Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. All right, Hello, this is
Speaker 1: it could happen here? Oh boy? Yeah, we've can't rob
Speaker 1: it into being here for Civil War week no less.
Speaker 1: We're also joined by special guest Margaret Killjoy. Uh and
Speaker 1: so if you can get who are less special? Now
Speaker 1: we're whole week. Yeah, we're here to start a civil war. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what I've read and read it started civil war sophy.
Speaker 1: We cleared that. We cleared that with corporate righte I
Speaker 1: hear officially backing the start of a civil war essentially
Speaker 1: corporated you know, go, go go ahead, cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: start a civil war, start a civil war? Do we
Speaker 1: be civilly and criminally liable for all violence that occurred?
Speaker 1: See I Heart Radio guarantee. Yeah, and we've been listed
Speaker 1: the people on this call who are Margaret Kildrey, Devans,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis, James Stout and myself, Sophie. They are also
Speaker 1: all civil and criminally liable. But do we get to
Speaker 1: collectivize a huge maybe, like or so of all the
Speaker 1: industry obviously, I mean some of us do. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: what it's like any civil war. You're going to find
Speaker 1: out who later. Okay, we're going to find out who today.
Speaker 1: Robert this is my death guy into how to beat
Speaker 1: a coup, start a civil war. And when the first
Speaker 1: part of it good, well, that's the only part of
Speaker 1: it you really need to win, Yeah it is. You
Speaker 1: don't want to get too bucked down in the latest
Speaker 1: staff because it's just depressing. So we we just want
Speaker 1: to focus on how to win the first forty eight
Speaker 1: hours and from there you can take it. Take a week,
Speaker 1: take the weekend off, yeah, break off, chill out, yeah fine,
Speaker 1: or just go down as a hero and let everyone
Speaker 1: else sort everything else out afterwards. And that's probably the
Speaker 1: best option. That's going to learn about a guy who
Speaker 1: dies within twenty four hours at the war starting as
Speaker 1: a hero and gets a gun named after him, which
Speaker 1: is all we can really want for ourselves. Ah, that
Speaker 1: does sound like the dream. Yeah, that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: the way Robert Evans needs to go. Not suggesting that
Speaker 1: anytime soon, of course. All right, I'm sure to imagine.
Speaker 1: Would it be the Robert or would it be there? Yeah, Robert,
Speaker 1: just give him a good old bobbin. It would be
Speaker 1: named after my nixt name, my nickname, the Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: of podcasting, right, Sophie, Now, yeah, no, Sophia says yes.
Speaker 1: If there's not already a gun named after Jesus, I
Speaker 1: will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not a kind of
Speaker 1: company you want to. We've we've really gotten off, and
Speaker 1: I think, in all fairness, it's not my fault. I
Speaker 1: think it's Garrison's fault. Yeah, that's why I was going
Speaker 1: to blame. I think we've all agreed on that. What
Speaker 1: are we talking about, Jim talking about the Spanish Civil War? Today?
Speaker 1: Will be be desegrating the name of Jesus Christ. A
Speaker 1: little bit later as well. So desigrating the name of
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, i'd gathered. Yeah, we'll do. That's just some
Speaker 1: more for you today. I'll send you some pictures afterwards
Speaker 1: that you will enjoy. All Right, So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War. We're not talking about all of
Speaker 1: it because that's a lot, and because I think it's
Speaker 1: important when we talk about the Spanish Civil War to
Speaker 1: talk about like the moments when revolutionary things happened, because
Speaker 1: they are as important as the moments when terrible things
Speaker 1: happened and the moments when the people in arms defeated
Speaker 1: the coupe, because that's both instructive and inspiring and interesting
Speaker 1: way to have a question. Yeah, what's the spanning a
Speaker 1: civil war? That's a great question and one I've failed
Speaker 1: to address thus far. It is a war that happened
Speaker 1: in Spain. It wasn't very civil, so only two out
Speaker 1: of three remarkably uncivil. Actually, so we're looking at nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six today, we're looking at July nine and twentieth
Speaker 1: ninety six, right, But you can see it as like
Speaker 1: the precursor to the Second World War. You have people
Speaker 1: who are fascist or fascist a jacent you have people
Speaker 1: who are explicitly anti fascist, and they are killing each
Speaker 1: other from nineteen thirty nine, and the anti fascists win, right,
Speaker 1: not entirely unfortunately, Yeah, that they have some wins along
Speaker 1: the way, you know, Okay, Yeah, there's some moments, the
Speaker 1: friends that you meet along the way. Yeah, what is
Speaker 1: civil war if not the friends that you make along
Speaker 1: the way? Don't answer that because it's sad. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these these are some friendly times. These are some good times.
Speaker 1: These are the first forty year hours of the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War. We're going to start with an anecdote about
Speaker 1: the pure Olympics, which you probably have never heard of
Speaker 1: unless you're me, because it's a it's a thing that
Speaker 1: I've written about ship Ton, but not many folks have
Speaker 1: read about. It's the antifer Olympics. It's the best way
Speaker 1: to understand the pot to Olympics. It was a gathering
Speaker 1: held in nineteen thirty six in Barcelona and opposition to
Speaker 1: the Berlin Olympics. So the Olympics are given to Weimar
Speaker 1: Germany in one right, they're not given to Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: But when Germany, yeah it's Germany is the pre Nazi
Speaker 1: it's before Hitler takes power. Yeah, when they were actually
Speaker 1: pretty cool in some way, it's pretty pretty progressive for
Speaker 1: the time period, right. In lots of ways, it's the
Speaker 1: woke Germans. Yes, it's the work Germans. It's it's like
Speaker 1: if if if AOC was running nineteen thirties Germany, that's
Speaker 1: what you get. I bet they had a whole institute
Speaker 1: that trans people got to hang out at and learn
Speaker 1: about themselves. I've heard that, Yet what happened to the
Speaker 1: institute I can't remember. The Nazis game and killed the
Speaker 1: first woman to medically transition in the Western Hemisphere and
Speaker 1: burned all of the books and then stole the records
Speaker 1: that the people have been keeping about all the gay people,
Speaker 1: and then rounded up all the gay people and murdered
Speaker 1: them in camps. That's that's what happened. Well, that's disappointing. Well,
Speaker 1: good thing. That'll good thing. That will never happen again. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we've learned our lesson. Yeah, there's absolutely no echoes of
Speaker 1: that in current political discourse. So that's fine. Hey, let's
Speaker 1: learn how to kill fascists. Yeah, buck them. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about the popul Olympics, the anti for Olympics.
Speaker 1: The Olympics that happened because the Nazis are ship and
Speaker 1: you shouldn't play games with ship people. Uh, to include
Speaker 1: the Olympics, even if you very much want to win
Speaker 1: a medal. Uh. Take note, athletes doing sports and dictatorships,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people, about twenty people instead
Speaker 1: decided to go to Barcelona where they're going to host
Speaker 1: this alternative games. Uh. And the seb text of the
Speaker 1: popular Olympics. It's not just that like shouldn't have the Olympics,
Speaker 1: it's that gasp shouldn't exist, and the anti fascism is
Speaker 1: strong and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting a war
Speaker 1: and killing the fascists. Right. That that's sport. George or
Speaker 1: Will called sport war without the shooting. Right, Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a war with the shooting. It's a good quote.
Speaker 1: George Orwell pops up a few times in this one.
Speaker 1: Not always right. Bad everything that he was right about that, Um,
Speaker 1: we passed up at the wrong time. It's never mind
Speaker 1: trying to make a George or Will gets shot shot
Speaker 1: in the throat. Now I just feel bad about it
Speaker 1: because at least that's the least I mean, before podcasting,
Speaker 1: the throat was the best place to get shot as
Speaker 1: a writer. That's true, that's true. Yeah, it didn't go
Speaker 1: well for him in the end. It sort of did
Speaker 1: end his life prematurely, I guess but he got some
Speaker 1: bangers out in terms of books. First, yeah, it can't him,
Speaker 1: all right. So we're talking about the popul Olympics, talking
Speaker 1: about the night before the Popular Olympics. You're gonna learn
Speaker 1: why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics. So guests
Speaker 1: keep listening, okay. Any six years ago in Barcelona, Pau Casal,
Speaker 1: the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals
Speaker 1: for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had
Speaker 1: already practiced. The Hymn of the Popular Olympics was a
Speaker 1: song co written by a Catalan composer and an exiled
Speaker 1: Jewish one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they
Speaker 1: moved to beethoven Tonight's symphony. You might know it as
Speaker 1: you know too. Joy Kassals recounted what happened next in
Speaker 1: his memoirs. I just called the chorus on stage to
Speaker 1: sing the Kali. When a man rushed into the hall.
