 where people will just chase that SEO max copy and 2:28:10.720 --> 2:28:13.480 that will become the new cool thing to do and 2:28:13.560 --> 2:28:16.280 like a lot of outlets as a result. But that's 2:28:16.360 --> 2:28:19.720 not the like earth shattering change that people are talking 2:28:19.760 --> 2:28:21.640 about on Twitter, dot com or whatever. 2:28:22.600 --> 2:28:24.200 Well, one thing I saw recently is that more and 2:28:24.280 --> 2:28:28.680 more students are just using chat GPT to look up 2:28:28.760 --> 2:28:31.960 information like as opposed to like as a Wikipedia as 2:28:31.959 --> 2:28:34.080 opposed to Wikipedia are as supposed to Google if they 2:28:34.080 --> 2:28:37.039 have a question. The last chat GPT which has a 2:28:37.040 --> 2:28:39.120 few problems as soon as you start getting into how 2:28:39.200 --> 2:28:42.800 much of the chat GBT output is just AI hallucinations 2:28:43.240 --> 2:28:45.480 where it's not actual information, which is honest, that's not 2:28:45.480 --> 2:28:47.400 thing I should just write my own thing on in 2:28:47.440 --> 2:28:52.000 the future. But yeah, it's just it's a really weird problem. 2:28:52.360 --> 2:28:55.440 That's really interesting that the problem of like because I 2:28:55.440 --> 2:28:57.520 think it's it's very clear to me at this point 2:28:57.840 --> 2:29:02.400 that AI is a more user friendly search experience than 2:29:02.400 --> 2:29:05.160 a search engine, right because you can talk to it 2:29:05.280 --> 2:29:07.879 like a person and explain what you need explained. That 2:29:07.920 --> 2:29:10.520 doesn't mean it's a better option in terms of it 2:29:10.680 --> 2:29:14.360 provides people with information more effectively that it that it 2:29:14.400 --> 2:29:16.400 actually tells them what they want to know as well. 2:29:16.800 --> 2:29:23.080 But it's like easier and maybe like less kind of 2:29:23.879 --> 2:29:27.119 an imposing task to like ask an AI a question 2:29:27.160 --> 2:29:29.240 that it is to ask like a search and to 2:29:29.400 --> 2:29:33.000 especially as as much worse as Google has gotten lately. 2:29:33.080 --> 2:29:34.680 Like one of the things that I found interesting is 2:29:34.680 --> 2:29:36.600 I was kind of doing digging for this. I was 2:29:36.640 --> 2:29:38.840 looking at some AI articles that were published in like 2:29:38.879 --> 2:29:42.040 twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. This is before 2:29:42.120 --> 2:29:45.480 the big you know AI push that like we're currently 2:29:45.480 --> 2:29:48.160 all in the middle of before chat GPT you know, 2:29:48.240 --> 2:29:51.520 got its its widespread release. And it was talking with 2:29:51.560 --> 2:29:53.720 like some people from Google who were like, Yeah, we 2:29:53.760 --> 2:29:57.360 really see AI like supercharging our search results. You know, 2:29:57.360 --> 2:29:59.600 there's a lot of potential and like its ability to 2:29:59.600 --> 2:30:02.920 help people with search. And I'm thinking about in twenty 2:30:02.959 --> 2:30:06.320 twenty twenty nineteen, Google was a really useful tool and 2:30:06.360 --> 2:30:11.199 it's a shit show now, like it's filled with ads, 2:30:11.360 --> 2:30:14.320 Like search results have gotten markedly, whereas everyone who uses 2:30:14.360 --> 2:30:16.160 Google as part of their job will tell you that 2:30:16.200 --> 2:30:20.959 it's gotten like significantly worse in the recent past. And 2:30:21.040 --> 2:30:28.200 like I that's kind of like the thing that I 2:30:28.240 --> 2:30:30.959 see being more of a worry, And. 2:30:30.920 --> 2:30:31.920 It's one of those things. 2:30:31.959 --> 2:30:35.480 It's like, on one hand, in the hype machine you have, 2:30:35.680 --> 2:30:39.000 like AI could become like our new god king and 2:30:39.040 --> 2:30:42.240 destroy us all, and the other like AI is going 2:30:42.280 --> 2:30:45.200 to like, you know, create all. There's all this vague 2:30:45.200 --> 2:30:47.240 talk about what could be giving people the tools to 2:30:47.320 --> 2:30:50.959 create more art than ever before, to you know, make 2:30:51.280 --> 2:30:54.879 more good things faster, and I kind of feel like, well, 2:30:54.920 --> 2:30:57.800 what if neither of those things happens, which I and 2:30:58.200 --> 2:31:03.720 it just sort of allows us to continue making the 2:31:03.800 --> 2:31:08.880 Internet worse for everybody at a more rapid pace. What 2:31:08.959 --> 2:31:11.959 if that's the primary thing that we notice about AI 2:31:12.160 --> 2:31:13.680 as consumers. 2:31:14.360 --> 2:31:15.600 It's probably a reasonab assumption. 2:31:15.680 --> 2:31:17.680 I think Garrison's point was good though, when they said 2:31:18.040 --> 2:31:20.720 that like bigger companies will buy, like companies will just 2:31:20.760 --> 2:31:22.520 exist to get bought, right, which is the thing that's 2:31:22.520 --> 2:31:26.519 happened to tech for decades, because like it can't fundamentally 2:31:26.600 --> 2:31:29.400 change things, Like if AI is another means of production, right, 2:31:29.440 --> 2:31:32.640 if we want to be like a grossly materialist, if 2:31:32.640 --> 2:31:34.840 AI is another means of predic's a tool for making things. 2:31:35.040 --> 2:31:37.120 If the same people own it and benefit from it, 2:31:37.160 --> 2:31:41.640 then like it's incapable of fundamentally changing our material conditions, right, 2:31:41.720 --> 2:31:45.080 just becomes another way for them to churn out shit 2:31:45.200 --> 2:31:47.840 and say that like this is fine, this is what 2:31:47.920 --> 2:31:49.920 you'll get, you know, like churn out shit content on 2:31:49.959 --> 2:31:51.800 the Internet or whatever it might be. 2:31:52.320 --> 2:31:56.959 And likewise, if AI is primarily like if it gets 2:31:56.959 --> 2:31:59.440 caught in this kind of SEO loop where it exists 2:31:59.480 --> 2:32:03.080 primary to help advertise and sell products, whether it's as 2:32:03.080 --> 2:32:07.000 a search engine or generating mass content you know, for 2:32:08.200 --> 2:32:11.560 like the Internet that's sort of optimized to appear higher 2:32:11.560 --> 2:32:15.119 in search results, and it's also being trained on that. 2:32:15.280 --> 2:32:16.959 Is there a point at which it kind of starts 2:32:16.959 --> 2:32:20.360 to lobotomize itself where it's just recycling shit other AI 2:32:20.520 --> 2:32:23.640 is written, which also seems kind of inevitable with that. 2:32:23.760 --> 2:32:25.160 This is one of those things. So one of the 2:32:25.200 --> 2:32:29.760 more famous moments, and like recent AI research, is this 2:32:30.080 --> 2:32:34.920 Google researcher timnit Gibru, who no longer works at Google, 2:32:35.560 --> 2:32:38.200 and some other very smart people put together a paper 2:32:38.240 --> 2:32:40.959 that like it was I think generally regarded by AI 2:32:41.040 --> 2:32:42.760 folks as kind of middle of the road, but it 2:32:43.680 --> 2:32:46.520 kind of it developed the term stochastic parrot, which is 2:32:46.520 --> 2:32:48.920 what people know it for as sort of trying to 2:32:48.959 --> 2:32:52.440 describe what these quote unquote AIS do in a way 2:32:52.440 --> 2:32:54.600 that's better than an AI, because like, part of what 2:32:54.640 --> 2:32:57.400 it was saying is that, like we have to look 2:32:57.440 --> 2:32:59.080 at this as kind of like a parrot that if 2:32:59.080 --> 2:33:01.760 you say enough like words around it, including enough like 2:33:01.840 --> 2:33:04.680 racial slurs, it'll start repeating a bunch of toxic shit. 2:33:04.720 --> 2:33:07.040 It doesn't know what it's doing, it doesn't have intention, 2:33:07.680 --> 2:33:10.119 it's just kind of like repeating this stuff because that's 2:33:10.160 --> 2:33:12.320 what's been fed into it. But one of the things 2:33:12.360 --> 2:33:14.920 to point out in that paper is that like when 2:33:14.959 --> 2:33:17.080 you have an AI, when you have one of these 2:33:17.160 --> 2:33:20.440 lms trained on too large of a model, it becomes 2:33:20.560 --> 2:33:23.960 number one kind of impossible to avoid that toxic stuff. 