Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Robert here. Before we get into it, I
Speaker 1: want to note my internet was terrible during this call.
Speaker 1: We tried to have the guest record locally, but there
Speaker 1: was kind of a technical glitch there, and Zoom glitched
Speaker 1: a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable.
Speaker 1: There are going to be like three or four points
Speaker 1: here where I pop in and just say what he
Speaker 1: was trying to say or what he said, and the
Speaker 1: Internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's
Speaker 1: actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice
Speaker 1: pops in and I read a line, it's me reading
Speaker 1: something that he said that got kind of distorted. I
Speaker 1: do apologize. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. A
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest
Speaker 1: to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode
Speaker 1: that is in the latter category about the struggle to
Speaker 1: make the United Kingdom less I don't know, in the
Speaker 1: thrall of a monarchy and an aristocratic class, and to
Speaker 1: build a more equitable society. And our guest today is
Speaker 1: somebody who is attempting to further that cause, and did
Speaker 1: so last year by attempting to huck several eggs at
Speaker 1: the current King of England, Charles the I forget the number. Patrick, Well,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Hi?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. Yeah, it was five eggs. Five
Speaker 3: eggs and he's the third king.
Speaker 4: The third king, third king.
Speaker 1: Far more than three unfortunately. Yeah, you guys have had
Speaker 1: a few. Was one of the ones you'all killed?
Speaker 4: To Charles?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was the last one.
Speaker 4: That was the last one. Well, yeah, I would say trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's start by talking about this is in a
Speaker 1: twenty about a year ago at a he was doing
Speaker 1: a they called it a walkabout, which I guess is
Speaker 1: when the king shows up in a city in the video.
Speaker 4: I watched the video of this and like, there's.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes,
Speaker 1: and some ladies got a massive sword.
Speaker 4: Like a a sword of.
Speaker 1: The size that I know for a fact that man
Speaker 1: cannot lift above his head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. He comes out of his little car
Speaker 3: and I know, all the little trumpets go and everyone starts,
Speaker 3: you know, waving their flags on queue and going like, look,
Speaker 3: there he is. There is some pretty unhinged to be honest,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's quite embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's like the American chauvinist in me that
Speaker 1: like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy.
Speaker 1: But I'm just finished reading an article about Dianne Feinstein
Speaker 1: where the journalist interviewing her was like, so you've missed
Speaker 1: a bunch of votes over the last three months, and
Speaker 1: she's like, no.
Speaker 4: I haven't. I've been working the whole time.
Speaker 1: So I guess we're all kind of enthrall to the
Speaker 1: corpses of of our past.
Speaker 3: It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem.
Speaker 1: So you decide to show up when you kind of
Speaker 1: find out that the king is going to be showing
Speaker 1: up here, and what kind of leads you to decide,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some eggs in my pocket
Speaker 1: and take my shot.
Speaker 3: So I actually only found out that he was coming
Speaker 3: to York about three days with a megaphone and you know,
Speaker 3: shout some cause obviously the queen had died about a
Speaker 3: month or so before, and during the funeral processions there
Speaker 3: was you know, several people were arrested for someone shouted
Speaker 3: at you know, Prince Andrew, you know, in Scotland's they
Speaker 3: were like, oh, you're a sick old man, and they did,
Speaker 3: and that was probably my my inspiration. But then on
Speaker 3: the morning when he came to York, my megaphone was
Speaker 3: just like busted. So I was just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna gonna go get some eggs then.
Speaker 4: And white eggs.
Speaker 1: What kind of led to that decision?
Speaker 3: Man? Everyone asked that. Yeah, I guess like I was
Speaker 3: into the assumption that we all just knew that you
Speaker 3: throw eggs at people you don't like maybe it's a
Speaker 3: British thing.
Speaker 1: But I think it may just be that in the
Speaker 1: US because of the gun stuff, people are like a
Speaker 1: lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun, right,
Speaker 1: if you're throwing stuff and somebody it's serious.