Speaker 1: He handed me an envelope, saying, breathlessly, this is from
Speaker 1: Minister Gasol. An uprising is expected in the city at
Speaker 1: any moment. I read Gasol's message. It said our rehearsal
Speaker 1: should be discontinued. Immediately or the musicians should go straight home,
Speaker 1: and that the concert schedule for the following day had
Speaker 1: been canceled. The messenger told me that since the message
Speaker 1: was written, an insurrection had started in Madrid and fascist
Speaker 1: troops were now marching on Barcelona. I read the message
Speaker 1: aloud to the orchestra and to the chorus, and then
Speaker 1: I said, dear friends, I do not know when we
Speaker 1: shall meet again. As a farewell to one another, shall
Speaker 1: we play the finale? And they shouted yes, let us
Speaker 1: finish it. Then the orchestra played and the chorus sang
Speaker 1: as never before. I could not see the notes because
Speaker 1: of my tears. So that's how power Casal started civil war.
Speaker 1: They finished that concert, incidentally, they came back to the
Speaker 1: same place, and yeah, it was very the same people.
Speaker 1: Uh no, not well, the same institutions. Right, these are
Speaker 1: called or fails, like I guess, popular chorus is popular
Speaker 1: kind of city orchestra kind of thing. So they finished
Speaker 1: it in the same place because in the intervening eighty
Speaker 1: eight years they was a little issue with the Franco dictatorship,
Speaker 1: which there still is in Spain incidentally, but yeah, Barstilon
Speaker 1: has very much reclaimed its memory is an anti Fascial city.
Speaker 1: Following the dictatorship, I could, really, I can really see
Speaker 1: myself in those musicians, you know, like it just feels
Speaker 1: like a very possible thing. Unfortunately, to just be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we're going to do this thing and then well,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, should we finish? Like yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like at some point maybe not. Like, Look, all of
Speaker 1: us were doing something else when we learned that a
Speaker 1: bunch of Chudd's had stormed Congress, right and that the
Speaker 1: yak hatman was inside the Senate chamber. Um like like
Speaker 1: the it and some of us gonna. I was on
Speaker 1: a bike ride. I kept riding my bike like there's
Speaker 1: not there's not much I can do. Uh. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to take the moments of joy because there might
Speaker 1: be much joy available for the next little while. Um
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's easy to see myself and
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to it, uh all right. The following morning, the city
Speaker 1: woke up before dawn to the sound of gunfire. To
Speaker 1: most of the Catalan working classes, wasn't a surprise. The
Speaker 1: cure had begun two days earlier in Morocco, and word
Speaker 1: traveled quickly among the anarchists. By the time the men
Speaker 1: of the Fourth Division and a General Fernandez Bodiel began
Speaker 1: their march to the central Plataa Catalunia, the people of
Speaker 1: the Popular Front were ready. The uprising had begun in
Speaker 1: Morocco in se an all day tension, A bit building
Speaker 1: Union radio had called a general strike, and despite the
Speaker 1: refusal of the Republican government to acknowledge how deep of
Speaker 1: trouble they were, in their union to render no allusion
Speaker 1: as to the stakes. By lunchtime on the nineteen Spain
Speaker 1: had gone through three prime ministers since breakfast, and Barcelona
Speaker 1: had defeated a coup. So what happens to the other
Speaker 1: prime ministers? Like okay, you be prime minister and you're like, oh, fun,
Speaker 1: now I don't want to be prime minister. Or they're
Speaker 1: getting killed by the fascists, or no, no, Madrid is
Speaker 1: very it's not very safe. It's safe. They basically your
Speaker 1: first guy. It's like, I've done funked up here. I
Speaker 1: should have seen this one coming, given that I was
Speaker 1: explicitly warned about it for weeks. He's like, peace, I'm out.
Speaker 1: Second guy pops in. He's like, don't worry, guys, we
Speaker 1: can fix this. What we need to do is call
Speaker 1: the call the general's talk it out. It's interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: give them just a just like a reason with them.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because what happens is in that conversation,
Speaker 1: it's the fascist general. I think it's capable, the young know.
Speaker 1: He calls I can't remember good d maybe maybe good head. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it says like you have your people and I have mine.
Speaker 1: And in that moment, what's happening is a fascist general
Speaker 1: who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician
Speaker 1: that he has an obligation to serve the people who
Speaker 1: elected him and and not just to make like unilateral
Speaker 1: compromises with fascists. Right, So that the what a country
Speaker 1: at a time at that moment, that second prime ministers
Speaker 1: also doomed. Right. So then we move on to number three.
Speaker 1: And at that point we opened up the armories to
Speaker 1: the working class, right, which is what they should have
Speaker 1: done earlier. In in every city where the working class
Speaker 1: is armed, the coup is defeated. In every city where
Speaker 1: it's not armed, the coup succeeds. And that doesn't have
Speaker 1: any ramifications for today. So keep going no, absolutely, none, no,
Speaker 1: and it's something that we can't learn from, so we
Speaker 1: shouldn't we shouldn't try. Um And obviously it's not direct parallel.
Speaker 1: There are some really interesting moments in this particular arming
Speaker 1: of the working class. One did I to come back
Speaker 1: to is that the there are the soldiers, right. It's
Speaker 1: obviously the weapons are in the hands of the military,
Speaker 1: and obviously the military has just done a coup, but
Speaker 1: not all the military has just done a coup. So
Speaker 1: you have some generals or colonels who are in charge
Speaker 1: of barracks, um who or armories, and they will be like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got the order. That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: I think it's who's kind of bullshit, like it hasn't
Speaker 1: succeeded yet, it might not succeed. Here are the rifles
Speaker 1: union members. But in Madrid you have another colonel who's
Speaker 1: a die hard cou coup guy, big big coup person,
Speaker 1: who is in control of the bolts of the rifles. UM.
Speaker 1: So like the rifle doesn't work without the bolt, right.
Speaker 1: The bolt is a bit like plugs a hole and
Speaker 1: makes a bullet go bang. I've explained that properly, right, Robert,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a technical terminology. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just the piece that makes the gun go bang. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the about critical to the functing the rifle held
Speaker 1: by another guy who turns out to be a fashion
Speaker 1: and so he doesn't issue them the bolts. So you
Speaker 1: have all these working class militiamen being like, how rifle
Speaker 1: work with no bolt? Just like entering the streets anyway, right,
Speaker 1: slapping on the bayonet. Now you have a pike. You
Speaker 1: have other people who have never operate to the rifle before.
Speaker 1: So like allegedly everyone's calling the Socialist Union headquarters in
Speaker 1: Madrid being do this, do that, and they're like, I
Speaker 1: can't hear ship. There's just hundreds of people behind me
Speaker 1: trying to operate the bolt on a bolt action rifle,
Speaker 1: trying to learn how to do this, and like they're
Speaker 1: taking their newsprint from their union newspaper right and trying
Speaker 1: to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been
Speaker 1: in like deep storage. It's very evocative scene, like you
Speaker 1: can smell it, you can hear it of these people
Speaker 1: being like, well we never used these before. They've been
Speaker 1: a deep storage for a long time. They're covered in Greece,
Speaker 1: but fuck it, like it's now or never. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was. Right. So if we go back to what
Speaker 1: happened in Barcelona, they had radios in public places, right,
Speaker 1: it is very common whole books about how Nazis used radios,
Speaker 1: but it's common in the thirties parts of the city.
Speaker 1: The paving stones had barely been relayed from October fighting.
Speaker 1: Then they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed,
Speaker 1: old rifles and pistols, and the bombs that the anarchists
Speaker 1: particularly love, would dragged out of the bottom of drawers.
Speaker 1: These people fucking love throwing bombs, like the just the Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's a there's a lady later on in the
Speaker 1: war called rosal Ladina Mitra like Rows of the Dynamiter
Speaker 1: who who just like it becomes the legend right for
Speaker 1: just throwing dynamite fascists. Yeah, Like, there's so much awesome
Speaker 1: ship that happens that gets lost because ultimately, like Hitler
Speaker 1: and Mussolini win the Spanish Civil War basically, right spoiler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So actually that night before the before the troops march
Speaker 1: on the city, the u g T, the Socialist control
Speaker 1: the dock union, the dock workers union, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: hang on, I'm pretty sure there's a ship in the
Speaker 1: harbor that has dynamite on it. Let's raid it. So
Speaker 1: they raid the ship, okay, steal the dynamite and drive
Speaker 1: through the city, distributing it to union members who spend
Speaker 1: the entire night making bonds. I'm sure that that went
Speaker 1: badly for several of them, but yeah, it went Badies
Speaker 1: of fascist too, but well yeah, almost undoubtedly. Uh, Like
Speaker 1: Robert and I have talked to some people in some
Speaker 1: other contexts who have made homemade bonds, and I don't smoke.
Speaker 1: It's what I will say, do not smoke if you're
Speaker 1: in the process of making bombs or explosives whatever. That's
Speaker 1: the same people say that you can't smoke whirer fuel
Speaker 1: in up your car. Yeah, cowards, Yeah, you go down
Speaker 1: like a chat. Yeah, that's my message to you. The
Speaker 1: other thing they did was they put on like their mono,
Speaker 1: so like a mono is like a like a onesie, right,
Speaker 1: like an overall blue mono was kind of the militia
Speaker 1: uniform because they weren't an army. They were just working
Speaker 1: class people who worked at factories who are not taking
Speaker 1: any ship from the army that day, and they put
Speaker 1: on their little union hats, which you can see in
Speaker 1: all the photos. They look very cool, very quaint um.