2:33:24.000 --> 2:33:28.200 But it also reduces the utility of the AI in 2:33:28.240 --> 2:33:30.560 a lot of ways because like when you have so 2:33:30.680 --> 2:33:35.480 much data going in, it's very difficult for the humans 2:33:35.520 --> 2:33:39.240 to kind of tell how competent it is. This is 2:33:39.320 --> 2:33:43.320 why stuff like chat GPT involves so much human training, 2:33:43.360 --> 2:33:46.080 why they had hundreds of people spending tens of thousands 2:33:46.080 --> 2:33:49.080 of man hours like going through responses to tell if 2:33:49.120 --> 2:33:52.520 they made sense. Because when you've got like it's one 2:33:52.560 --> 2:33:55.360 thing if you're like using an if you're for example, 2:33:55.400 --> 2:33:57.680 training an AI on a bunch of different like medical 2:33:57.760 --> 2:34:02.080 data to try to determine patterns and like antibiotic research, right, 2:34:02.320 --> 2:34:04.440 which is a thing that that lllms have been like 2:34:04.680 --> 2:34:07.959 shown to be have some early utility and is like 2:34:08.040 --> 2:34:11.160 kind of helping to identity identify new paths for like 2:34:11.200 --> 2:34:15.440 antibiotics research, because like we've got a lot of data, 2:34:15.520 --> 2:34:17.960 but it's also a really focused kind of data, right, 2:34:18.000 --> 2:34:20.320 We're not like training these things on like all of 2:34:20.520 --> 2:34:23.959 you know, Wikipedia and and you know thousands and thousands 2:34:24.000 --> 2:34:27.800 and thousands of fan fiction stories about Kirk and Molder 2:34:27.879 --> 2:34:31.360 fucking each other during some sort of like Exile file 2:34:31.440 --> 2:34:35.760 Star Trek crossover. We're we're we're using a fairly focused 2:34:35.879 --> 2:34:40.000 data set to try and analyze it in a manner 2:34:40.000 --> 2:34:43.879 more efficiently than people are simply capable of. That's a 2:34:43.920 --> 2:34:47.800 lot more useful in terms of getting good data than 2:34:48.360 --> 2:34:51.800 you know, just training it on half of trillion different 2:34:52.000 --> 2:34:53.800 things out there, a lot of which you're going to 2:34:53.800 --> 2:34:59.240 be lies. But anyway, I found that interesting. It's kind 2:34:59.280 --> 2:35:02.480 of worth noting that, like Gabru and a number of 2:35:02.480 --> 2:35:06.480 other people who were responsible for that got forced out 2:35:06.680 --> 2:35:10.760 by Google and kind of attacked by the industry because 2:35:11.640 --> 2:35:15.200 I think there's a desperation And I talked about this 2:35:15.320 --> 2:35:18.200 in that episode I did last year kind of about 2:35:18.320 --> 2:35:22.359 the fundamental emptiness at the core of the modern tech industry. 2:35:22.360 --> 2:35:25.800 But I think there's this desperation, Unlike, we have to 2:35:25.879 --> 2:35:28.160 find the new thing, the thing that's going to be 2:35:28.240 --> 2:35:30.280 as big as social media was, the thing that's going 2:35:30.280 --> 2:35:32.560 to deliver the kind of stock market returns that social 2:35:32.600 --> 2:35:36.840 media did, and that doesn't exist yet. And AI is 2:35:37.640 --> 2:35:42.560 after especially several years of disasters with crypto and diminishing 2:35:42.600 --> 2:35:46.920 returns in social media and honestly diminishing returns, and like 2:35:46.959 --> 2:35:50.080 traditional tech because like smartphones have reached kind of a 2:35:50.120 --> 2:35:53.560 point of saturation. Right, you can make money sell obviously, 2:35:53.720 --> 2:35:56.600 like you can make money selling smartphones, but you can't 2:35:56.760 --> 2:35:59.880 show exponential growth, right, There's just not that many people 2:36:00.160 --> 2:36:01.600 who need new ones. 2:36:02.000 --> 2:36:02.160 Yeah. 2:36:02.760 --> 2:36:06.400 Anyway, Yeah, I think there's I feel some desperation here. 2:36:06.720 --> 2:36:09.160 I wanted to kind of close by reading you all. 2:36:09.240 --> 2:36:12.920 I found a very funny article in the Financial Times 2:36:13.400 --> 2:36:17.039 that was about the potential that the head of Europe's 2:36:17.040 --> 2:36:23.080 biggest media group, Birtlesman, sees for generative AI. And yeah, 2:36:23.320 --> 2:36:26.039 it interviewed a couple of people, including a guy Thomas Rabe, 2:36:26.040 --> 2:36:31.000 who works is the chief executive of the German business 2:36:31.000 --> 2:36:35.000 that owns Penguin Random House and One of the things 2:36:35.000 --> 2:36:37.440 that he says in this is basically like I think 2:36:37.480 --> 2:36:40.320 this is, you know, uh going to be super great 2:36:40.360 --> 2:36:44.279 for authors. You know, there's a potential for copyright infringement problems, 2:36:44.320 --> 2:36:47.400 but really like it would allow you to feed your 2:36:47.440 --> 2:36:51.560 own work into an AI and then produce much more 2:36:51.600 --> 2:36:54.040 content than you were a raverable put able to put 2:36:54.040 --> 2:36:56.280 out before. Like his exact what is it's if it's 2:36:56.320 --> 2:36:58.120 your content for what you owned the copyright, and then 2:36:58.160 --> 2:37:00.120 you use it to train the software you can and 2:37:00.160 --> 2:37:04.880 theory generate content like never before, which I think is yeah, 2:37:05.040 --> 2:37:08.959 a fundamental Like you know, I don't actually even think 2:37:09.000 --> 2:37:10.760 it's going to be possible to like train them on 2:37:10.800 --> 2:37:13.520 airport novels like you've got like James Patterson and other 2:37:13.600 --> 2:37:17.480 guys who they're not They don't write their own books anymore. 2:37:17.560 --> 2:37:20.280 They have like a team of ghostwriters. But like having 2:37:20.360 --> 2:37:23.240 gone through a lot of AI's stories, they're not books, 2:37:23.840 --> 2:37:26.280 Like they're not capable of writing books. They're capable of 2:37:26.360 --> 2:37:30.240 like producing text and producing pieces of books that human 2:37:30.240 --> 2:37:34.160 beings can edit laboriously into something that might look like 2:37:34.200 --> 2:37:36.840 a book. But the use in that is not like 2:37:37.600 --> 2:37:40.760 filling up airports with kind of mid grade fiction, because 2:37:40.800 --> 2:37:43.200 I think that's even beyond these models. It's like tricking 2:37:43.240 --> 2:37:47.200 people on Amazon. There was a really funny quote in 2:37:47.240 --> 2:37:52.119 this article though, where at the end of it, Rabe 2:37:52.160 --> 2:37:54.760 is like, I asked chat GPT what the impact of 2:37:54.840 --> 2:37:58.480 chat GPT or generative AI is unpublishing it prepared a 2:37:58.480 --> 2:38:01.640 phenomenal text. Frankly, it was very detailed into the point, 2:38:02.120 --> 2:38:05.440 which he then presented at a staff event. So there 2:38:05.480 --> 2:38:08.560 is kind of evidence that the CEO jobs could be 2:38:08.600 --> 2:38:10.760 pretty easily replaced by this, Like. 2:38:10.920 --> 2:38:15.320 You don't actually have to do anything, Comrade chat GBT, 2:38:15.560 --> 2:38:18.760 we agree, it's just spinning Jenny for bosses. 2:38:18.840 --> 2:38:19.320 I love it. 2:38:19.680 --> 2:38:20.040 Yeah. 2:38:20.160 --> 2:38:23.440 Anyway, that's that's what I've got right now. We have 2:38:23.480 --> 2:38:25.720 a We've been doing some research and we'll have an 2:38:25.800 --> 2:38:28.800 article out on one of the more unsettling little site 2:38:28.800 --> 2:38:32.840 industries that I think AI is going to create, which 2:38:32.879 --> 2:38:38.840 is like scam children's books that exist to make conment 2:38:38.879 --> 2:38:41.400 on the Internet money and poison the minds of little kids. 2:38:41.760 --> 2:38:45.360 But we'll get that to you next week. Yeah, it 2:38:45.400 --> 2:38:48.000 felt like it was worth coming back to this subject 2:38:48.080 --> 2:38:51.720 because it, I don't know, it's the most apocalyptic thing 2:38:52.320 --> 2:38:54.880 people in the media are talking about in a day 2:38:54.920 --> 2:38:58.320 in which like the entire Northeast is blanketed in poison smoke, 2:38:58.400 --> 2:38:59.240 which seems. 2:38:58.959 --> 2:39:01.520 Bad at well, people are talking about that now because 2:39:01.520 --> 2:39:03.760 they all live in New York and they're the fuck out, 2:39:03.800 --> 2:39:05.400 But yeah, previous. 2:39:05.000 --> 2:39:09.560 To it is yeah, good to help. 2:39:25.280 --> 2:39:29.080 Hello everyone, It's just me James again today and I'm 2:39:29.160 --> 2:39:32.040 joined by Ruth Kinner, who's going to introduce herself shortly, 2:39:32.240 --> 2:39:35.360 and we're discussing the concept of mutual aid and trying 2:39:35.360 --> 2:39:37.920 to sort of cast that in a broader perspective. We 2:39:37.920 --> 2:39:39.840 talk a lot about mutual aid, but we don't talk 2:39:40.360 --> 2:39:42.160 often about what it is and what it means and 2:39:42.520 --> 2:39:45.000 how it's been happening for a very long time. So Ruth, 2:39:45.000 --> 2:39:47.039 would you like to introduce yourself and tell us any 2:39:47.080 --> 2:39:47.959 do you think it's relevant? 