Speaker 3: Although someone someone threw a beer at Ted Cruz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they sure did. That was good. That was good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think you know, I actually had a lot
Speaker 3: of time to think about before my trial about white
Speaker 3: eggs and stuff, and I think they're just funny, you know,
Speaker 3: like there's a lot of egg puns that came out
Speaker 3: of it that that, you know, not to get too
Speaker 3: philosophical about it, but they're kind of you know, they're
Speaker 3: they're really harmless, you know, but inherently humiliating as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, yeah.
Speaker 3: Well exactly. And I think there's there's something to be
Speaker 3: said for contrasting the violence of the state, yeah, with
Speaker 3: what's obviously like very low level violence. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: the one standing trial for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is like the language that got used by the
Speaker 1: state kind of in the proceedings against you was was amusing.
Speaker 1: Like I know that it was a pain in the
Speaker 1: ash you had to go through, but like the kind
Speaker 1: of the framing that they they put with it to
Speaker 1: make it seem like this was this was such a
Speaker 1: like serious offense against public order was was was quite funny.
Speaker 1: And I think it's beyond me to know what was
Speaker 1: going on in the now king's head at the time,
Speaker 1: but I you got quite close. You can see right
Speaker 1: after it hit there's there's goop on the ground directly
Speaker 1: in front of his foot, and his shoulders slump a
Speaker 1: little and he looks down, and I wonder if it
Speaker 1: made him feel bad. I hope it did. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe he's not
Speaker 1: capable of that, but I wonder.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I mean through five and I will say
Speaker 3: it for the record that one of them did bounce
Speaker 3: off his arm, but he does have a force field,
Speaker 3: so it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get
Speaker 3: the full impact. But yeah, I honestly think he didn't
Speaker 3: have a clue what's going on. He's pretty pretty sen
Speaker 3: how to be honest. Yeah, but you know, monarchists were like,
Speaker 3: so like, wow, look at how stoic he is. He
Speaker 3: just doesn't even care. He just shrugged it off. He's
Speaker 3: such a badass, and it's like he's just been guided
Speaker 3: through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's got
Speaker 3: to pretend that he you know, smiles and waves at
Speaker 3: normal people and he doesn't think that we're all clubs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, and it was the crowd reaction around
Speaker 1: you was pretty intense from what I understand. I mean,
Speaker 1: like people came after you when they realized what had happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think in some ways that spoke more more
Speaker 3: itself than like anything that I could have done. You know,
Speaker 3: the reaction to the video, you know, people immediately just
Speaker 3: start like pulling my hair, out in chunks and just
Speaker 3: like screaming, like you know, like just killing him, like
Speaker 3: stick his head on a spike, kick him to death,
Speaker 3: and you know, and it really I think maybe that
Speaker 3: kind of rhetoric is perhaps more like, you know that
Speaker 3: the overt violence is more prevalent in American politics. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it exposed that you know, these people are
Speaker 3: essentially fascists, you know, and that they yeah, they're very,
Speaker 3: very violent people.
Speaker 1: And I think this is something people have are starting
Speaker 1: to recognize a little bit more about kind of politics
Speaker 1: in the UK. I mean, we're looking right now. The
Speaker 1: Public Order Act of twenty twenty three is kind of
Speaker 1: the most recent law that's gone through Parliament that effectively
Speaker 1: like expands the ability of the police to crack down
Speaker 1: on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems,
Speaker 1: based on what I've read, pretty credible that it basically
Speaker 1: makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for
Speaker 1: almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was
Speaker 1: exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind of
Speaker 1: of anti monarchist protesters who are more on the liberal
Speaker 1: side of things, and you're kind of approaching this as
Speaker 1: an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters with
Speaker 1: signs that were saying stuff like not my king, attempted
Speaker 1: to rally doing so. I believe their goal, from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, was to comply with the law as
Speaker 1: they understood it, and that did not protect them from
Speaker 1: the police.