Speaker 1: So to understand why the conflict they fought that day began,
Speaker 1: it's probably beyond the scope of this podcast, and to
Speaker 1: understand where did the way it did will infuriate just
Speaker 1: about everyone listening, which is fine, but we don't have
Speaker 1: all day. Okay. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: some of the people involved, kill Joy's podcast and the
Speaker 1: Spanic Anarchist is a great place to start. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was wonderful to check that out. Yeah
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, great podcast, really great. I love it.
Speaker 1: So if you listened to look at that, Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: you should like and subscribe. Is that? Is that still
Speaker 1: the thing? Cool people who did? Yeah? I think I've
Speaker 1: heard of that. Yeah. The host is brilliant. Yeah, she's amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make the clever, but instead I'm probably blushing.
Speaker 1: You deserve. Oh okay, Yeah, if you want to read
Speaker 1: some books, I'm going to list some books at the end,
Speaker 1: probably far too many because this is my ship, but
Speaker 1: I've more books written about the SPA, A civil war then, um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess war in general, but I think anarchists have
Speaker 1: written more about the Spanish Civil War, though maybe undoubtedly
Speaker 1: anything else combined. Yeah, the the device we are speaking
Speaker 1: on is currently propped up on a large stack of them,
Speaker 1: actually most of my material possessions. It's yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 1: It's the way your life should be. It's I've written
Speaker 1: one to uh and it's heinously expensive, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy with it. If if you struggle to obtain
Speaker 1: it materially, please just shoot me a direct message, unless
Speaker 1: you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement because
Speaker 1: you're fascist or something, in which case please don't bother. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you got this far. If you
Speaker 1: are a fascist, I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, I probably
Speaker 1: have some no uh funk off Nazi. I guess. I
Speaker 1: think I think fewer people hate listen. I okay, my
Speaker 1: theory I know that we wanted to hear. My theory
Speaker 1: about why podcasting to um is because it's harder. People
Speaker 1: don't have the attention span to hate listen the same
Speaker 1: way that they can like hate skim or like hate
Speaker 1: read tweets and reply. And so I've made a lot
Speaker 1: of different media and a lot of different ways over
Speaker 1: the past couple of decades, and I get less hate
Speaker 1: mail about podcasts than most other forms. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: my theory, is that people podcast because no one wants
Speaker 1: to sit there and like hate listen. I mean people
Speaker 1: like hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen
Speaker 1: to those like clip shows where they take the right
Speaker 1: wing person and you know, show them saying something that
Speaker 1: we all I think it's not an intelligent thing to say,
Speaker 1: and then we laugh or whatever. But so anyway, if
Speaker 1: you're the person who has been put on this earth
Speaker 1: to hate listen to, it could happen here in order
Speaker 1: to I don't know, um, make fun of it to
Speaker 1: your audience. Um, thanks for the lessons, I guess, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, yeah, we're getting that that sweet revenue.
Speaker 1: I know, where does that revenue come from? It just appears.
Speaker 1: It's like like liking, It grows on the side of
Speaker 1: a wet building. It doesn't come from ads. Ads do
Speaker 1: organic could grow a lot a lot like liking. They
Speaker 1: just start showing up, um and replicating we really have
Speaker 1: no choice. But yeah, anyway, Yeah, it's a fact of nature.
Speaker 1: If you have that person, I will say that my
Speaker 1: messages stop being a Nazi. That's that's me being polite.
Speaker 1: On the night of some assault Guards members, some elite
Speaker 1: paramilitary police force it was founded by and sometimes mostly
Speaker 1: loyal to the Republic, went against your their officers has
Speaker 1: sneaked rifles out to members of the c NT an
Speaker 1: anarchist union. And that's pretty that's pretty based. It's the
Speaker 1: one day, as you will learn, this is the one
Speaker 1: day all cops took off from being bastards. Some of them,
Speaker 1: it turns out, are capable of doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: or were I should say, Yeah, of corps were handing
Speaker 1: out rifles to anarchist the that would be not a
Speaker 1: parallel that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: somewhat unique. Right. It doesn't mean that these people had
Speaker 1: not spent the past decades killing each other. It does
Speaker 1: not mean that they would not return to doing so
Speaker 1: within less than a year. But just for a day,
Speaker 1: everything was hunky dorry. And it's leftist Christmas. Yes, this
Speaker 1: pretty yeah, this more or less is leftist Christmas, like
Speaker 1: because there's even like there's gifts. They call them proletarian
Speaker 1: shopping trips um. But what they do is requisition merchandise
Speaker 1: from stores and uh and distributed to people who need it.
Speaker 1: Are you just are you referring to armed rubbery? Is
Speaker 1: that that's a different thing, that was only armed robbery.
Speaker 1: If somebody tries to fight back shopping with a gun,
Speaker 1: that's it. And what if there is no law, is
Speaker 1: it really a crime? M hmmm. I don't know, no one,
Speaker 1: No one can say I will say that they only
Speaker 1: it seems like they only robbed the shopkeepers who were turds,
Speaker 1: people who like lent a lot of money at a
Speaker 1: very high interest rate, things like that in these predetorian
Speaker 1: shopping trips, which I'm not being against what happened. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm stripping away some of the niceties. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: people hadn't gathered, they weren't picking up when I was
Speaker 1: putting down. Yes, it is going into a shop with
Speaker 1: guns and taking things and giving them to people who
Speaker 1: need them. Whether or not that is bad. Who can
Speaker 1: say Robin Hood, famous villain in history. Yeah that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: bad bad dude. Sheriff of Nottingham, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: would have been big into crypto. I'm sure all around
Speaker 1: legend so when I said if there is no law,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really joking. Like at this point Luis Compans,
Speaker 1: who's a Catalan leader. He's a liberal leftist politician, and
Speaker 1: earlier that evening he'd refused to open the armories. He
Speaker 1: realizes that things are out of his control, and so
Speaker 1: he sets off for a walk and he walks down
Speaker 1: the Rambler. Right. If you've been to Barcelona, it's this
Speaker 1: big old street now it's full of a kind of
Speaker 1: restaurants to have photographs on their menus so that German
Speaker 1: people can understand what they're going to eat um, which
Speaker 1: is much of Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people
Speaker 1: who don't speak Catalan or Spanish who go to Barcelona
Speaker 1: can eat very well there for lots of money. M
Speaker 1: if you've been on holiday, you've probably been there. I
Speaker 1: did not eat very well in Barcelona, really. I had
Speaker 1: almost no money and was vegan, and my Spanish there's
Speaker 1: more in my coutoy is non existent, so I mostly
Speaker 1: were ung out and cooked pasta. There are not a
Speaker 1: lot of cities I've been to where it's harder to
Speaker 1: eat vegan than Barcelona. That is, that is a challenge.
Speaker 1: Maybe Belgrade where where the national dishes thirty pounds of
Speaker 1: meat on a plate. Yeah, Sophia, Nos Sophia, so I
Speaker 1: can't remember to pronounced the name of the capital of Bulgaria.
Speaker 1: Um also a hard place to eat vegan. That was
Speaker 1: hard for me. Yeah, that does not surprise me. Yea, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: surprise me. It's a big part of the catle In cuisine.
Speaker 1: You'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm having some lentils, and
Speaker 1: then they'll be like, psych, there's a pig in here.
Speaker 1: We put a whole fucking pig in this thing. We
Speaker 1: did reverse vegan. We made lintels out of pig. I
Speaker 1: just ate everywhere I go. You can crush in falafel.
Speaker 1: And one of the Catalan national dissues is called kappi potta,
Speaker 1: which means head and foot because those are the ingredients
Speaker 1: and it's it's a bit of a pig that no
Speaker 1: one else wanted. One of the American national dishes is
Speaker 1: also the head and feet of the face of a pig,
Speaker 1: but they call it a hot dog. At least the
Speaker 1: Catalans are honest about it, that's true. But yeah, if
Speaker 1: the it's better now to eat vegan, I'm vegan, and
Speaker 1: I was there in have to move among the right circles.