2:39:48.440 --> 2:39:50.600 Yeah, thank you, James. So my name is Ruth Kinner 2:39:50.680 --> 2:39:54.480 and I work at Lufber University in the UK. Lufber's 2:39:54.720 --> 2:39:58.720 halfway between Nottingham and Leicester in the East Midlands, and 2:39:59.360 --> 2:40:02.880 I'm a political theorist and historian of ideas and I 2:40:02.920 --> 2:40:07.039 specialize in anarchist political thought. And one of the people 2:40:07.080 --> 2:40:10.680 I've spent probably most time looking at is Peter Cropotkin, 2:40:11.480 --> 2:40:16.360 and I've written about Kropotkin's life and work. I'm also 2:40:16.480 --> 2:40:19.480 the editor of the journal Anarchist Studies, and I'm a 2:40:19.480 --> 2:40:22.360 member at Lufber University of the Anarchism Research Group. 2:40:23.080 --> 2:40:27.320 I lovely. Yeah, that's a very very appropriate TV for this. 2:40:28.520 --> 2:40:31.160 So can we start off by explaining because I think 2:40:31.200 --> 2:40:33.240 people hear mutual aids sort of thrown about a lot, 2:40:33.280 --> 2:40:35.800 and they know that it's people helping people, But what 2:40:36.560 --> 2:40:37.600 would you define it as? 2:40:37.640 --> 2:40:39.800 What would be a useful definition for people to work of? 2:40:41.640 --> 2:40:45.440 So mutual aid is about people helping people. But I 2:40:45.440 --> 2:40:48.200 think crop Popkin's argument, or you know, the way that 2:40:48.840 --> 2:40:52.519 anarchists tend to think about mutual aid is that it's 2:40:53.120 --> 2:40:58.200 a way of describing a relationship that can be encouraged 2:40:58.320 --> 2:41:02.080 or discouraged according to the ways in which we organize 2:41:02.080 --> 2:41:05.280 our social relationships. So mutual aid is a kind of 2:41:05.560 --> 2:41:09.320 a response that we all have two people when it's 2:41:09.560 --> 2:41:13.360 based on empathy, I guess, but it's something that we 2:41:13.440 --> 2:41:20.640 can dampen. I suppose if we divorce ourselves from other 2:41:20.680 --> 2:41:25.760 people in our everyday lives, and particularly if we tend 2:41:25.920 --> 2:41:29.560 to think that people's well being is the concern of 2:41:29.720 --> 2:41:33.720 others rather than something which is a collective concern of 2:41:34.440 --> 2:41:34.879 all of us. 2:41:35.480 --> 2:41:35.760 Yeah. 2:41:36.040 --> 2:41:39.200 Yeah, I think it's really excellent because it's very easy, 2:41:39.280 --> 2:41:42.240 especially if you're living under sort of capitalism as it 2:41:42.280 --> 2:41:46.400 exists today, to divorce yourself from your empathy or I 2:41:46.440 --> 2:41:49.880 don't know, responsibilities the right word, but to help other people. 2:41:50.160 --> 2:41:52.640 Can We see that all the time, And I think 2:41:52.720 --> 2:41:56.760 one area where we've seen that increasingly, certainly in the 2:41:56.800 --> 2:41:59.680 two countries that we're sitting in, is with this like 2:42:01.200 --> 2:42:04.680 this bizarre I don't want to like pathologize it, but 2:42:04.760 --> 2:42:09.600 this this deeply untasteful lack of empathy for refugees and 2:42:09.680 --> 2:42:13.600 people seeking asylum. So I wanted to sort of start 2:42:13.680 --> 2:42:17.240 with the example of the Lifeboats in the UK, because 2:42:17.640 --> 2:42:20.760 I think they're great. They pop up in Crapotkin, They've 2:42:20.760 --> 2:42:23.280 been around for very long time, and they were, at 2:42:23.360 --> 2:42:25.200 least when I was living in the UK, very charitied 2:42:25.200 --> 2:42:29.160 institution that people supported. And can you explain a little 2:42:29.160 --> 2:42:32.720 bit about how they operate within that sort of mutual 2:42:32.800 --> 2:42:33.840 aid lens. 2:42:34.840 --> 2:42:35.120 Yeah. 2:42:35.160 --> 2:42:40.040 So the Lifeboat Association was prompted by it's called an 2:42:40.080 --> 2:42:42.480 appeal to the British Nation that was published in eighteen 2:42:42.480 --> 2:42:45.760 twenty five by this guy called William Hillary. And what 2:42:45.879 --> 2:42:49.280 Hillary wanted to do was to support the foundation of 2:42:49.320 --> 2:42:51.240 a kind of national institution that was going to help 2:42:51.280 --> 2:42:55.680 the victims of shipwrecks. And he couched this project actually 2:42:55.720 --> 2:42:58.600 as quite a sort of nationalistic terms, I suppose were 2:42:58.600 --> 2:43:03.160 in patriotic terms, part of the duty that British people 2:43:03.160 --> 2:43:06.480 would have as one of the great seafaring nations. But 2:43:06.560 --> 2:43:10.080 what it did was that it established the skeleton, if 2:43:10.080 --> 2:43:12.199 you like, or it produced the sort of the foundation 2:43:12.240 --> 2:43:14.280 for the Lifeboat Association, which is what we know now, 2:43:14.640 --> 2:43:18.560 which is basically a voluntary organization run by volunteers, funded 2:43:18.560 --> 2:43:22.879 by the public, with a remit to help anybody who 2:43:22.920 --> 2:43:26.920 is in distress at sea. And I guess although it 2:43:26.959 --> 2:43:30.279 was sort of the original idea of the Lifeboat Association 2:43:30.400 --> 2:43:35.720 came from this sort of rather patriotic seafaring tradition. Hillary's 2:43:35.720 --> 2:43:41.199 idea was that once you set up these organizations locally 2:43:41.920 --> 2:43:44.320 on the coast, then actually they could be replicated. So 2:43:44.360 --> 2:43:46.680 he did have a sort of internationalist perspective. He thought 2:43:46.720 --> 2:43:50.040 that these things would be would mushroom, you know, across 2:43:50.040 --> 2:43:52.520 the globe and that we would have lifeboat associations everywhere. 2:43:52.720 --> 2:43:55.240 I'm not sure if that's true, but certainly the Lifeboat 2:43:55.240 --> 2:43:59.000 Association is still alive and well in the UK and 2:43:59.560 --> 2:44:01.920 it does exactly what he wanted it to do. It 2:44:03.600 --> 2:44:06.360 looks after people in distress at sea without fear or favor, 2:44:06.400 --> 2:44:09.280 and it's an example of mutual aid, I guess, because 2:44:09.320 --> 2:44:13.640 the people who do this as volunteers are always putting 2:44:13.680 --> 2:44:19.280 themselves at risk of peril or drowning, if you like, 2:44:19.680 --> 2:44:22.359 in order to try and preserve the lives of others. 2:44:22.800 --> 2:44:26.279 Yeah, and it's a very at least from my memory, 2:44:26.320 --> 2:44:29.640 an institution. I've never really heard of anyone having negative 2:44:29.680 --> 2:44:33.640 opinions about lifeboats until relatively recently. There was always a 2:44:33.680 --> 2:44:36.120 lifeboat shaped thing that you could put money in, like 2:44:36.160 --> 2:44:38.680 a donation box, and people just put money in it 2:44:38.680 --> 2:44:39.920 and no one was like, oh, I don't. 2:44:39.760 --> 2:44:40.480 Like the lifeboats. 2:44:42.080 --> 2:44:45.440 But recently I suppose I've come under fire from Britain first, 2:44:46.879 --> 2:44:51.640 for I think they would phrase it as like encouraging 2:44:51.720 --> 2:44:54.440 people to take the risk of traveling on small boats 2:44:54.480 --> 2:44:59.120 to the United Kingdom to claim asylum. And can you 2:44:59.240 --> 2:45:01.920 characterize I don't want you to characterize that attack because 2:45:01.920 --> 2:45:06.160 it's relatively easy to characterize and it's you know, it 2:45:06.400 --> 2:45:07.400 doesn't need much explaining. 2:45:07.400 --> 2:45:07.920 It's stupid. 2:45:07.959 --> 2:45:11.520 But the response to that, because I think it has 2:45:11.560 --> 2:45:14.560 been quite It's easy for people in America to see 2:45:14.600 --> 2:45:17.039 Britain as like a parochial at island full of turfs. 2:45:17.080 --> 2:45:22.600 But I think actually most people were still like most 2:45:22.600 --> 2:45:25.320 people were pretty I guess offended by the thought that 2:45:25.320 --> 2:45:28.120 we'd allow people to drown rather than coming to our 2:45:28.160 --> 2:45:29.560 country right to claim asylum. 2:45:29.760 --> 2:45:32.080 Is that fair statement, Yeah, I think so. 2:45:32.160 --> 2:45:35.600 I mean I think it was astonishing actually, or I 2:45:35.600 --> 2:45:38.760 think it astonished people that the Lifeboat Association would be 2:45:38.760 --> 2:45:41.840 politicized in the way that was attempted by the right. 2:45:42.720 --> 2:45:48.000 The whole idea of picking and choosing who one would 2:45:48.040 --> 2:45:50.600 rescue at sea is simply preposterous. And as you say, 2:45:50.640 --> 2:45:55.200 I mean, you know, the Lifeboat Association is widely supported. 