Speaker 3: No. So you know, the context is in the wake
Speaker 3: of the police there was a police officer, you know,
Speaker 3: last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: in the wake of that, they passed the Police, Courts,
Speaker 3: Sentencing and Crime Bill. And that that bill was really like,
Speaker 3: you know, the most over crackdown on protest. It banned
Speaker 3: it allowed the police to arrest, the discretion of an officer,
Speaker 3: any protest that was deemed potentially annoying, like that's the
Speaker 3: specific language, is any any action that could be loud
Speaker 3: or annoying. So, you know, there was a there was
Speaker 3: a lot of protests against that at the time. That
Speaker 3: obviously came to nothing, and they passed the bill anyway,
Speaker 3: and then and then so the Public Order Bill just
Speaker 3: goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest
Speaker 3: anyone who might be about to do something that's loud
Speaker 3: or annoying and including this new thing called a serious
Speaker 3: Disruption Prevention Order, which is something that they can apply
Speaker 3: to someone who's considered an aggravated activist.
Speaker 1: He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more
Speaker 1: than twice for protest related offenses.
Speaker 3: Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to
Speaker 3: communicate about your ideas, basically stopped from attending protests in
Speaker 3: the first a rest at the train station. And yeah,
Speaker 3: we saw that in play with the Republic, with this
Speaker 3: organization that had been extensively liaising with the police, and
Speaker 3: you know, it just seemed quite like Pikachu face when
Speaker 3: suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah, but
Speaker 3: for literally, you know, no pretext. It was they had
Speaker 3: they had like twelve thousand pounds worth of signs in
Speaker 3: a van and they were they were all wrapped up
Speaker 3: in yeah, just like rope rope, and the pretext for
Speaker 3: the arrest was that the rope was a lock on
Speaker 3: device that could be used to you know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: like jump in front of the procession and tie yourself
Speaker 3: with rope.
Speaker 4: To the road.
Speaker 3: I really don't know, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from what I could tell just from the coverage,
Speaker 1: I've read. If their protest had gone the way they
Speaker 1: planned it, it would have been like a show, a
Speaker 1: visible show that there were people who didn't like the monarchy,
Speaker 1: but it would not have caused it. Like they would
Speaker 1: not have this. These people were not planning to like
Speaker 1: burn down any public buildings or you know, smash car
Speaker 1: windows or stop a road. Not that I'm specifically condemning
Speaker 1: that behavior, but I'm just stating this was not the
Speaker 1: state cracking down on people because they were afraid of
Speaker 1: a riot. This was the state cracking down on people
Speaker 1: because they didn't want the display of any kind of
Speaker 1: descent to exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, that's where we're at in this country.
Speaker 3: And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was
Speaker 3: the best thing that could have happened for the movement,
Speaker 3: because you know, what it really did was just shine
Speaker 3: a light that it was impossible to ignore and in
Speaker 3: some ways kind of over shadowed the coronation. Really was
Speaker 3: far more than any speech that Graham Smith you know,
Speaker 3: was planning to give, you know, just so overtly that
Speaker 3: that there is no acceptable form of descent. Now, the
Speaker 3: very concept is so distasteful to yeah, our aristocracy that
Speaker 3: it's banned.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see
Speaker 1: the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think
Speaker 1: it is true. I doubt I would have heard about
Speaker 1: that protest if it had gone as the organizers planned, right,
Speaker 1: because it would have just been Yeah, there's some people
Speaker 1: who don't like the monarchy in the UK. That doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me at all, but seeing it was like everywhere
Speaker 1: all over my social media. I got sent it by
Speaker 1: multiple friends, by a family member because the state decided
Speaker 1: to go after these people, And I do think I
Speaker 1: think it's also from just a standpoint when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a struggle with as long odds as kind of
Speaker 1: struggling against the monarchy in the United Kingdom, which is
Speaker 1: you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure
Speaker 1: outside of the Vatican, right Basically, when you're talking about that,
Speaker 1: it is so important to be able to look at
Speaker 1: moments like this and see the upside in them rather
Speaker 1: than just rather than just kind of feel the boot
Speaker 1: all the time. Otherwise you're you're not going to have
Speaker 1: the endurance to keep fighting, you know.