Speaker 1: But yeah, on the rambler it would be hard. And
Speaker 1: so that night, companies, he's walking down the rambler. He's
Speaker 1: got his hat across his face so no one could
Speaker 1: see him, and he's pulled up his color kind of
Speaker 1: like an old timey private eye, and up and down
Speaker 1: the rambler. Anarchists and socialists are stealing cars and welding
Speaker 1: armor plates to the front of them. Yes, yes, another
Speaker 1: time honored anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of war is the
Speaker 1: improvised technical And so what they do here is, well
Speaker 1: these steel plates, right, and then they write the name
Speaker 1: of the union on top, just so people and know
Speaker 1: who's killing them on so they could keep track of
Speaker 1: their stolen cars. Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Like you don't
Speaker 1: want anyone stealing your stolen car. Yeah yeah. There comes
Speaker 1: a point in the next couple of weeks where some
Speaker 1: of the more ideologically committed anarchists will stop or take
Speaker 1: down traffic signals because they feel they're an unwarranted restriction
Speaker 1: on individual liberty. Those Twitter discourse Yeah yeah, get on
Speaker 1: that tank you Yes, time was a flat circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very funny. Um, I bet they. I bet
Speaker 1: there were was a contingent of them that were taking
Speaker 1: down libraries to for gate keeping knowledge. Libraries. Libraries are
Speaker 1: pig prisons, book pigs. Yeah, yeah, they burned them, just
Speaker 1: in a class of anarchist fashion. Or we all know
Speaker 1: that libraries are better served under a free market system
Speaker 1: like that. One guy tweeted, Yes, Amazon should run the
Speaker 1: library and every book should cost you ten dollars. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's the only way we can grow as
Speaker 1: a society. And if you don't like it, well something
Speaker 1: in front of your truck. Also, if you have an
Speaker 1: idea that's based on a book and Amazon owns the copyright,
Speaker 1: they now own the idea. That's the only thing that's fair.
Speaker 1: No thinking without proper copy right, Is it okay to
Speaker 1: use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owned words? No? Does
Speaker 1: that mean that we're going to be fighting the next
Speaker 1: one of these situations with instead of spray painting CNT,
Speaker 1: someone's gonna come by and spray paint Amazon Basics onto
Speaker 1: them with a third chase. I'm doing that tonight. I
Speaker 1: would be up armoring my trucks as soon as we're finished. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and spray painting Amazon basics and then just going to
Speaker 1: the beach after that and actually what they spraint painted
Speaker 1: on the There was CNT, there was U g T,
Speaker 1: there was FI. These are C and T Confederate, your
Speaker 1: National de Trabajo Right Nation, nor Labor confederation. This is
Speaker 1: an anarcho Syndicalist Union uh PHI federon Anarki barrier is
Speaker 1: the Iberian Anarchist Federation. They're a group within the c
Speaker 1: NT that is more committed to a hardline, illogical ideological anarchism.
Speaker 1: The hug Tier or Socialist Union. You have other groups
Speaker 1: to the pum is probably any other one you need
Speaker 1: to know. They are not trotsky It's Trotskyites. Anyone who
Speaker 1: tells you they are either doesn't know what they're talking
Speaker 1: about or is consciously misleading you. And they were in
Speaker 1: open beef with trotsky right like that they are. They
Speaker 1: are writing letters to trotsky beefing about whether they should exist,
Speaker 1: which trotsky Is is a no on that question. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not trotsky As. They just get called trotsky Is
Speaker 1: by Stylinists because everyone who they don't like is a Stylinist.
Speaker 1: Right that they are anti Stylinist Marxists. Um, that's what
Speaker 1: I will call them. What some folks do is they
Speaker 1: paint you HP on top of their cars. You nidos
Speaker 1: armanos proletarios. I think it stands for United Proletarian Siblings,
Speaker 1: I guess. And that's important, right, because these groups had
Speaker 1: been fighting among themselves and with each other for a
Speaker 1: very long time and having like what appeared today to
Speaker 1: be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things, but they
Speaker 1: were important and then you know, this ideological commitment is
Speaker 1: what gets them through this period of time. But the
Speaker 1: uh P comes from a Studius where anarchists and socialists
Speaker 1: had come together to fight against the state rank to
Speaker 1: fight as part of a minor strike minors particular love
Speaker 1: for dynamite, by the way, that's how they, yeah, kings
Speaker 1: of the dynamite throw that, that's how they dealt with
Speaker 1: the local garrison. Really and actually the first use of
Speaker 1: a combat helicopter was against the Popular Front, the UHP
Speaker 1: in Asturius, and that strike was eventually put down by
Speaker 1: one in Francisco Franco, who will learn about later. Nice guy,
Speaker 1: No problems with him. That's a lie. Yeah, shocking, I
Speaker 1: know it turns out to be a total turd of
Speaker 1: a human being. But he was, wasn't he? Um, Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wasn't he like some
Speaker 1: sort of vaguely? Wasn't he like a right wing syndiclaus
Speaker 1: for a while? Yeah, he had all kinds of sort of.
Speaker 1: I don't think Franco had any convinced political views other
Speaker 1: than like that he wanted to be in charge. But yes,
Speaker 1: he was a radical scendic list I said, right wing
Speaker 1: syndiciclast but yeah, no, but so a number of officers
Speaker 1: I don't know if Franco was with, but there were
Speaker 1: like a group called the Party who Okay, I see,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if Franco was one, now that I
Speaker 1: think about it. I try not to learn too much
Speaker 1: about the person of Francisco Franco, because he is a turd.
Speaker 1: He he does pivot, and he pivots when he's in power,
Speaker 1: right from like a soon a more totalitarian project to
Speaker 1: this national Catholic project to sort of Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: problematic dude with yeah, with no clear ideology of than
Speaker 1: he should be in power, and he doesn't care who
Speaker 1: he has to roll over to get there. Um, that's
Speaker 1: a common political ideology, it is. Yeah, it pops up
Speaker 1: a lot on the right, something something there with dudes
Speaker 1: on the right that maybe we should think about. No,
Speaker 1: it's never happened again, and never in this country of course,
Speaker 1: fortunately saying it could never happen right where we are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not in my backyard, that's the right. Yeah, America
Speaker 1: is different, I think as the subtitle, Okay, so sorry, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just sad. Anyway, the people in Barcelona that day
Speaker 1: were even more numerous and diverse, and the already bustling
Speaker 1: he was used to. The nineteen July was slated to
Speaker 1: be the start of the largest anti fascist spectacle the
Speaker 1: world have ever seen. That's a direct quote from a
Speaker 1: public the article about the Popular Olympics. Right, as I said,
Speaker 1: these games aim to show the strengths of the popular
Speaker 1: front with a series of events. Some of those event
Speaker 1: to the ones you might expect, But some of these
Speaker 1: events were designed to reward nations with a healthy working
Speaker 1: class rather than nations with a few exceptional athletes. Right,
Speaker 1: So we look at the Olympics today, having one or
Speaker 1: two exceptional athletes, especially in certain areas, can like vault
Speaker 1: you to the top of the medal table. Right. Medal table,
Speaker 1: of course, invented by the Nazis to illustrate eugenics. Uh
Speaker 1: wold really yeah yeah. Before most six there was no
Speaker 1: Olympics table. Uh, not in the fable way that we
Speaker 1: see it now. So much of the pageantry that we
Speaker 1: associate with the Olympic Games was invented by Carl D.
Speaker 1: M uh the torch relay, the parade of flags in
Speaker 1: the opening ceremony, like, yeah, the the Olympics are fucking Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: like with the rainbow rings. It's wild how much of
Speaker 1: that ship is cribs straight from Nazi pageantry? Oh? Um.
Speaker 1: The book called The Nazi Game is pretty good on
Speaker 1: that if you want to read it. Um. Lots of
Speaker 1: books about the thirty six Olympics, But yeah, um, I
Speaker 1: should just acknowledge that the the International Olympic Committee did
Speaker 1: fund a lot of my research for reasons that maybe
Speaker 1: becoming clear, have since ceased. Also, Clay didn't think I
Speaker 1: was very good, I guess. But anyway, institution that has
Speaker 1: some ship to deal with that it hasn't dealt with,
Speaker 1: I will say, um. And yet it was on its
Speaker 1: bullshit heavily in right. Um, so one of the things
Speaker 1: they did at the popular Olympics was they had a
Speaker 1: ten by hundred meter relay. And it's just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if the Americans have school sports days. Yes,
Speaker 1: I try to Why I I don't remember anything about
Speaker 1: public school sporting events. Okay, at the risk of sort
Speaker 1: of unveiling more trauma, what happens here, now, that's fine, Okay.
Speaker 1: What happens here is that, uh, you line up right
Speaker 1: in groups of five and you just run back and forth,
Speaker 1: passing a bat on to each other, and much like
Speaker 1: school sport today, with the caveat being that the people
Speaker 1: in this event had to already be entered in other
Speaker 1: events at the games, and so like you just get
Speaker 1: like weightlifters, and there was a chess event at the games, right,
Speaker 1: So you get the chess athletes and they're just hauling
Speaker 1: as as fast as their chess playing legs can carry
Speaker 1: them back and forth to prove the like superior health
Speaker 1: of their nation's working class. Think chess chess leads, chess
Speaker 1: chess leads, chess leads. Yeah, thanks, yeah, I really say
Speaker 1: with that one. Yeah, you pulled it back out of you. M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't have any athletes. Sadly, Yeah, they did have
Speaker 1: people who built human castle, so it's another event. And
Speaker 1: really wait wait wait wait a castle made out of humans?
Speaker 1: Whoa wait, you are not familiar with cash down as
Speaker 1: the like the the Great Catholic and tradition of building
Speaker 1: human towers. No, no, okay, like pivot. Uh it's fucked now.