2:45:55.240 --> 2:45:57.879 I mean you tend to see offices of the Lifeboat 2:45:57.920 --> 2:46:01.600 Association at seasides, so you know, this is a you know, 2:46:01.680 --> 2:46:05.199 the environment is the holiday environment, it's the beach environment. 2:46:06.120 --> 2:46:10.800 It's part of being together in a place which is 2:46:11.000 --> 2:46:15.160 enjoyed by people together, but which also has its risks. 2:46:15.160 --> 2:46:16.959 And I mean the first time I think, you know, 2:46:17.000 --> 2:46:21.000 I came across the Lifeboat Association was was actually through 2:46:21.000 --> 2:46:25.200 an appeal that was made through a very popular and 2:46:25.280 --> 2:46:29.000 well known BBC television program for children, which was called 2:46:29.040 --> 2:46:33.680 Blue Peter. And you know, they funded a boat by 2:46:33.720 --> 2:46:37.320 asking kids to send in milk bottle tops which could 2:46:37.360 --> 2:46:40.600 be melted down and turned into an eminium or whatever 2:46:40.640 --> 2:46:42.200 it was. And then you know, this is how they 2:46:42.200 --> 2:46:44.560 funded a lifeboat. I mean, so this this, you know, 2:46:44.680 --> 2:46:47.800 lifeboats aren't deeply rooted I think, I mean, the support 2:46:47.840 --> 2:46:51.320 for lifeboats are deeply rooted in people's psyche in this country. 2:46:51.360 --> 2:46:55.240 And and as I say, I think it was it 2:46:55.320 --> 2:46:58.920 was interesting. I guess that these these calls from the 2:46:59.000 --> 2:47:02.520 rights that the Lifeboats Association was somehow doing wrong in 2:47:02.680 --> 2:47:05.600 looking after migrant boats, I mean, the small boats, really 2:47:05.680 --> 2:47:09.600 vulnerable dinghies that were being sailed across the Channel. I 2:47:09.680 --> 2:47:16.120 just think the it gained absolutely no traction because it 2:47:16.280 --> 2:47:20.279 simply didn't speak to people's public perception or or deeply 2:47:20.280 --> 2:47:22.760 held perceptions if you like, of the role of this association. 2:47:23.440 --> 2:47:27.480 Yeah, and there's been a really significant campaign to dehumanize 2:47:28.280 --> 2:47:32.000 migrants in the UK even perhaps to a degree greater 2:47:32.120 --> 2:47:35.120 than we've seen in much of the US, although there's 2:47:35.640 --> 2:47:39.039 complete bipartisan consensus that we should criminalize people coming here 2:47:39.160 --> 2:47:42.480 in the United States too. And I spent people will 2:47:42.480 --> 2:47:45.280 have heard that I spent the last week driving along 2:47:45.400 --> 2:47:49.280 the border seeing little children forced to be held in 2:47:49.320 --> 2:47:52.320 the desert with no shade and no water. It's also 2:47:52.400 --> 2:47:55.200 very brutal here. But I think it says something that 2:47:55.200 --> 2:47:58.600 that's an institution that looks like that was a line 2:47:58.640 --> 2:48:01.480 that wasn't cross I guess by the right, and this 2:48:01.560 --> 2:48:06.240 demonization of migrants. So we're having established that this is 2:48:06.280 --> 2:48:09.840 a very cherished and important institution. Can we talk about 2:48:09.879 --> 2:48:13.040 how mutual aid is something that because I think it 2:48:13.320 --> 2:48:17.720 can seem understandably to people who have been educated in 2:48:18.560 --> 2:48:22.480 the sort of neoliberal consensus, that certainly it is very 2:48:22.480 --> 2:48:25.480 common in schools and universities in both of our countries. 2:48:26.240 --> 2:48:28.279 How this has in fact been like part of human 2:48:28.360 --> 2:48:30.320 history for as long as as people have been living 2:48:30.360 --> 2:48:34.200 in societies, and how it's a natural human response to 2:48:34.560 --> 2:48:35.400 want to do this. 2:48:36.840 --> 2:48:37.200 Yeah. 2:48:37.600 --> 2:48:39.880 So I mean, I think this takes us back to 2:48:40.360 --> 2:48:46.120 Kropotkins theorization, if you like, of mutual aid. So I 2:48:46.160 --> 2:48:48.640 mean talking about sort of you know, our neoliberal culture. 2:48:48.640 --> 2:48:51.920 I mean, Cropotkin's writing in a time where you have 2:48:52.040 --> 2:48:58.320 a similar kind of individualism being stoked, and it's being 2:48:58.360 --> 2:49:03.320 stoked particularly through a notion of of social Darwinism. So 2:49:03.560 --> 2:49:07.680 the idea that fitness is linked to or that the 2:49:07.720 --> 2:49:12.720 survival is linked to individual fitness, and that competition is 2:49:12.760 --> 2:49:16.119 the is the basic rule of life, and that therefore 2:49:16.160 --> 2:49:21.200 not only individuals, but states as well should be you know, 2:49:21.280 --> 2:49:25.680 pitting themselves against each other in order to gain advantage 2:49:25.680 --> 2:49:29.920 and to secure their own well being. And Kropotkin wanted 2:49:29.920 --> 2:49:32.640 to sort of challenge this argument, and so the way 2:49:32.680 --> 2:49:36.840 he did it was to say two things. One that 2:49:36.840 --> 2:49:39.920 that biological fitness is not linked to competition. It's actually 2:49:39.920 --> 2:49:44.760 linked to cooperation. So individuals in any species cannot survive 2:49:44.840 --> 2:49:49.280 unless they have support from from from others in their species. 2:49:49.280 --> 2:49:52.160 I mean, it's simply, you know, that's that's how biology works. 2:49:52.560 --> 2:49:57.440 So whatever advantage that individuals might might you know, acquire, 2:49:58.280 --> 2:50:00.760 actually their well being depends on the co operation or 2:50:00.800 --> 2:50:04.000 the collective practices that they have with others. So he 2:50:04.080 --> 2:50:07.039 recognized that there was interspecies competition, but he said, basically 2:50:07.080 --> 2:50:11.520 within species survivalist based in cooperation. And from that he 2:50:11.640 --> 2:50:15.160 then said, you know, one of the things that we 2:50:15.200 --> 2:50:18.360 can learn from this, from this sort of re under 2:50:18.480 --> 2:50:22.520 or from this sort of review of social Darwinism, is 2:50:23.200 --> 2:50:29.120 to think about how we can encourage cooperation as a 2:50:29.160 --> 2:50:32.800 moral value. And he said, you know, the way then 2:50:32.840 --> 2:50:36.680 we because that's a good thing. Surely it's it's you know, 2:50:36.760 --> 2:50:40.440 if we're biologically attuned to cooperate, then why don't we 2:50:40.480 --> 2:50:43.360 make this a principle of our lives. And he said 2:50:43.360 --> 2:50:45.080 that the way that we should do this is by 2:50:47.320 --> 2:50:50.720 configuring our social arrangements or our environments, if you like, 2:50:50.800 --> 2:50:55.000 in ways that enabled us to see that we were 2:50:57.280 --> 2:51:00.240 we were affected by the same sorts of problem, that 2:51:00.280 --> 2:51:02.879 we had affinities with each other, that there was a 2:51:02.920 --> 2:51:06.119 basic relationship that we had with each other, not only 2:51:06.160 --> 2:51:09.640 with family members and friends, but with strangers too, and 2:51:09.680 --> 2:51:12.400 that once we could understand that, then actually we could 2:51:12.440 --> 2:51:15.879 sort of organize our social lives in ways that were 2:51:15.959 --> 2:51:19.000 supportive of others when they were in positions of need 2:51:19.080 --> 2:51:20.720 or when they're in situations of need. 2:51:21.200 --> 2:51:24.800 Yeah, so how would one go about doing that? It 2:51:24.840 --> 2:51:29.240 can seem look where I live. Thousands of people live 2:51:29.280 --> 2:51:31.160 on the street, right and I can watch people every 2:51:31.200 --> 2:51:33.000 day walk past people who just need a little bit 2:51:33.040 --> 2:51:34.760 of help and not give it to them, and it 2:51:34.760 --> 2:51:38.280 can be very disheartening. And so how do we begin 2:51:38.360 --> 2:51:41.879 to organize in a way that recognizes our sort of 2:51:41.920 --> 2:51:42.760 mutual dependence. 