Speaker 3: For me with specifically with the eggs, I was I've
Speaker 3: been conscious the whole time that the backlash and the
Speaker 3: you know, disproportionate state reaction would speak more than my
Speaker 3: own actions. So so, for example, one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why I think, you know, it went pretty viral when
Speaker 3: I when I threw the eggs in the first place,
Speaker 3: I was a bit surprised by by how it went
Speaker 3: kind of quite internationally. But but but you know, so
Speaker 3: the fact, so my bail conditions were between between my
Speaker 3: arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 3: carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so that
Speaker 3: is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right.
Speaker 1: I gotta notice there like a provision for if you're
Speaker 1: going home from the store or are you just are.
Speaker 3: You just so? So the copper who was literally just
Speaker 3: like making this up at the station says like, okay,
Speaker 3: so your bail condition is you're not allowed within five
Speaker 3: hundred meters of the king, you're not allowed to carry
Speaker 3: eggs in public. And then he goes like, oh, actually,
Speaker 3: like what was if he wants to buy some eggs
Speaker 3: And they're like okay, So they changed it so it's
Speaker 3: like you're allowed to carry eggs as long as you're
Speaker 3: going home from the shops and you've got the receipt.
Speaker 3: And I think that was more viral than me actually
Speaker 3: doing it, you know what I mean, Like people were like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's that's Britain for you. Have you
Speaker 3: got a license for those eggs?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway
Speaker 1: with like a like a like a nineteen forty style
Speaker 1: shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each.
Speaker 3: Yir yeah and so and so you know when I so,
Speaker 3: I had my trial, you know, which was for yeah,
Speaker 3: threatening behavior that made someone feel imminent violence. In the
Speaker 3: wake of that, like I was convicted, I narrowly avoided
Speaker 3: six months in prison, which is the sentence that I thought, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and so, so you know, in my trial, you know,
Speaker 3: I had the option to either downplay what I did
Speaker 3: as being like, oh, it's not really violence, it's just
Speaker 3: an egg. But then of course, you know, legally it
Speaker 3: was you know, that could just cancel as a soul.
Speaker 3: But then I chose instead to say, Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 3: was violence, but it was legitimate violence because it was
Speaker 3: necessary to resist the far greater violence of the British state,
Speaker 3: you know, citing the historic impact of colonialism.
Speaker 1: He's saying current foreign policy, like the king personally negotiating
Speaker 1: weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: And then also you know climate breakdown and the way
Speaker 3: in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels global
Speaker 3: South like intentionally and so therefore, you know, I was
Speaker 3: basically defending the right of you know, acting in defense
Speaker 3: of others with violence. I'm glad I did it, and
Speaker 3: I'd have done much worse. So in the end, actually
Speaker 3: I got one hundred hour. I got one hundred hours
Speaker 3: of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away
Speaker 3: with it essentially.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, did you get us? I wondered, was it
Speaker 1: just a situation? Did you just get lucky with a
Speaker 1: judge or like, because that's that's surprising. I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: like that that worked as well as it did in
Speaker 1: a positive way.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 3: had a big bag with me with all my light
Speaker 3: undies in because I thought I was going down, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think there was partly, yes, getting lucky with
Speaker 3: the judge. Partly I think they were in a really
Speaker 3: difficult position and this is what I wanted to put
Speaker 3: them in essentially, which is that following all of that
Speaker 3: the money, you know, in the lead up to the coronation,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of negative press around around the
Speaker 3: king and the monarchy, and they had a choice between
Speaker 3: either sending me to prison and looking extremely authoritarian and
Speaker 3: blowing out proportion, or letting him get away with it.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think they chose to minimize the
Speaker 3: negative press. You know, I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an
Speaker 3: independent judiciary and there would have been no conversations with
Speaker 3: the palace and the police about the charging procedures. But
Speaker 3: that's a low rubbish but you know, yeah, and so
Speaker 3: but I think I wanted to put them in that
Speaker 3: difficult position because I knew that, like I said, their
Speaker 3: backlash would look worse than what I did. And so
Speaker 3: when I chose to go to the coronation following following
Speaker 3: my conviction, you know, I had to tell my probation officer, look,
Speaker 3: I'm going to the coronation. I am going I'm going
Speaker 3: to peacefully protest. I'm just going to be there, deal
Speaker 3: with it, you know. And basically he told me that
Speaker 3: the counter Terrorism Department was seeking an injunction from the
Speaker 3: courts to stop me attending but then the court had
Speaker 3: ruled that no I was allowed to attend. I'd already
Speaker 3: been given my punishment and he wasn't going to put
Speaker 3: any further conditions on me not be allowing allowed to go.