Speaker 1: One of my friends wrote her PhD on these uh
Speaker 1: about that they just made up? Just now listen, okay,
Speaker 1: A you can write your history PhD about literally anything,
Speaker 1: as long as no one else has written it before.
Speaker 1: The scene a quan history PhD s And I wrote
Speaker 1: my PhD about the anti for Olympics, right, I wrote
Speaker 1: my master's about predatarian shopping trips. Uh that's cool, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought so um at the time, the yes, so Cashel. Right,
Speaker 1: you get your people at the bottom, right, and they
Speaker 1: sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist and then
Speaker 1: they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware
Speaker 1: that I'm biting my shirt and this is mainly an
Speaker 1: audio medium. But they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right,
Speaker 1: men and women, non binding people. I'm sure to form
Speaker 1: a big old circle. And then the next layer climb
Speaker 1: up them right and stand on top of them. There's
Speaker 1: slightly fewer people, and the people get smaller, and the
Speaker 1: layers have fewer people in them, like concentric circles. Right
Speaker 1: as you get higher and higher, and then a small
Speaker 1: child wearing always a horse riding helmet for reasons that
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely clear, ascends and this ship is high
Speaker 1: like if you're standing on your balcony, like you are
Speaker 1: eye to eye with this fucking toddler who climbs up
Speaker 1: the top, get to the top like arm in the air,
Speaker 1: and then climbs back down. And these groups people do
Speaker 1: people do this all the time. Yeah, Look, American's national
Speaker 1: sport is is this thing where like young young men
Speaker 1: give each other brain damage. So, oh, I'm not anti this,
Speaker 1: and I'm just well, I'm actually impressed by it because
Speaker 1: we do the human pyramid thing, which is the same thing.
Speaker 1: All they're not nearly as impressive or interesting. No, I
Speaker 1: check out castas the cool thing about them as they
Speaker 1: exist within communities, right, these colds, these groups of castodiers
Speaker 1: are groups of people who do this from a neighborhood, right,
Speaker 1: so that they'll all be from a certain town, like
Speaker 1: the Talagona group was the one near me and my friends.
Speaker 1: Dissertation Ida reports a name, you can probably look it up.
Speaker 1: It was about like how this this practice has been
Speaker 1: integrated into incorporating migrants into Catalan us, right, like Catalan
Speaker 1: identity by being again come and come and stand on
Speaker 1: us or be stood on by us, and you two
Speaker 1: can be Catalan. Oh that seems like that would yeah,
Speaker 1: that would bring a community closer together into a heap
Speaker 1: on the ground. Yeah, and it has all kinds of
Speaker 1: other uses, right, cat stuck up a tree, just call
Speaker 1: those guys. Yeah, I want a rubber house. Yeah. Famously
Speaker 1: ladders a band in Catalonia because there for cowards. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: just all day casteus. But yeah, this was part of
Speaker 1: the popular Olympics, right, human castles. I'm glad we went
Speaker 1: there for everyone who didn't know. People googling that. It's
Speaker 1: part of the u n like United Nations Protected Human
Speaker 1: Patrimony or something like. It's it's it's a bit important.
Speaker 1: So do you ever just like make up stuff to
Speaker 1: tell Americans about and then we believe you because you
Speaker 1: have an accent? I mean we have an accent too, sure,
Speaker 1: but like yeah, yeah, yeah, Luckily your accents are all
Speaker 1: neutral and vanilla. Yeah exactly, voice yeah yeah, um uh no,
Speaker 1: I did. I think I've told this story on the
Speaker 1: internet before, but one time I was giving a talk
Speaker 1: about diabetes and the bronx and this I asked if
Speaker 1: this kid wanted to ask the kids they wanted to
Speaker 1: ask any questions, and young women itching to ask a
Speaker 1: question just goes, do you guys really have pies with
Speaker 1: meeting them? Like if she didn't misled her whole life,
Speaker 1: I was able to confirm that for her, I savory
Speaker 1: pies like fucked me up. When I was in France,
Speaker 1: I was completely unprepared for the existence of these things.
Speaker 1: I volunteered to cook for a bunch of um, a
Speaker 1: bunch of activists who are busy having their meeting, and
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, sure, I'll come cook for you.
Speaker 1: And I figured I would just like show up and
Speaker 1: make pasta burritos because I'm an American. And they gave
Speaker 1: me a lemonnu and on it was tarde legume and
Speaker 1: I was like, I know what those words mean. That
Speaker 1: means pie vegetables, and that isn't that doesn't exist. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the funk you're talking about, Um, this
Speaker 1: is not a very interesting story and now everyone's heard it.
Speaker 1: But I learned how to make a vegetable pie on
Speaker 1: no notice because that was what the menu insisted upon.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I I feel for this person and the
Speaker 1: bronx who wasn't convinced that you were telling the truth
Speaker 1: about meat pies. Yeah. And if they're listening, I was
Speaker 1: a promise look it up. Now they've got Google. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The lesson we've learned there is don't cook for French people.
Speaker 1: So at the Games, one of the cool things is
Speaker 1: that nations competed instead of states, right, And we can
Speaker 1: fucking go off on the difference between nations and states.
Speaker 1: The state is the entity that has political control and
Speaker 1: exercise of monopoly on the legitimate violence in the geographic area.
Speaker 1: A nation is an imagined community that exists across base
Speaker 1: of time. That's the shortest I'm going to do that,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to say anything that what's a
Speaker 1: country between those country is it's a geographical area that
Speaker 1: the state controls. But sometimes it's mapped onto nation as well, right,
Speaker 1: like Catalonia being a good example. But for most of
Speaker 1: the time people use it synonymously with state. So countries
Speaker 1: aren't competing. Nations are right. The egg styled Jews of
Speaker 1: Europe are competing, right, because if you're Jewish and it's six,
Speaker 1: don't want to fucking like marching there with the German flag,
Speaker 1: I would imagine doesn't feel good, negative vibes, so they
Speaker 1: don't do that. There they are the exiled Jews, right,
Speaker 1: and the anti fascists who are exiled from Germany in Italy.
Speaker 1: They also come in with their own different flags, right. Um.
Speaker 1: Initially there was some rumblings about the nub A CP
Speaker 1: sort of competing in the end of the United States team,
Speaker 1: which is made up of trade unionists, had black and
Speaker 1: white folks on it. The organizers are actually so invested
Speaker 1: in like um, the I guess including a pressed black
Speaker 1: people from the United States within the remit of people
Speaker 1: who sort of anti fascism wanted to advocate for that.
Speaker 1: They threw this whole Olympics together in like three or
Speaker 1: four months. It was shoestring budget. It's funded by the
Speaker 1: French government, the Spanish government, the Catalan government in a
Speaker 1: vidual donors and some trade unions from Norway. And they
Speaker 1: took their very sparse money and we're like we will
Speaker 1: pay your way if you if you're black people from
Speaker 1: America want to come over here, cause we understand its
Speaker 1: ship over there if you want to come and play
Speaker 1: with us, and that's fine, which is cool, Like fuck
Speaker 1: you to the fact that, because the whole Olympics is
Speaker 1: a fuck you to to Nazi Germany, right, and so
Speaker 1: it's cool that it also was like and fuck you
Speaker 1: too racism in the United States also like I like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like it's also worth noting, Actually, look, why are
Speaker 1: we saying fuck you to the Nazis and that like
Speaker 1: the people at the popular Olympics like ran faster, jumped higher,
Speaker 1: worth stronger, like the Olympics are extremely gate kept by class.
Speaker 1: We see that. We see that kind of crumbling like
Speaker 1: with your with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that. Right,
Speaker 1: but at this point there were still workers sports and
Speaker 1: bourgeois sports and bourgeoire sports twins the Olympics, right, Like
Speaker 1: the Olympics still had an amateurism rule. If you got
Speaker 1: paid for exercising, you couldn't go, so yeah, which meant
Speaker 1: that like working class people, right, like if you don't
Speaker 1: get paid time off, and one gets paid time off,
Speaker 1: its six then they can't go and compete. Right, Like
Speaker 1: if even if you work full time and I say, hey, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I'll pay for a couple of weeks, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: make sure I take care of your rents so you
Speaker 1: can go and do the Olympics. Nope, if you run
Speaker 1: a benefit race after the Olympics, they will take your
Speaker 1: medal away. Tom Longboat who they did that too. They
Speaker 1: do that a whole lot to people who aren't white. Shockingly.
Speaker 1: Um so, yeah, Olympics not great. Actually, maybe we'll do
Speaker 1: a whole left bord and what have the Olympics do
Speaker 1: some bad ship. But yeah, these people come from America
Speaker 1: right on the team. It's Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley goes
Speaker 1: on to be kind of a legendary boxer, right. He's
Speaker 1: biracial man from Pennsylvania. Uh. And Dot Tucker she's a
Speaker 1: black woman. She ran her union in the Bronx and
Speaker 1: she ran hardrometers as well. Yeah, fucking plan that one out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love a good written into the script like planned out.