2:51:44.680 --> 2:51:46.960 So, I mean, part of the arguments, I think is 2:51:47.000 --> 2:51:52.480 that people will fill the gaps when they see that 2:51:52.520 --> 2:51:54.959 others are in need. And that's exactly what the Lifeboat 2:51:54.959 --> 2:51:58.080 Association does, and that's exactly what happened during the pandemic 2:51:58.120 --> 2:52:02.000 for example. So you know, not surprisingly one of the 2:52:02.000 --> 2:52:04.800 things that happened in the first weeks of the pandemic 2:52:04.879 --> 2:52:07.240 was the mushrooming of groups that call themselves mutual aid 2:52:07.240 --> 2:52:10.600 societies mutual aid associations, and they were networked. I mean, 2:52:10.640 --> 2:52:12.840 somebody set up a website so that you know, people 2:52:12.840 --> 2:52:15.640 could see exactly where these groups were. They were networked 2:52:15.640 --> 2:52:17.800 in the UK. I think there were some relationships that 2:52:17.840 --> 2:52:21.200 were even transatlantic. So part of the argument is that 2:52:21.240 --> 2:52:23.520 you don't have to plan this, and in fact, mutual 2:52:23.560 --> 2:52:25.959 aid is an unplanned is best thought of as an 2:52:26.040 --> 2:52:29.760 unplanned response. But I guess the other thing is all 2:52:29.800 --> 2:52:33.000 the question that mutual aid begs is that, you know, 2:52:33.080 --> 2:52:36.760 if people get together in times to fill the gaps, 2:52:36.879 --> 2:52:39.560 if you liked to provide support for people who were 2:52:39.560 --> 2:52:43.280 in need, then how do they sustain those organizations over 2:52:43.360 --> 2:52:47.720 periods of time without suffering burnout and all the rest 2:52:47.720 --> 2:52:51.520 of it. And I think that really then depends on. 2:52:52.920 --> 2:52:53.959 You know, sort of. 2:52:54.080 --> 2:52:56.440 Establishing I guess, I mean, you know, that's again why 2:52:56.480 --> 2:52:59.879 we should take some heart. I think from the Lifeboat Association, 2:53:00.040 --> 2:53:02.400 it's been going a long time. It is possible to 2:53:02.440 --> 2:53:05.960 do these things, but it's difficult, and it does require 2:53:06.520 --> 2:53:09.400 that you learn how to cooperate with people who you 2:53:09.480 --> 2:53:11.959 might not otherwise work with, you might not otherwise think 2:53:12.040 --> 2:53:15.440 you have anything in common with, But where you find 2:53:15.440 --> 2:53:19.960 that common ground in order to undertake practical activities in 2:53:20.120 --> 2:53:21.520 collaboration with each other? 2:53:22.080 --> 2:53:25.560 Yeah, I think that's very question. I'm always like in 2:53:25.600 --> 2:53:28.080 twenty eighteen, I don't know if you were familiar with 2:53:28.080 --> 2:53:30.520 it's been in the southern border of the United States. 2:53:30.560 --> 2:53:32.440 We had a large group of migrants coming here from 2:53:32.520 --> 2:53:36.040 Central America who became like a sort of talking point 2:53:36.040 --> 2:53:38.640 in the mid terms through no fault of their own, 2:53:38.879 --> 2:53:40.680 and they were held at the US border and then 2:53:40.720 --> 2:53:43.560 tear gas from the sort of Tommy Hilfiger gist out 2:53:43.560 --> 2:53:47.520 store in San Diego. And I was really impressed with 2:53:47.560 --> 2:53:49.600 Like I was there trying to help with my friends 2:53:50.040 --> 2:53:52.560 and sort of trying to do anarchist things, but also 2:53:53.200 --> 2:53:56.600 there were people who were older ladies from churches and 2:53:56.640 --> 2:54:00.600 people from mosques and people from synagogues and very much 2:54:01.040 --> 2:54:03.440 willing to work together, and you know, like you know, 2:54:03.520 --> 2:54:05.520 we'd go to cost go together and spend thousands of 2:54:05.560 --> 2:54:08.920 thousands on water and nappies for babies and such. But 2:54:09.560 --> 2:54:12.879 I think getting past that initial sort of I'm not 2:54:12.920 --> 2:54:15.440 a person who works for people who go to church too, 2:54:15.480 --> 2:54:16.920 like what this person wants to help and so do 2:54:17.000 --> 2:54:21.440 I was what allowed that to happen? Can you preps 2:54:21.440 --> 2:54:25.720 think of other examples that people I'm interested in things 2:54:25.760 --> 2:54:27.640 like the lifeboats, which people might not see through the 2:54:27.720 --> 2:54:31.400 lens of mutual aid because there's such established institutions that 2:54:31.400 --> 2:54:33.240 they there's an assumption. I think a lot of people 2:54:33.240 --> 2:54:35.560 probably think that there's some kind of state involvement with 2:54:35.600 --> 2:54:39.080 the lifeboats, right, and the same with lots of sort 2:54:39.120 --> 2:54:42.640 of the societies that exist to prevent cruelty to animals 2:54:42.680 --> 2:54:44.800 and children and that kind of thing, right, those aren't 2:54:44.800 --> 2:54:47.560 state funded either in the UK. Can you think of 2:54:47.600 --> 2:54:49.880 other examples of mutual aid that people might have sort 2:54:49.879 --> 2:54:53.320 of not realized are entirely driven by society and not 2:54:53.320 --> 2:54:53.680 the state. 2:54:54.920 --> 2:54:55.440 Well, I suppose. 2:54:55.640 --> 2:54:58.360 I mean, the best or one of the best examples 2:54:58.640 --> 2:55:01.520 recently in the US context is the establishment of the 2:55:01.520 --> 2:55:06.160 Common Ground Collective after Hurricane Katrina. So the aid that 2:55:06.200 --> 2:55:09.359 first went into the people who were stricken by Katrina 2:55:09.680 --> 2:55:12.240 was not provided by the state. In fact, you know, 2:55:12.360 --> 2:55:15.640 that came a lot later, but it was provided by 2:55:15.680 --> 2:55:18.360 people who, you know, by by groups of people who 2:55:19.400 --> 2:55:22.000 who thought that they, you know, they could offer medical 2:55:22.000 --> 2:55:26.800 support or set up systems of you or help set 2:55:26.879 --> 2:55:31.160 up systems of of of basic supply and rescue. And 2:55:31.400 --> 2:55:34.120 and that's exactly what happened, and the Common Ground Collective 2:55:34.200 --> 2:55:36.480 was established as a result of it. I mean, you 2:55:36.560 --> 2:55:39.800 find this sort of thing, I mean, I mean, it's 2:55:39.840 --> 2:55:44.720 it's fairly usual in times of you know, sudden emergency 2:55:44.720 --> 2:55:47.760 and crisis that actually the people who who do the 2:55:47.879 --> 2:55:52.200 hands on work of actually taking people off off you know, 2:55:52.440 --> 2:55:55.720 the how the roofs of flooded houses and all the 2:55:55.720 --> 2:55:59.720 rest of it. These are local people typically, they're not 2:56:00.440 --> 2:56:03.480 the agencies who often you know, take a lot of 2:56:03.480 --> 2:56:05.800 time to get there. I mean the other examples, I 2:56:05.800 --> 2:56:10.320 think in the American context again which are often rooted 2:56:10.320 --> 2:56:15.480 around church groups, but certainly a lot of black people's 2:56:15.560 --> 2:56:18.280 organizations which you know, who couldn't you know, where they 2:56:18.320 --> 2:56:24.640 couldn't access support services set up mutual aid societies because 2:56:24.680 --> 2:56:27.080 that was the if you like, the only alternative that 2:56:27.120 --> 2:56:30.600 they would have in order to provide you know, sort 2:56:30.640 --> 2:56:35.720 of clubs for their kids and breakfast clubs and any 2:56:35.800 --> 2:56:36.920 kind of welfare at all. 2:56:37.879 --> 2:56:38.560 That that was. 2:56:38.520 --> 2:56:40.680 The that was the root of it. The other example, 2:56:40.720 --> 2:56:42.840 I mean Kropotkin looks at, I mean these are nineteenth 2:56:42.840 --> 2:56:45.880 cent and nineteenth center example, which is sort of something 2:56:45.879 --> 2:56:51.360 that's later absorbed by the state. Are the the the 2:56:51.680 --> 2:56:56.080 the the insurance arrangements that were that were made by 2:56:57.360 --> 2:57:01.879 miners to look after are those who were injured down 2:57:01.920 --> 2:57:04.320 the mines and their families in the event of their death. 2:57:05.200 --> 2:57:09.480 So you know, they were setting up their own systems 2:57:09.480 --> 2:57:13.000 of contribution to ensure that those families would be provided 2:57:13.040 --> 2:57:15.680 for if the worst came to the worst. And you know, 2:57:15.720 --> 2:57:17.640 eventually this gets taken up by the station and it's 2:57:17.640 --> 2:57:21.080 sold back to you as national insurance. That these systems 2:57:21.120 --> 2:57:25.320 are you know, they're established essentially by local people for 2:57:25.400 --> 2:57:26.280 their own benefits. 