Speaker 3: So so but I knew that if I went to
Speaker 3: the coronation and they would arrest me anyway, and it
Speaker 3: would make them look bad, you know. And then they
Speaker 3: they did. You know, I was as well as well
Speaker 3: as all of the organizers. I was there, you know,
Speaker 3: just not my king, blah blah blah. And then and
Speaker 3: then I and then I look up and there's a
Speaker 3: little watchtower that they had erected in the center of
Speaker 3: Trafalgar Square, and I just saw that there was about
Speaker 3: seven police officers just all like staring at me and
Speaker 3: filming me from you know, like two hundred meters away.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, okay, they're gonna arrest me now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I gave my phone and my wallet to
Speaker 3: my brother and then smile. And then within seconds, within seconds,
Speaker 3: they were just dragging me out, like you know, in handcuffs,
Speaker 3: from the center of a of a crowd of about
Speaker 3: you know, twenty thousand people. And and it honestly couldn't
Speaker 3: have looked like more like overtly fascist if they tried,
Speaker 3: and and that was kind of the point. Really is.
Speaker 1: A man, I uh, such a wild story, but.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm glad you did what you did.
Speaker 1: I'm impressed by the amount of thought that kind of
Speaker 1: went into the optics of it, because it's really the
Speaker 1: only way to turn an egg into an effective weapon,
Speaker 1: right is by very careful planning. I'm kind of curious
Speaker 1: where do you see what do you see as the
Speaker 1: route forward for both not just kind of opposing the
Speaker 1: monarchy in your country, but sort of opposing the overreach
Speaker 1: by the police. This is a problem in more places
Speaker 1: than the United Kingdom, but y'all are kind of on
Speaker 1: one of the cutting edges of sort of global attempts
Speaker 1: by law enforcement and its supporters in the state to
Speaker 1: effectively make dissent impossible. Ahead of what everyone knows is
Speaker 1: going to be kind of a heightening period of climate
Speaker 1: based activism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so with the climate activist movement in the UK,
Speaker 3: you know, we've seen extinction rebellion active since like twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and I've been, you know, arrested multiple times with them
Speaker 3: at different actions. You know, the part of their strategy
Speaker 3: was that mass arrests, you know, blocking roads, nonviolent direct
Speaker 3: action and civil disobedience would force the government to take action.
Speaker 3: And I think really we're seeing that strategy like having
Speaker 3: run its course. And I think for a while now
Speaker 3: that's been evident that it wasn't working because they've just
Speaker 3: banned the types of protest that we were doing. And
Speaker 3: also it was essentially quite naive to believe that, yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, if we cause enough desruption, they're just going
Speaker 3: to put aside all of the you know, lobbying interests
Speaker 3: and their literal role in upholding capitalism to just go,
Speaker 3: oh no, okay, fair enough that they're blocked and roads,
Speaker 3: we are going to like radically transform society to deal
Speaker 3: with climate breakdown. That was never going to work, you know, realistically.
Speaker 3: And so so even though you know, we've seen every
Speaker 3: time they pass these these new legislation, there are there's
Speaker 3: a there's a backlash, there's some marches, there's some protests
Speaker 3: that fizzle out, and the state just keep consolidating more
Speaker 3: and more power, and people keep getting more and more
Speaker 3: disillusioned with.
Speaker 1: He says, with what an effective strategy of resistance looks
Speaker 1: like and so for me personally, it's something I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about for a while now.