Speaker 1: It's good. Don't It sounds sarcastic, but I actually mean
Speaker 1: it really honestly. You can appreciate the joy that I'm
Speaker 1: feeling right now. And so that games brings twenty thou
Speaker 1: anti fascist to Barcelona, right and some of them are watching,
Speaker 1: some of them are competing, some of them are staying
Speaker 1: in hotels. The Hotel Olympic is where most of them stay,
Speaker 1: but they ran of space, so about two weeks before
Speaker 1: the games, they went around random houses and we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you have someone to stay? So lots of the
Speaker 1: athletes are just like crashing with people and it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. If you go to the archive in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: you can see the little forms where they go up
Speaker 1: to a house and be like, okay, this person has
Speaker 1: two beds and they can take care of breakfast, and
Speaker 1: that's two athletes who can stay here. They went door
Speaker 1: to door. Yeah, it's heartbreaking seeing that ship and then
Speaker 1: knowing what happened. Um. I was just thinking it was
Speaker 1: like a better way to Um. Yeah, like that's what
Speaker 1: Airbnb should be, you know, yes, yeah, I think if
Speaker 1: the Airbnb, if we compare this to the Berlin Olympic
Speaker 1: village where the Condor legions stayed before they headed off
Speaker 1: to bomb people in Spain, we will see that one
Speaker 1: side is better than the other side. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: these people are staying all across Barcelona, right. They's trained
Speaker 1: in the stadium the day before, they're distributed all around
Speaker 1: the city. So in the morning of thee these are
Speaker 1: kind of hardcore Catholic conservatives. Um, they report to the
Speaker 1: San Intario barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the Pedroldes barracks,
Speaker 1: officers get their troops up but think at four in
Speaker 1: the morning, serve them a ration of rum for breakfast
Speaker 1: and tell them that there's been an anarchist uprising in
Speaker 1: the city that they have to put down, and so
Speaker 1: they send them my right, this is a lie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the uprising is in fact what they are doing as
Speaker 1: they march into the city. It's telling that they lie
Speaker 1: because the troops are conscripts and are not really brought
Speaker 1: into their nationalist crusade at the point. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: worth always remembering there, like working class people get trapped
Speaker 1: up in wars, often not by their own choosing. Well,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like how they're like, you have
Speaker 1: to go out and fight Antifa, you have to go
Speaker 1: out and do a coup against the United States because
Speaker 1: otherwise Antifa, who are all stalinists, are going to turn
Speaker 1: the us into the uss are. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: There there's no parallel. No, that's that's not a parallel. Sorry, okay, no,
Speaker 1: it could never happen here. That's that's our big message
Speaker 1: for today. So these guys they start heading down Agnula
Speaker 1: Diagonal right towards Plasfa Cataluna, at the heart of the city.
Speaker 1: The cavalry or on a different street carried Tarragona. There
Speaker 1: are dragoons on a different street. They leave a little
Speaker 1: later because the Spanish army is something of a clusterfuck,
Speaker 1: and they all plan to join up, but they never did. Instead,
Speaker 1: all across the city, sirens sound the alarm in factories
Speaker 1: and where these troops have been planning to meet up
Speaker 1: with one another. They met up with sniper fire and
Speaker 1: those homemade bombs we talked about. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: where ship gets gets good. At the barricades, they met
Speaker 1: men and women with everything from modern machine pistols to
Speaker 1: blunderbusses and slingshots. Yeah, the blunderbusses are pretty cool. You
Speaker 1: can find some pictures. Many troops were forced back into
Speaker 1: their barracks. Some made it as far as a telephone
Speaker 1: exchange and the hotel's Rits and Cologne in the middle
Speaker 1: of the city. What the troops, who are incredibly poorly
Speaker 1: trained consecuts with little or no combat experience and even
Speaker 1: less willingness to fight, ran into It was the most
Speaker 1: unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's Nationalists had governed the autonomous region
Speaker 1: since the declaration of the Republic in ninety one. They
Speaker 1: formed a broad leftist alliance called the Esca Republicanady Catalonia.
Speaker 1: That means Catalan Republican Left. I was calling the e
Speaker 1: r C to avoid that. It's a bit of an
Speaker 1: alphabet soup, but I'll try and explain where I need
Speaker 1: to so. Before the Popular Front existed, they're kind of
Speaker 1: a proto popular. They combine liberal and leftist parties who
Speaker 1: share agreement on autonomous and progressive Catalonia, and they tend
Speaker 1: to be either aligned with or to the left of
Speaker 1: the government in Madrid, most often to the left of
Speaker 1: um They don't cover support of the anarchists, right. That's
Speaker 1: important um luis compounds who's the leader right there, the
Speaker 1: Catalan leader of the generality that at that point has
Speaker 1: been a lawyer for the anarchist before, so he may
Speaker 1: have more personal support than the party as a whole
Speaker 1: had among the anarchists. Um, for decades, right, the police
Speaker 1: in Barcelona have acted on behalf of capital against labor.
Speaker 1: They do violence for the people who aren't stuff against
Speaker 1: people who make stuff. And even under the republic, this
Speaker 1: has continued, right, They had called it the Republic of order,
Speaker 1: and Margaret, I think you covered the li the pistols
Speaker 1: right there, the years of the pistol in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, it was, yeah, they like shooting the anarchists
Speaker 1: in order to bring about order. They and they it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a legal thing. They weren't like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: our legal strategy. It was just like we're in charge,
Speaker 1: so we will assassinate the anarchists and then the other
Speaker 1: thing that like, I feel like it's like we're thinking
Speaker 1: about because if if someone's hearing, you might be like,
Speaker 1: why does the government care if the anarchists are on
Speaker 1: their side? And it's to my understanding and correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. The anarchists are like a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the working class of Barcelona at this point, so
Speaker 1: it's like they actually do care because it's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge swaths of people. The anarchists by the end of
Speaker 1: the night will own the city. Right, and they have
Speaker 1: always been the majority of the Catalan working class in
Speaker 1: this period. They they control the way elections go. Right.
Speaker 1: When the anarchists abstained, then the right winds. When the
Speaker 1: anarchists they don't say, don't vote, like they don't like,
Speaker 1: they're not like, yeah, I go vote, They're like, they
Speaker 1: don't maybe consider not abstaining, then the popular front winds. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very funny how they how to use words. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the anarchists are the working class, for the for
Speaker 1: the most of the most of the industries, most of
Speaker 1: the unions are anarchos cynicalist. Right, so you don't have
Speaker 1: support the anarchists, you don't have support the working class.
Speaker 1: In the twenties, the cops called the anarchirts. The anarchists
Speaker 1: called the cops. Right. This is how we get the
Speaker 1: famous affinity groups, right, lost Darios, los Quixotes, delidial and
Speaker 1: being some famous ones. Right, And we'll talk about them
Speaker 1: a little bit in the next episode. How that works
Speaker 1: and what they mean. Uh so not one. Their declaration
Speaker 1: of Republic was a massive boost for the anarchists. Um
Speaker 1: More people have joined anarchist unions they felt safe for
Speaker 1: doing so. Primo de Rivera, the previous dictator had been
Speaker 1: very harsh an anarchists. They actually briefly in the out
Speaker 1: job the GAT secured like libertarian socialists and they just
Speaker 1: took over some towns. Uh and like they they see
Speaker 1: his weapons from the cops and abolished currency for a
Speaker 1: week and it was just like, get it's on. It's
Speaker 1: it's anarchism. And so for five days for goals belonged
Speaker 1: to the people of the gold. And this is before
Speaker 1: we talk about before the the coup and all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is republic begins in one So there's a number
Speaker 1: of these early on in the republic, when the state
Speaker 1: is less violently postured towards anarchism, the anarchists really fucking
Speaker 1: send it. Um. You see it in cassas via hearsts,
Speaker 1: you see in fig goals. Um. So yeah, they more
Speaker 1: people joining because they feel safe for joining, and that
Speaker 1: leads to more open conflict with the sort of civil
Speaker 1: order I guess. But with the threat of fascism looming,
Speaker 1: the CNT establishes defense committees and these become like a
Speaker 1: quick reaction force for the city, right, So by the
Speaker 1: time the troops leave their barracks, activis within the CNT
Speaker 1: were ready for them. Barcelona's Reval, the densely populated district
Speaker 1: just off the more tourists friendly Rambler, have become known
Speaker 1: as a Bali chins and that means Chinatown, not because
Speaker 1: Chinese people are people with any Asian extraction lived there,
Speaker 1: just because they watched gangster movies about Chicago's Chinatown and
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, yeah, we're we can go that hard. Okay,
Speaker 1: they just called it that. Chris Ellim has a great
Speaker 1: book on the construction of Chinatown. Now, people have been
Speaker 1: shooting each other in those streets for decades, right, But
Speaker 1: for once everyone in the revol was pointing their guns
Speaker 1: out every balcony, and the raval becomes a sniper's nest,
Speaker 1: and by the time the sun came up, it was
Speaker 1: an impenetrable fortress of the working class. And at this
Speaker 1: time the state would find itself begging the anarchists for
Speaker 1: support and not the other way around. And I think
Speaker 1: that's maybe where we'll end it today, so that people
Speaker 1: can be sort of teetering on the edge of the
Speaker 1: seat to know what happens next. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining me, Margaret. Would you like to plug anything?