2:57:26.760 --> 2:57:29.040 Yeah, perhaps we ought to talk about that because there's 2:57:29.040 --> 2:57:32.640 a lot of these spontaneous societal things, especially in the UK, 2:57:32.720 --> 2:57:35.400 that are corrupted by the state and then sold back 2:57:35.400 --> 2:57:38.800 to us and then gradually stripped away of the very 2:57:39.160 --> 2:57:41.039 essence of what they're supposed to be, at the National 2:57:41.080 --> 2:57:44.800 Health Service being another example. Can you talk about the 2:57:44.959 --> 2:57:48.240 danger of that kind of state maybe dangers who are 2:57:48.280 --> 2:57:51.000 on word, But there can be a state capture of 2:57:51.080 --> 2:57:56.439 mutual aid efforts which can sometimes one might argue, always 2:57:56.640 --> 2:57:58.880 like strip them of the essence of what they are. 2:57:59.240 --> 2:58:00.160 Is that fair to say? 2:58:01.760 --> 2:58:04.560 Well, it certainly changes this. Well, I mean so so 2:58:04.640 --> 2:58:09.160 state welfare changes the relationships that that people have to 2:58:09.360 --> 2:58:14.560 those institutions, and and so in one sense it's it 2:58:14.640 --> 2:58:18.120 alleviates the burden of of of running those institutions. But 2:58:18.240 --> 2:58:21.280 in the on the other hand, it it does two things. 2:58:21.280 --> 2:58:24.440 I think one is that it it tends to encourage 2:58:24.480 --> 2:58:29.879 the idea that looking after each other is somebody else's responsibility. 2:58:30.160 --> 2:58:33.600 So actually it diminishes or it disincentivizes the sort of 2:58:33.640 --> 2:58:42.160 the that that stimulus to help each other directly. So 2:58:42.320 --> 2:58:44.600 mutual aid is a kind of direct action, if you like. 2:58:45.640 --> 2:58:49.640 Whereas you know, once we give these these processes over 2:58:49.720 --> 2:58:52.760 to the state, then actually we start to see people 2:58:52.800 --> 2:58:55.680 in different in different ways. So we do start to 2:58:55.959 --> 2:58:59.760 get the language of scrounging or of you know, idle, 2:58:59.800 --> 2:59:04.400 the es, deserving, undeserving poor. All of those things come 2:59:04.440 --> 2:59:06.640 from the idea that we're paying into an institution and 2:59:06.720 --> 2:59:11.400 not necessarily being guaranteeed that we're getting value for money. 2:59:11.440 --> 2:59:14.680 So we start to see the institution slightly differently. And 2:59:14.760 --> 2:59:20.000 I think the other thing is that the I mean 2:59:20.040 --> 2:59:22.920 the worry I guess of of that sort of co 2:59:23.000 --> 2:59:27.560 optation is that it's it conceals the other things that 2:59:27.320 --> 2:59:30.560 the state does. So welfare is the last thing, if 2:59:30.600 --> 2:59:34.760 you like, that that states assume as a responsibility, and 2:59:34.800 --> 2:59:38.760 it and it provides a gloss, if you like, on 2:59:38.840 --> 2:59:43.960 the law and order function that the state serves. Uh 2:59:44.280 --> 2:59:47.440 and and somehow sort of makes the state look a 2:59:47.440 --> 2:59:51.360 bit friendlier than perhaps we should think it is. And 2:59:51.520 --> 2:59:53.920 I mean this, you know, when the I suppose that 2:59:54.000 --> 2:59:55.400 I mean the term that was used in the in 2:59:55.400 --> 2:59:58.000 the British context. In the in the the immediate post 2:59:58.000 --> 3:00:00.320 war period was not the welfare state, it was the 3:00:00.360 --> 3:00:03.920 warfare state, because the idea was that the introduction of welfare, 3:00:05.000 --> 3:00:08.080 which starts really after the after the Second World War, 3:00:08.680 --> 3:00:13.320 concealed the violence that the state was otherwise perpetuating elsewhere. 3:00:13.879 --> 3:00:16.920 Yeah, I think that's very It's something we should consider 3:00:17.000 --> 3:00:18.600 very strongly when we're looking at these things. 3:00:18.680 --> 3:00:18.800 Right. 3:00:18.840 --> 3:00:22.400 I think it also strips the like the person to 3:00:22.480 --> 3:00:25.760 person aspect of mutual aid from mutual aid, like the 3:00:27.160 --> 3:00:30.760 certainly the most common sort of mutual aid responses I've 3:00:30.800 --> 3:00:34.800 been part of, to health crises and then to along 3:00:34.840 --> 3:00:35.280 the border. 3:00:35.360 --> 3:00:37.320 And part of. 3:00:37.160 --> 3:00:40.879 What makes that very meaningful is people saying, like, you know, 3:00:40.959 --> 3:00:43.160 this is a this is a line between two states, 3:00:43.160 --> 3:00:46.280 but it's not a line between two people or two communities. Right, 3:00:46.280 --> 3:00:49.000 And you are welcome because I am of this community 3:00:49.000 --> 3:00:51.200 and I want you to come here, which you do 3:00:51.240 --> 3:00:54.000 not get when you know there's a man in green 3:00:54.040 --> 3:00:57.879 combat pants throwing MRIs from the back of a pickup truck, like. 3:00:57.840 --> 3:00:59.119 That doesn't that's right? 3:00:59.480 --> 3:01:01.720 And equally I suppose that, I mean, that's the other thing. 3:01:01.760 --> 3:01:03.280 I mean that's that's kind of what I was trying 3:01:03.320 --> 3:01:05.200 to get at that. You know, once you have a 3:01:05.480 --> 3:01:08.800 once you have state welfare, you have concepts of access 3:01:08.840 --> 3:01:12.560 through citizenship, and that reinforces the idea that there's a 3:01:12.600 --> 3:01:16.360 there's a right of access, and then there's a there's 3:01:16.360 --> 3:01:20.320 an exclusion that necessarily follows from that, and so you know, 3:01:20.360 --> 3:01:25.800 the relationship becomes much more transactional rather than which is 3:01:25.840 --> 3:01:28.640 the way that the mutual aid is couched in in 3:01:28.640 --> 3:01:33.040 the anarchist lexicon. You know, it's it's it's it's driven 3:01:33.120 --> 3:01:40.000 by by altruism and and and giving without without the 3:01:40.080 --> 3:01:41.200 expectation of reward. 3:01:41.920 --> 3:01:44.400 Yes, yeah, I think that's very important. It doesn't imply 3:01:44.480 --> 3:01:46.959 a power or an expectation of sort of reciprocity. 3:01:47.040 --> 3:01:49.000 It's it. 3:01:50.400 --> 3:01:54.440 I forget exactly where I read this. Terrible at these things, 3:01:54.440 --> 3:01:57.440 but like I guess you don't do it in a 3:01:57.440 --> 3:02:00.120 selfish sense. But it benefits you as well as the 3:02:00.200 --> 3:02:03.120 person you are giving too in because those people are 3:02:03.120 --> 3:02:04.000 part of your community. 3:02:04.040 --> 3:02:04.480 Is that fair? 3:02:04.520 --> 3:02:08.400 And you shouldn't be complete if people are suffering, like 3:02:08.520 --> 3:02:09.160 right next to you. 3:02:09.520 --> 3:02:10.119 Yes, So I. 3:02:10.080 --> 3:02:12.840 Suppose there's a sort of there's a there's an argument 3:02:12.879 --> 3:02:15.440 to say that, I mean that that comes from the 3:02:15.640 --> 3:02:22.160 from the notion of of of recasting what it is 3:02:22.680 --> 3:02:26.680 to be an individual. So you know, you're you're your 3:02:26.760 --> 3:02:29.800 personal enrichment actually relies on the relationships that you can 3:02:29.800 --> 3:02:33.360 cultivate with other people, so you know, the the quality 3:02:33.400 --> 3:02:36.160 of those relationships is actually something that of course benefits you. 3:02:36.240 --> 3:02:38.440 But I think the I mean, one of the things 3:02:38.560 --> 3:02:42.360 what can tells this story about a child drowning in 3:02:42.400 --> 3:02:45.480 a river, and he imagines three people standing on the 3:02:45.560 --> 3:02:49.800 river bank. One of them is a religious believer, the 3:02:49.840 --> 3:02:53.400 second one is he calls an ordinary bourgeois a mutilitarian, 3:02:53.720 --> 3:02:55.680 and the third one he doesn't describe at all. And 3:02:55.720 --> 3:02:57.959 he says, you know what what happens when they see 3:02:57.959 --> 3:02:59.360 this child in the river. And he says, well, the 3:02:59.360 --> 3:03:02.640 religious person is wondering, you know, I should go and 3:03:02.680 --> 3:03:05.600 save the child because I'll reap my reward in heaven. 3:03:06.360 --> 3:03:09.120 And the utilitarian is thinking, you know, if I if 3:03:09.160 --> 3:03:11.200 I save this child, then I'm going to feel really 3:03:11.240 --> 3:03:13.480 good about myself, and so therefore I should do it. 3:03:13.800 --> 3:03:15.959 And while they're while they're sort of going through that 3:03:16.040 --> 3:03:18.800 process of reasoning, the third person has just jumped in 3:03:19.000 --> 3:03:22.520 and saved the child, and that's mutual aid. 3:03:23.400 --> 3:03:25.680 Yeah, yes, I think that's very good. Yeah, it comes 3:03:25.760 --> 3:03:29.040 from Yeah, it doesn't need to be like overly theorized, 3:03:29.040 --> 3:03:31.720 I suppose, yeah, and it really doesn't, like I've never 3:03:32.320 --> 3:03:34.640 I think the construction of mutual aid is important because 3:03:34.640 --> 3:03:36.720 it allows us to join the dots across the world 3:03:36.720 --> 3:03:39.840 and across time and to see the relationship with the state. 