Speaker 3: But recently have is that, you know, we have to
Speaker 3: stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local level
Speaker 3: and essentially you know, using like democratic confederalism, you know,
Speaker 3: as they're doing Rajava, to to look at creating a
Speaker 3: national network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside
Speaker 3: of the state. Because because because I think a lot
Speaker 3: of the problem with these direct action movements is that
Speaker 3: they don't have the legitimacy of a democratic mandate. So
Speaker 3: that's even whilst the tactics might be like in some
Speaker 3: way effective, you know, Extinction Rebellion has always said our
Speaker 3: message is to say that climate change is a serious threat,
Speaker 3: but we cannot propose the solutions because we don't have
Speaker 3: a democratic mandate. But the way to you know, work
Speaker 3: around that is to build a democratic mandate through holding
Speaker 3: people's assemblies, creating forums where people can create their own vision,
Speaker 3: and then direct action can then be used in service
Speaker 3: of those aims rather than putting the car before the horse,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I think that that's certainly like one of
Speaker 1: the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're always talking about an uphill battle here,
Speaker 1: and I think kind of the inherent difficulty of fixing
Speaker 1: any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the and what
Speaker 1: we mean is dismantling the systems that are causing climate destruction,
Speaker 1: and like that is such a lopsided battle that I
Speaker 1: think whenever, whenever you have you present an option to people,
Speaker 1: because it sounds hard, there's this tendency to just be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to go by the thing that
Speaker 1: we know, which is just kind of like trying to
Speaker 1: vote in better people. If we can take a lesson
Speaker 1: out of the last thirty years, it's that the standard
Speaker 1: electoral methods cannot provide the solution to climate change, Like
Speaker 1: they simply aren't going to do it. And I think
Speaker 1: the police in a lot of kind I mean in
Speaker 1: the United States right here in one of my old hometown's, Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: they just voted on a police accountability bill that the
Speaker 1: police have basically said we're not going to abide by
Speaker 1: like this is and you can find stories like that
Speaker 1: all over the United States and other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Like the kind of the hope that you can just
Speaker 1: sort of like put in your however long it takes
Speaker 1: you to do voting in your country or city or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that that's the method forward. It's it seems more
Speaker 1: realistic because it's more familiar. But I think the vision
Speaker 1: you're putting forward not to say that it's as simp
Speaker 1: that's simple, but like it's effortful. And I think that
Speaker 1: whenever someone's positing something like that that requires that kind
Speaker 1: of like effort from a large enough segment of the population,
Speaker 1: I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that
Speaker 1: we can just all kind of keep putting our twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and
Speaker 1: expect it to get better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's like one of those things with you know,
Speaker 3: like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have to
Speaker 3: imagine a world where that's possible, and that requires changing everything, right,
Speaker 3: and I think that applies is to tackling climate change
Speaker 3: and implementing direct democracy. So you know, if you're talking
Speaker 3: about a system where people can turn up to a
Speaker 3: forum in a local community center or you know, church
Speaker 3: or whatever once a week, then people say, well, that's
Speaker 3: not going to be accessible, you know, because so it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you're right, we'll probably have to set up a system
Speaker 3: of mutual aid that supports you know, working class people
Speaker 3: to be able to attend those kind of events. And
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, it's like how you're going to pay
Speaker 3: for it, And it's like, well, you're right, We're probably
Speaker 3: going to have to, you know, set up a solidarity
Speaker 3: economy where, you know, we if we decide, for example,
Speaker 3: that we want free public transport then and and bus
Speaker 3: drivers to be paid paid a fair wage, you know,
Speaker 3: then you're going to have to look at a whole
Speaker 3: system whereby people are potentially getting free housing in return
Speaker 3: for being a bus driver, free food that comes from
Speaker 3: the local food cooperative. And you're like, I say, building
Speaker 3: dual power rather than attacking the system head on, because
Speaker 3: in a battle, in a pitch street battle in this country,
Speaker 3: at least between us and the police, that we're going
Speaker 3: to lose. And I think that, you know, we need
Speaker 3: to think smarter because at this point, they haven't yet
Speaker 3: made organizing public meetings illegal, but you know, they probably
Speaker 3: will at some point, and then it's the only way
Speaker 3: we'll be able to resist that is if we've had
Speaker 3: some public meetings to decide how we're going to do it,
Speaker 3: because at the moment, we haven't even had the meeting
Speaker 3: to decide what our collective strategy is because there is
Speaker 3: so much atomization between these different like you know, left
Speaker 3: wing like social movements and civil society organizations and so much.