Speaker 1: Do you have any plug doubles? Well, I have a
Speaker 1: book that's available for preorder. It's called We Won't Be
Speaker 1: Here Tomorrow. And if you like um transwoman who robs
Speaker 1: guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover, or
Speaker 1: you like the um the dead in Valhalla coming back
Speaker 1: and joining in an American civil war to fight against Nazis,
Speaker 1: then you might like this book. Um. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: I read that story on this podcast. UM fucking ruined
Speaker 1: the next episode, because that's what happened as well, I know,
Speaker 1: I know. Well, actually there's a different story that I
Speaker 1: didn't write. I think. Oh no, there's one about um
Speaker 1: velociraptors in the Spanish Civil War. Um that that anyway,
Speaker 1: that's completely unrelated. Okay, So that is where you I'm
Speaker 1: The book is currently available for pre order and if
Speaker 1: you get it from a k Press or a couple
Speaker 1: other different independent bookstores, then it comes with the free
Speaker 1: art print that comes from the book, and so if
Speaker 1: you like that, you could consider getting it or ask
Speaker 1: your library to get it. And you can follow me
Speaker 1: on the internet at Magpie killed Joy on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Margaret kill Joy on Instagram. That's myable. I have a podcast,
Speaker 1: I do. I actually have two podcasts. I have a
Speaker 1: podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying, which is
Speaker 1: an individual and community preparedness podcast, and I also have
Speaker 1: a podcast on this very network. Um I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you all haven't noticed it yet. I've just been kind
Speaker 1: of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called
Speaker 1: cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about history,
Speaker 1: but in a fun way about stuff that cool. I'm
Speaker 1: exciting against it right now. Thank you very much, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Ah, welcome back to it could happen here.
Speaker 1: This is part two of it can happen here, the
Speaker 1: podcast that Fox. All right, that's my job done today. Okay,
Speaker 1: Part two of James The Spanish Civil War and the
Speaker 1: the Antifa Olympics. That's right, yep uh Civil War week.
Speaker 1: Closing out with this one. Why does the Olympics? Why
Speaker 1: did the Antifi Olympics hate freedom though? Is my question.
Speaker 1: The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of
Speaker 1: the balls. Yeah, they are taking your children and Bustloads
Speaker 1: of black clad athletes are showing up in your city. Stay.
Speaker 1: This does make me think back briefly to win. A
Speaker 1: couple of different anti fascist groups in Seattle and Portland
Speaker 1: played soccer and it became a whole thing because yeah,
Speaker 1: they were oh I used to play anarchist soccer in
Speaker 1: New York City and oh that got that got canceled hard.
Speaker 1: Well it's it's in Portland, got canceled art it Also
Speaker 1: because it was in New York City, there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of like semi famous actors who would come and
Speaker 1: play anarchist soccer, but then couldn't be like visually associated,
Speaker 1: so like people would all mask up in solidarity. Whatever
Speaker 1: camera people would come by because like some famous actor
Speaker 1: it was playing anarchist soccer in the park. That's very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's standing. More of that needed. And yeah, these anarchists,
Speaker 1: of course, would just busy doing the traditional anti faster
Speaker 1: Just think of starting forest fires in Oregon before okay,
Speaker 1: before the Civil War. So anyway, picking up from the
Speaker 1: last episode where we left our heroes, Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the heroes, right. So with the minitary merging towards
Speaker 1: the city and every balcony in the working classroom ault
Speaker 1: quickly becoming a sniper's nest. Every rifle was needed at
Speaker 1: the barricades with Spanish and catle and tops took an impressed,
Speaker 1: idented break from being bastards and instead significant elements of
Speaker 1: the most squad Guardsville and the elite paramilitary assault guides
Speaker 1: grabbed their hand carbines rifles with names like Tiger and
Speaker 1: Destroyer and took none of them are called Roberts saddi
Speaker 1: um and took to the barricades. What a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is why the Spanish lost. Get me my robbit,
Speaker 1: I can see it now. I'm prepared to help you
Speaker 1: with the advertising. It no, just just gonna bob them
Speaker 1: right up. That's why they called them bobbies. Yeah, famously.
Speaker 1: I think we need to make I think it needs
Speaker 1: to be some sort of like nine barreled electronic volley gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody we could take out to something that could take
Speaker 1: out at least two Japanese prime ministers at once. You
Speaker 1: only need two barrels for one prime minister, so you
Speaker 1: could get up to four. Yeah, yeah, say some time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, today you go back and get Joan shiro Koaizumi,
Speaker 1: finally bring him to justice with a nine barrel pipe gun.
Speaker 1: M okay so these people. So the cops and the
Speaker 1: anarchists are fighting alongside each other. Is that what you're
Speaker 1: telling for wrecked? Yep. The anarchists are pulling up paving stones,
Speaker 1: building barricades, which they had learned in previous conflict with
Speaker 1: the state could stop light artillery, and they are welcoming
Speaker 1: the cops. It's worth pointing out that the here is
Speaker 1: a Day are not cops, and the here is a
Speaker 1: Day are very rarely cops. Instead, it's the ordinary people
Speaker 1: of Catalonia, right, Everyone from liberals to left libertarians runs
Speaker 1: to the barricades. But the anarchist affinity groups, the anarchist
Speaker 1: defense committees are the mortar that holds together the resistance. Right.
Speaker 1: They are experienced, they have plans, They provide impetus and
Speaker 1: inspiration to the working class. They are ready when their
Speaker 1: liberal government is not um. They're a pretty good handle
Speaker 1: on fighting in the streets of Barcelona too. This is
Speaker 1: their home turf right, And incidentally, we see this ship
Speaker 1: a lot like people who are good at fighting the
Speaker 1: cops become integral and fighting the state happened in the Maidan,
Speaker 1: happened in ter Rear Square, both with ultras right liquor
Speaker 1: football fans, people who go to football games that also
Speaker 1: like fighting cops. Um, so, like, it's not unprecedented that
Speaker 1: the folks who are good at fighting the cops become
Speaker 1: integral at fighting the state when state turns bad turns
Speaker 1: bad in many cases. They also have more experience when
Speaker 1: it plating their weapons than the poorly trained conscripts, because
Speaker 1: it would be pretty hard to have less. There's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a debate, a discussion about causality here.
Speaker 1: Does the cooper fail where it does because the cops
Speaker 1: remain loyal or does the beach head established by the
Speaker 1: working class a lava cops who were sympathetic but not
Speaker 1: convinced to safely remain loyal. Right, so, across Spain, it's
Speaker 1: like not quite the same as us to the cops
Speaker 1: are better trained and better armed than the military, but
Speaker 1: they often hung back until the working class to take
Speaker 1: a decisive action. Right. Um, the it was where the
Speaker 1: winds blowing, Yeah, exactly like they sometimes like occasionally they
Speaker 1: will do some sort of kingship like in the one
Speaker 1: city they couple of the assault guards their officers side
Speaker 1: with a coup so they get shot by their own men.
Speaker 1: Love to see in other places they signed to do nothing.
Speaker 1: In some places the soldiers come for them, where they're like,
Speaker 1: suck it, it's on now. But in other places they
Speaker 1: join with the working class, as they do in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: The civil Guard is older. The civil Guard tends to
Speaker 1: be in more rural places where the coup tends to
Speaker 1: be more successful, and civil guide tends to be less
Speaker 1: loyal to the republic. The civil Guide in Barcelona waits
Speaker 1: until noon. The coup is really defeated by noon. By noon,
Speaker 1: the soldiers all hold up in the food buildings and
Speaker 1: it's very clear that they haven't won. And then they
Speaker 1: come in on a horseback clip clopping down the street
Speaker 1: doing the raised fist salute, like just milking it to
Speaker 1: announce their sort of loyalty to republic. They did have
Speaker 1: better guns and better marksman, so they were helpful in
Speaker 1: assaulting their buildings. That came next. Alright, alright, everyone, we're here.
Speaker 1: We saved the day. Yeah, here we go, thin blue line.
Speaker 1: So what happens all across Barcelona is the tremendously poorly
Speaker 1: organized army meet well organized when in trench resistance, and
Speaker 1: they're killed a turn back. So I want to give
Speaker 1: one example of this from Avenue D Carrier. It's related
Speaker 1: by Beaver in his book. Now, what they've done in
Speaker 1: the carrier was taken out huge rolls of newsprint like
Speaker 1: the stuff that you put newspaper on, and rolled them
Speaker 1: into the streets to make a barricade. Right, Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: the degree to which people were like ready in amusing
Speaker 1: ways is it's a great part of this, you know.