3:03:39.959 --> 3:03:42.680 But it doesn't need you don't need to have read 3:03:42.760 --> 3:03:47.120 Crapotkin to like, I know a big it's sprung up 3:03:47.160 --> 3:03:49.920 here a lot in the pandemic too, right, like free shops, 3:03:50.040 --> 3:03:53.879 and certainly for older people or people who are compromised. 3:03:54.480 --> 3:03:59.120 I remember breaking thousands of loaves of bread from the 3:03:59.400 --> 3:04:01.360 pizza shop down the street wasn't able to open, so 3:04:01.360 --> 3:04:02.840 they would bring me flower and I would make bread 3:04:02.840 --> 3:04:05.080 and we would take it to people, and things like 3:04:05.120 --> 3:04:08.480 that were very spontaneous and didn't particularly need like theorizing 3:04:08.520 --> 3:04:12.200 in terms of Popkin, But sadly they sort of we 3:04:12.280 --> 3:04:15.120 lost a lot of that with the you know, with 3:04:15.200 --> 3:04:18.199 the reduction in the severity of the pandemic, I guess, 3:04:18.200 --> 3:04:20.879 and I think it's important to remember that that was 3:04:20.920 --> 3:04:23.000 a natural response on one that we should cultivate. 3:04:24.200 --> 3:04:26.480 Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, I mean 3:04:26.480 --> 3:04:28.400 there were all sorts of things that were going on here. 3:04:28.440 --> 3:04:30.360 I mean there were people who were sewing up scrubs 3:04:30.360 --> 3:04:35.680 for health workers, delivering lunches to health workers, you know, 3:04:35.720 --> 3:04:38.000 as well as just you know, the checking on the neighbors, 3:04:38.040 --> 3:04:42.440 making sure that people were okay. So yeah, I mean 3:04:42.480 --> 3:04:45.959 it took you know, multiple different forms, and yeah, I 3:04:45.959 --> 3:04:48.400 mean it is difficult because you know, once real life 3:04:48.760 --> 3:04:52.039 as it were sort of returned and the and the 3:04:52.080 --> 3:04:56.800 lockdowns were relaxed, you know, people have all kinds of 3:04:56.879 --> 3:05:00.720 other demands on their time and and we sort of 3:05:00.760 --> 3:05:03.960 then get used to thinking that, you know, somebody else 3:05:04.040 --> 3:05:06.120 is going to pick up the pieces now. 3:05:06.600 --> 3:05:10.720 Yeah, yeah, I do think that that's part of that 3:05:10.800 --> 3:05:15.720 lockdown nostalgia, which is bizarrely already occurring three years down 3:05:15.760 --> 3:05:17.520 the line. But people look back and think, oh, well, 3:05:17.520 --> 3:05:20.600 it wasn't that bad, and obviously thousands of people died 3:05:20.640 --> 3:05:20.959 that we. 3:05:20.959 --> 3:05:21.960 Shouldn't overlook that. 3:05:22.000 --> 3:05:24.520 But part of what people are looking back on is 3:05:24.520 --> 3:05:27.039 that sense of community, which I think so many of 3:05:27.120 --> 3:05:29.880 us lack. The alienation is very real for a lot 3:05:29.879 --> 3:05:32.879 of us, and so those mutual aid groups or watchapp 3:05:32.920 --> 3:05:35.279 groups and things gave people a real sense of belonging. 3:05:35.360 --> 3:05:36.160 I think that's the same. 3:05:36.280 --> 3:05:38.000 A lot of people felt that way in twenty twenty, 3:05:38.040 --> 3:05:41.280 for obviously there was an uprising in the United States 3:05:41.280 --> 3:05:43.800 which gave people a sense of purpose, which maybe they 3:05:43.879 --> 3:05:48.440 they're not feeling anymore. If people are interested in I 3:05:48.440 --> 3:05:50.680 guess there's learning and there's doing, and that they can 3:05:50.720 --> 3:05:52.600 be distinct or they can be done at the same time, 3:05:52.800 --> 3:05:55.440 and we can learn by doing. And where would people 3:05:55.480 --> 3:05:57.960 start they want to start their reading? Are their texts 3:05:58.000 --> 3:06:00.360 that you'd recommend, that you know, are not the size 3:06:00.360 --> 3:06:02.880 of a breeze block that people might find approachable? 3:06:05.160 --> 3:06:08.160 Well, you can get I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm 3:06:08.320 --> 3:06:11.720 I mean Potkin's book Mutual Aid is quite long. I mean, 3:06:11.720 --> 3:06:14.600 it's the last two chapters really that are the ones 3:06:14.600 --> 3:06:18.000 to read, and that's freely available online. It's I mean, 3:06:18.000 --> 3:06:20.120 it's a very nineteenth century kind of argument. 3:06:20.200 --> 3:06:20.440 I mean. 3:06:20.720 --> 3:06:23.800 The other I mean, the other one that I really 3:06:23.840 --> 3:06:27.640 like is Cindy Milstein's Anarchism and Its Aspirations, and that's short, 3:06:27.720 --> 3:06:30.840 it's very accessible, and she has this discussion of mutual 3:06:30.879 --> 3:06:33.120 Aid where she she links it to what she calls 3:06:33.160 --> 3:06:37.680 the ethical compass, And I think that speaks really nicely 3:06:37.760 --> 3:06:42.080 to the to the you know, the principles and the sentiments, 3:06:42.120 --> 3:06:44.320 if you like, of mutual aid, that it is this 3:06:44.400 --> 3:06:47.760 kind of thick relationship that people cultivate but not necessarily 3:06:47.800 --> 3:06:53.360 a not necessarily with a view to living in sort 3:06:53.360 --> 3:06:58.720 of permanently in community with each other, but actually to 3:07:00.120 --> 3:07:02.640 change the dynamics of the of the kind of the 3:07:02.680 --> 3:07:07.960 cities we live in and the detachments that we not 3:07:08.040 --> 3:07:11.160 only have but also sometimes kind of value. We don't 3:07:11.160 --> 3:07:13.200 necessarily want to live in each other's pockets. But actually 3:07:13.240 --> 3:07:15.160 that doesn't mean to say we can't practice much alive 3:07:15.240 --> 3:07:15.680 with each other. 3:07:16.320 --> 3:07:19.440 Yeah, I think that'd be a great, great place for 3:07:19.440 --> 3:07:21.720 people to start if they want to read a tiny 3:07:21.760 --> 3:07:22.640 bio of Cropotkin. 3:07:22.720 --> 3:07:26.760 Dog Section Press has an excellent exit. 3:07:27.200 --> 3:07:29.200 I'm a big fan of their great Anarchist book. I 3:07:29.240 --> 3:07:33.400 think it's very approachable for Yeah. 3:07:32.720 --> 3:07:36.600 They're also they're also available online, Yes they are, yeah, Yeah, 3:07:36.640 --> 3:07:37.560 and they're illustrated. 3:07:38.080 --> 3:07:40.400 Yeah, they're very beautifully illustrated. 3:07:41.120 --> 3:07:42.600 It's been a good one for me to assign to 3:07:42.680 --> 3:07:48.040 students and have them approach anarchism from a non prejudice perspective, 3:07:48.080 --> 3:07:50.720 I suppose, which is which can be hard. Like I 3:07:50.800 --> 3:07:53.240 always remember coming to the US for the first time 3:07:53.240 --> 3:07:55.400 when I was twenty one, and like, I don't think 3:07:55.400 --> 3:07:57.520 I presented in a way that was particularly affable to 3:07:58.720 --> 3:08:03.440 the Transport Security Administration. But I, what are you doing here? 3:08:03.720 --> 3:08:06.480 I'm pH d student. What are you studying political violence 3:08:06.480 --> 3:08:11.920 and the anarchist unions? I was immediately sent to the 3:08:11.920 --> 3:08:16.000 little room that you go to UH and UH. I 3:08:16.000 --> 3:08:18.480 had some more questions to answer. But I think it's 3:08:18.600 --> 3:08:21.320 it's really important to present anarchism. I think through the 3:08:21.400 --> 3:08:23.800 lens of mut because I think so often it's viewed 3:08:23.800 --> 3:08:26.560 through the lens of like a predilection for chaos and violence, 3:08:26.920 --> 3:08:29.680 which is the opposite of what you're doing when you 3:08:30.280 --> 3:08:33.080 know you're giving someone a blanket or something like it's 3:08:34.720 --> 3:08:37.480 And so I think if people listening will at least 3:08:37.480 --> 3:08:39.360 be familiar with the concept of anarchism and mutual aid 3:08:39.400 --> 3:08:41.360 and not see it in that prejudicial way. But I 3:08:41.400 --> 3:08:43.880 think if we can present it to other people, you know, 3:08:43.959 --> 3:08:46.440 you're doing anarchism. Everyone was doing getting to start the 3:08:46.480 --> 3:08:49.400 pandemic when they were sewing masks. Like you say or home, 3:08:49.440 --> 3:08:50.640 bring hand sanitizer. 3:08:51.120 --> 3:08:53.800 Yeah, and I think that's I think that's really important 3:08:53.840 --> 3:08:59.880 actually to to the to the argument that the mutually 3:09:01.120 --> 3:09:04.640 is for everyone, So you know, you're not Anarchists are 3:09:04.640 --> 3:09:06.840 not trying to change people's heads or get them to 3:09:06.920 --> 3:09:09.800 think in particular ways when they talk about mutual aid. 3:09:10.640 --> 3:09:15.920 What they're doing is tapping into a propensity that exists 3:09:16.240 --> 3:09:18.800 within all of us. And what anarchists are saying is 3:09:18.840 --> 3:09:23.080 that if you, you know, if you push organizations in 3:09:23.160 --> 3:09:25.879 particular directions and actually you've got a better way or 3:09:25.879 --> 3:09:29.840 a better means of a better sort of environment within 3:09:29.920 --> 3:09:35.199 which you can sustain those practices. But mutual aid itself 3:09:35.280 --> 3:09:38.240 is not about being an anarchist. It's about being a 3:09:38.280 --> 3:09:38.840 human being. 