Speaker 3: Sometimes just depresses me to think about how many people
Speaker 3: are working for environmental charities or whatever, where all of
Speaker 3: their work and their research is going towards creating policy
Speaker 3: proposals for politicians to ignore it. If you were putting
Speaker 3: that amount of energy and your enthusiasm in service of
Speaker 3: the vision that's been created democratically by the people, then
Speaker 3: we don't need to petition anyone to make the changes
Speaker 3: we need, because we'll have organized effectively enough to do
Speaker 3: the things that will really challenge state power, for example,
Speaker 3: like a mass rent strike and a general strike.
Speaker 1: Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting
Speaker 1: policy papers on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered,
Speaker 1: was going towards putting forth policy that is then being
Speaker 1: backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes,
Speaker 1: that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking
Speaker 1: roads that's able to actually throttle some of the life
Speaker 1: support system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not
Speaker 1: looking at a recommendation, a white paper that's going to
Speaker 1: wind up on some bloodless bureaucrats desk, or that's going
Speaker 1: to wind up getting cut to pieces in Parliament. You're
Speaker 1: you have something that that has teeth behind it, right,
Speaker 1: the kind of force that might be able to make change.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff, you
Speaker 1: have to contrast it with what we've been trying so far,
Speaker 1: which is nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, diversity of tactics is huge, and
Speaker 3: so you know a lot of these direct action groups
Speaker 3: in the UK, like just Stop Oil that have been
Speaker 3: blocking motorways and stuff, have received, like you know, huge criticism,
Speaker 3: especially from people who you know really ought to be
Speaker 3: allies and at least recognize the the that this action
Speaker 3: is coming out of a place of desperation because people
Speaker 3: cannot see a better way. Yeah, and you know, there
Speaker 3: was a there's someone from just Stop Oil who just
Speaker 3: got three years in prison for blocking a motorway and
Speaker 3: and that's that's insane, you know, And you know on
Speaker 3: some level that person is it is a martyr, and
Speaker 3: you've got to hold your your often say. What that
Speaker 3: has done is shine a spotlight again on state authority
Speaker 3: in a way that you know, if they have these
Speaker 3: laws on the books but they never have to use them,
Speaker 3: then it's easy to forget that they exist. We have
Speaker 3: that power.
Speaker 4: Do you want to talk a little bit about cooperation UK?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, So so you know, for me, I'm a
Speaker 3: democratic confederalist, you know, I mean or like you know,
Speaker 3: the Rajavant project using direct democracy but also confederating that
Speaker 3: up to sort of replace the state with a form
Speaker 3: of governance that's democratic. And you know, I also I'm
Speaker 3: a big believer in cosmocracy, right, which is the proper
Speaker 3: name for global democracy.
Speaker 1: He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about this while
Speaker 1: I was doing my masters.
Speaker 3: And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this
Speaker 3: system world, we can use the internet to confederate to
Speaker 3: a global level, you know, and really start to ta
Speaker 3: call the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which
Speaker 3: is like the fact that our separation from nature and
Speaker 3: the rise of fascism is is threatening angus with extinction.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and you know,
Speaker 3: that that's what motivates a lot of my actions. But
Speaker 3: you know, in some ways I've been kind of stewing
Speaker 3: on these ideas alone. And so recently I met a
Speaker 3: group called Cooperation UK. Who are you know, connecting. I
Speaker 3: can often get bogged down in abstract theory about like
Speaker 3: how you know, changing the whole world and never actually
Speaker 3: doing anything practical. That's my downfall. But you know, you
Speaker 3: need to start a movement like that locally, and and
Speaker 3: so they're copying Cooperation Jackson, you know, who have been
Speaker 3: incredibly effective, you know, setting up people's assemblies, mutual aid
Speaker 3: economy in Jackson and also like a community land trust.
Speaker 3: You know, they own like fifty different buildings you know
Speaker 3: that are used collectively by the community. And this group
Speaker 3: are planning to set that up in Hull, which is
Speaker 3: just a city in the Northeast that's incredibly deprived. It's
Speaker 3: got like the lowest voter turnout in the UK, but
Speaker 3: it also has a thriving network of food banks and
Speaker 3: you know cooperatives and mutual aid groups. And I think
Speaker 3: the next step for me is when those those groups
Speaker 3: send delegates to meet together and decide on collective strategy,
Speaker 3: right like because there are so many people doing so
Speaker 3: much good work, but there's almost like no faith in
Speaker 3: our own vision, which is that if we're the people
Speaker 3: you know who are say a union for nurses, then
Speaker 3: you know, we should be deciding the conditions that exist
Speaker 3: in healthcare, you know, because who better besides patients and
Speaker 3: like staff is that to decide the conditions that they
Speaker 3: that they operate in. And and so yeah, cooperation UK.
Speaker 3: There are there's a group of us that are moving
Speaker 3: to Whull. I'm moving. I'm moving next week. I'm really
Speaker 3: excited about it. And yeah, we're planning to set up
Speaker 3: lots of local neighborhood assemblies with the intention of within
Speaker 3: a year holding a citywide people's assembly that can create
Speaker 3: a shared vision and then and then potentially you know,
Speaker 3: standing candidates for local council, but whose only policy is
Speaker 3: we will enact. We will give power to the people's
Speaker 3: assemblies and then they can use the you know, financial
Speaker 3: power of existing institutions to support the transition to a
Speaker 3: new model. And whilst they're doing that in Hull, you know,
Speaker 3: the work that I hope to be doing is document
Speaker 3: in that process learning, you know, so people can learn
Speaker 3: from the mistakes and that, you know, and hopefully we
Speaker 3: can set them up in in every city well across
Speaker 3: the UK, because there are already people who's think very
Speaker 3: similarly and that we're at a time now where that's
Speaker 3: coalescing into the you know, people are recognizing the need
Speaker 3: for this new movement with a new strategy that's based
Speaker 3: around democracy rather than just activism. And yeah, it's really exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's I think that's a worthwhile idea.
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's it's bold and something that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad to see being attempted. Well, it's been
Speaker 1: really great talking with you today. Did you have anywhere
Speaker 1: you wanted to direct listeners in order to help if
Speaker 1: they're interested in what Cooperation UK is doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. So there's there's a crowdfunder that I think
Speaker 3: there'll be. I believe there'll be a link that you
Speaker 3: guys can act.
Speaker 1: He says, and we'll be using that money to set
Speaker 1: up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also
Speaker 1: to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their
Speaker 1: local community.
Speaker 3: And I hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate,
Speaker 3: you know, going to start reaching out to each other,
Speaker 3: forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing
Speaker 3: like the mutual aid that we that we need to
Speaker 3: support each other, you know, for example, you know, if
Speaker 3: we're talking about Palestine or Iran, to provide real meaningful solidarity,
Speaker 3: these you know, liberation groups will require more organization than
Speaker 3: just like thoughts and prayers.
Speaker 1: Really and yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much, Patrick,
Speaker 1: It has been great talking with you. Good luck as
Speaker 1: you continue moving forward.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, I guess I
Speaker 3: should also say I'm on I'm bizarrely, I'm on TikTok.
Speaker 3: That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish
Speaker 3: it wasn't. I'll probably want to start making more YouTube
Speaker 3: videos discussing these ideas, So maybe I'll send you a
Speaker 3: link that you can put in there, the Citizen of
Speaker 3: Earth Show. It's my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Excellent, well, Patrick, tell well Citizen of Earth YouTube channel
Speaker 1: and we'll of your TikTok and the description.
Speaker 4: Thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Everybody go out and uh, you know, acquire eggs.
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