3:09:39.520 --> 3:09:40.680 Yeah. 3:09:39.920 --> 3:09:42.680 I wonder so if people want to sort of build 3:09:43.240 --> 3:09:45.200 ways of taking care of each other without the state 3:09:45.680 --> 3:09:48.520 where they are, maybe they can see a problem, right 3:09:48.520 --> 3:09:50.160 that hasn't been addressed by the state, like one of 3:09:50.160 --> 3:09:52.600 those holes that you spoke about, or a problem that 3:09:52.640 --> 3:09:56.320 the state is addressing inadequately or in an undesirable way. 3:09:56.800 --> 3:09:58.480 How would they go about, Like, do you have advice 3:09:58.560 --> 3:10:01.119 people looking to start? It can be especially if you're 3:10:01.160 --> 3:10:03.600 not on social media, which I know we've had people email, 3:10:03.680 --> 3:10:06.200 but like I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, and how 3:10:06.200 --> 3:10:08.080 do I organize mutual aid? So do you have any 3:10:08.120 --> 3:10:09.000 suggestions for that? 3:10:09.480 --> 3:10:12.240 Yeah, so, I mean there are I mean there are 3:10:12.360 --> 3:10:15.680 normally sort of in any I mean certainly where I live, 3:10:15.720 --> 3:10:17.480 which is a small market town. I mean there is 3:10:17.520 --> 3:10:18.600 a community center there. 3:10:18.800 --> 3:10:19.280 I mean there are. 3:10:19.280 --> 3:10:21.200 Churches too, but I mean there is a sort of 3:10:21.240 --> 3:10:23.160 a local civic center if you like, which has all 3:10:23.240 --> 3:10:27.760 kinds of adverts for local groups and activities. There's a 3:10:27.840 --> 3:10:30.400 I mean, we're a town of sanctuary, so we're one 3:10:30.440 --> 3:10:33.360 of the places that migrants are sent to in order 3:10:33.400 --> 3:10:38.600 to register. And the people who are involved in the 3:10:38.600 --> 3:10:41.520 town of Sanctuary, they meet them, greet them, try and 3:10:41.560 --> 3:10:45.920 give them information that's useful to them. They run English 3:10:45.959 --> 3:10:48.800 language classes, they try and get the kids into swimming pools. 3:10:48.800 --> 3:10:51.040 I mean, they're all sorts of things activities that they're doing. 3:10:51.360 --> 3:10:53.080 So I think it's a matter of sort of seeing 3:10:53.200 --> 3:10:56.720 what's there, yeah, and then sort of try. I mean 3:10:56.840 --> 3:10:59.600 often I think people don't realize the skills they have. 3:11:00.480 --> 3:11:02.240 So for example, you know, if they speak more than 3:11:02.280 --> 3:11:07.240 one language, it's often really helpful to people who are 3:11:07.320 --> 3:11:09.600 arriving in a in a foreign land or a land 3:11:09.600 --> 3:11:12.080 that they don't they're not they're not speakers of the 3:11:12.160 --> 3:11:16.640 native language, you know, to help translate, to share information, 3:11:17.120 --> 3:11:19.280 just to point people in the direction where they can 3:11:19.320 --> 3:11:21.920 get help from from other agencies. So I don't think 3:11:21.959 --> 3:11:23.800 I mean, it seems to me that you know, mutual 3:11:23.800 --> 3:11:26.960 aid is not necessarily trying to sort of say you're 3:11:27.000 --> 3:11:31.280 not going to enable people to access support services that 3:11:31.320 --> 3:11:35.119 are provided. I mean, even if they're paltry services provided 3:11:35.120 --> 3:11:36.879 by the state. What you're trying to do is to 3:11:37.040 --> 3:11:41.439 meet people's needs. And there are existing groups and associations 3:11:41.440 --> 3:11:43.879 which are which will enable you to do that. I mean, 3:11:43.879 --> 3:11:45.760 you could go if you live at the seaside, you 3:11:45.760 --> 3:11:49.240 could go down to your local lifeboat association and see 3:11:49.240 --> 3:11:51.200 if they need a volunteer to run the office. You 3:11:51.200 --> 3:11:54.080 know there are that these are the sorts of things 3:11:54.400 --> 3:11:58.280 things that keep these institutions running. That's the kind of 3:11:58.360 --> 3:11:59.040 thing that you can do. 3:11:59.520 --> 3:12:02.240 Yeah, I think that's a very good, very good suggestion 3:12:02.400 --> 3:12:04.520 for people. And we don't we don't need to yet 3:12:04.640 --> 3:12:06.680 be like turn our noses up at support for the 3:12:06.720 --> 3:12:09.760 state where what little is available. We should avail ourselves 3:12:09.800 --> 3:12:10.920 and other people who need. 3:12:10.840 --> 3:12:12.680 It and empower other people to get to Yeah. 3:12:12.879 --> 3:12:16.640 Yeah, absolutely, and certainly we can't. We can't act as 3:12:16.640 --> 3:12:18.480 if the state doesn't exist at a time where it does. 3:12:18.600 --> 3:12:20.520 It's powerful and it can hurt vulnerable people. 3:12:21.560 --> 3:12:21.800 Yeah. 3:12:21.879 --> 3:12:23.560 I think that's Is there anything else you'd like to 3:12:23.600 --> 3:12:25.680 say before we finish up on the topic of mutual aid. 3:12:28.160 --> 3:12:31.280 No, I think we've covered Yeah, I think we've we've 3:12:31.320 --> 3:12:33.360 sort of covered it. I mean, I just I guess 3:12:33.360 --> 3:12:36.400 it's a you know, mutual aid is a is The 3:12:36.640 --> 3:12:38.879 important thing for me is that mutual aid is a 3:12:39.000 --> 3:12:41.160 It's an easy thing and it's and it and it 3:12:41.200 --> 3:12:45.560 can build and that's the the it, and it can 3:12:45.600 --> 3:12:47.720 be sustained. That's the joy of it. And I think 3:12:47.800 --> 3:12:51.680 that's the brilliant thing about the example of the Lifeboat Association. Yeah, 3:12:51.680 --> 3:12:55.760 we can set up all kinds of things and run them. 3:12:56.120 --> 3:12:57.480 We don't need to be told to do it. We 3:12:57.480 --> 3:12:58.800 don't need to be told how to do it. 3:12:59.240 --> 3:12:59.480 Yeah. 3:12:59.640 --> 3:12:59.880 I mean. 3:13:00.160 --> 3:13:01.680 One of the things that always gives me like a 3:13:01.680 --> 3:13:05.560 little spark of joy for such a venomble British institution 3:13:05.680 --> 3:13:09.320 with royal in its name, is that they celebrate for 3:13:09.440 --> 3:13:14.920 p Hopkins's birthday apparently, Yeah, exactly, they'll post on all 3:13:14.959 --> 3:13:17.600 their social media like pictures of Cropopkin, like a little 3:13:17.640 --> 3:13:22.760 birthday cake and the celebrations, which yeah, I think people should, 3:13:23.480 --> 3:13:26.160 you know, take a little moment of joy to celebrate 3:13:26.200 --> 3:13:28.480 these things that we've already achieved and I guess trying 3:13:28.480 --> 3:13:30.920 and do better. Is there is there any where people 3:13:31.400 --> 3:13:33.080 can find you on the internet. I don't know if 3:13:33.120 --> 3:13:35.360 you have social media or website. 3:13:35.480 --> 3:13:39.720 Not on social media, but I mean easily you can 3:13:39.760 --> 3:13:42.720 find me at the university at Luff University. It's lo 3:13:42.959 --> 3:13:45.440 ugh b o r g h. 3:13:46.400 --> 3:13:48.240 It's one some of my colleagues have struggled with. 3:13:50.240 --> 3:13:51.080 Yeah, it's not easy. 3:13:52.520 --> 3:13:54.240 Yeah, so that's the easiest post to find me in. 3:13:54.480 --> 3:13:57.000 My contact information is there and if anyone wants to 3:13:57.000 --> 3:13:58.240 write to me, then I'm happy. 3:13:58.000 --> 3:13:58.440 To write back. 3:13:59.120 --> 3:14:01.840 Wonderful, Thank you so much, say share. 3:14:04.400 --> 3:14:04.600 Hey. 3:14:04.720 --> 3:14:07.800 We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from 3:14:07.840 --> 3:14:09.520 now until the heat death of the Universe. 3:14:10.120 --> 3:14:12.640 It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. 3:14:12.720 --> 3:14:15.360 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 3:14:15.440 --> 3:14:18.560 coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 3:14:18.560 --> 3:14:21.760 Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can 3:14:21.760 --> 3:14:24.480 find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at 3:14:24.480 --> 3:14:26.800 coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources. 3:14:26.920 --> 3:14:27.680 Thanks for listening.