Speaker 1: That was what they had available to them. Seems to
Speaker 1: be stopping bullets. So is the way to stop bullets?
Speaker 1: It is, Yeah, lots of layers of newsprint, um, different places,
Speaker 1: so yes, it was yeah, yeah, it certainly seemed to
Speaker 1: work here. And they had their big old guns like
Speaker 1: Spanish mouses, certifying stops for a second, and a small
Speaker 1: group of workers and an assault guard close the distance
Speaker 1: between themselves and to seventy five millimeter field guns. But
Speaker 1: they're holding their rifles above their heads. They said that
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk and not to fight for a
Speaker 1: few minutes, to give a passionate speech informing the soldiers
Speaker 1: they've been lied to that the anarchists were not in revolt,
Speaker 1: that they were in fact part of a coup, and
Speaker 1: that they should not fire on their Predatorian brothers. It's
Speaker 1: not exactly clear what they said, but whatever they said,
Speaker 1: it worked, and very slowly the seed of class consciousness
Speaker 1: was planted and it bloomed in about the time it
Speaker 1: takes to turn a seventy five millimeter gun a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty degrees loaded and fired at your offices. Again,
Speaker 1: it's just so good like that that these powerful anecdotes
Speaker 1: of like someone just being like, ha, yeah, now that
Speaker 1: you phrase it like that, we're on the same team.
Speaker 1: Let me turn the stund Yeah, I ALSASO just love
Speaker 1: to think of a guy who has just been like
Speaker 1: previously like for God and country gets vaporized by seventy
Speaker 1: five millimet Again, it's truly magnificent to death. So the
Speaker 1: popular Olympians are still in town, right, Uh that they
Speaker 1: turned up to show off as anti fascist, but they
Speaker 1: didn't really expect to be showing off their anti fascist
Speaker 1: BUTTA fighters quite like this, But lots of and were
Speaker 1: winning participants. The Americans were down by the buck of
Speaker 1: ther market. You've probably been there, you've been to Barcelona.
Speaker 1: He probably bought an edible arrangement um what tourists like
Speaker 1: to do. Um. And they watched the streets around them
Speaker 1: turn into battle brands. You can see the bullet holes
Speaker 1: in the hotel where they stayed in some of the
Speaker 1: cafes around there, and that some of these bullet holes
Speaker 1: that should be mentioned from a sadah and altogether different battle.
Speaker 1: A year later and this day they popped out of
Speaker 1: their hotel rooms to take a look at what was
Speaker 1: going on, got shot at, and then went back inside
Speaker 1: and then out of different balconies. But they had this
Speaker 1: big of popping out of different balconies, like I don't
Speaker 1: understand what the fund is going on in their heads,
Speaker 1: whether like people keep shooting at us, let's continue to
Speaker 1: try different balconies. I can see doing that, just being serious, right,
Speaker 1: like yeah yeah yeah, they and they'd all made friends
Speaker 1: with Spanish people, right, they were just they were not
Speaker 1: the athletes of today that they were out late drinking
Speaker 1: every night, and they were really bummed, very quickly, very
Speaker 1: upset that we need to get stuck in like you know,
Speaker 1: we're young, healthy people and their diaries. They also right
Speaker 1: about seeing the Spanish women at the barricade and just
Speaker 1: being like, oh funk, yes this is outstanding. Yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're just like because they're very committed, right, like
Speaker 1: these these anti fatties are very committed to gender equality,
Speaker 1: Like they really are. And it's it's demonstable in all
Speaker 1: the communications about the popular Olympics, when they send stuff
Speaker 1: to unions and unions like here's a team. It's tend
Speaker 1: dude say like, well that's fucking disappointing, Like where are
Speaker 1: the women? What are we doing here? Hey? How are
Speaker 1: we making the world better with just a bunch of
Speaker 1: dudes exercising together? Like? Um? So that it really is.
Speaker 1: I think it's very genuine commitment for them, and they're yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just so pumped. So when the fighting lolls, these
Speaker 1: guys come running out and they saw those cavalry horses, right,
Speaker 1: the cavalry horses that they'd expected to parade down the
Speaker 1: Rambler in the victorious coup had now been stacked on
Speaker 1: top of each other as barricades, and so the horses, Yes,
Speaker 1: they used the horses as cover. You can find pictures
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, yeah, it kind of the horses didn't
Speaker 1: want to be fascists. Yeah, but I think you can
Speaker 1: take some solace in knowing that the people who are
Speaker 1: riding them also got killed. Yeah, you say, the horses
Speaker 1: didn't want to be fascist. This is in the intersection
Speaker 1: of ship. You enjoy Robert Actually, yeah, yeah, shifting on
Speaker 1: horses and hating fascists, which are the same horses would
Speaker 1: be very good at shifting on fascists for a great night.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I know, r I P. Horses did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: Paul went out for the horses. So Charlie Burley runs
Speaker 1: down into the street, right, He's pretty accustomed to fighting.
Speaker 1: He's a boxer. He is a mixed race kid who
Speaker 1: grew up in Pittsburgh. He's refused to go to the
Speaker 1: Olympics because he doesn't want any of Hitler's bullshit and
Speaker 1: he doesn't speak Spanish. So all he needed, oh he
Speaker 1: knows how to do. It's pick up a crowbar, start
Speaker 1: leavering up paving stones and helping to build a barricade
Speaker 1: the universal language, yeah, breaking ship. And so he just
Speaker 1: gets stuck in and now I'm rhythm do right. These
Speaker 1: barricades he built, like I said, they were so strong
Speaker 1: that they would stop like artillery across the city whipped
Speaker 1: and snaps of bullets cracked across the wide boulevards that
Speaker 1: cut through the regimented grid as the exemplar snipers were
Speaker 1: stationed in the bell towers of churches. They picked off
Speaker 1: the newly formed People's militiaies a dash between the barricades
Speaker 1: carrying ammunition of food. A French athlete the right wing snipers.
Speaker 1: That's correct. Yeah, yeah, so that you will definitely read it.
Speaker 1: They were priests, but they're not. I don't think, just
Speaker 1: a weird you know, if you're gonna put a sniper,
Speaker 1: then you want to put something up there who knows
Speaker 1: how chees a rifle. But yeah, that makes yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so they probably weren't pretty that doesn't mean the priests.
Speaker 1: We're not betting them. Surely were. It's some points, um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is why the churches get burned. It's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons. A group of German exiles suspected
Speaker 1: their companies diplomats might be involved, so they raided their
Speaker 1: homes and found massive statues of weapons, which is great.
Speaker 1: The Republic had very liberal asylum policies, So you have
Speaker 1: a town of German Italian anti fascists already in town
Speaker 1: and elsewhere. People found each other in the streets, were
Speaker 1: joined up with pre existing affinity groups to form Centuria
Speaker 1: Centorio is a Latin word for units for a hundred soldiers.
Speaker 1: They're broadly based on language, and they're named after some
Speaker 1: famous leftist like Tom Mann, Karl Marx or Salomon Rent
Speaker 1: their founder of Antifa with a capital uh. Later these
Speaker 1: would become the nucleus of the International Brigades. But the
Speaker 1: International Brigades were the army of the commintern and the
Speaker 1: Centuria went basically like under Soviet control. Yes, that's right
Speaker 1: there Soviet controlled communist internationals, so they would not trying
Speaker 1: lee stylist more or less right, and certainly like you
Speaker 1: can read our ship hand about the International Brigades going
Speaker 1: from a broad popular front leftist alliance to straight up
Speaker 1: stylist and what that does to their their desire to
Speaker 1: fight and their ability to fight. And I would suggest
Speaker 1: that it's not great, but it's a story as all
Speaker 1: the time, Yes it is. Yeah, draw your own conclusions.
Speaker 1: Cecil lb is very good on that if you want
Speaker 1: read his book. So these Centuria don't have officers, and
Speaker 1: they certainly don't have commissars. Right and off their roll
Speaker 1: too fight the Nazis. By eleven am, General Goddard has
Speaker 1: landed from New Yorker. He was hoping to command the city,
Speaker 1: which he The nationalists thought that the Backburner would be
Speaker 1: the easiest city for them, right, they thought it was
Speaker 1: a soft target. They were wrong. I don't know what again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not smart. It was only through the intervention of Caddida,
Speaker 1: her son incidentally killed Trotsky, that his life was spared.
Speaker 1: He hold up in the headquarters. Headquarters was over run.
Speaker 1: They wanted to execute him immediately. She intervened. She says, no,
Speaker 1: you know, we've gotta we gotta do this pretended justice.
Speaker 1: So we put him on the prison ship of Uruguay
Speaker 1: and then he's killed a little later, after a court martial.
Speaker 1: He's executed a few weeks later in the mounch Wee Castle.
Speaker 1: That day in the mounch Wee Castle, the troops had
Speaker 1: shot their officers and the n c o s had
Speaker 1: lead did a raid on the armory where they began
Speaker 1: and distributing guns to anarchists. Again yeah, very cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love to see it. The Cattle Left and the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church had some historical disagreements. Right, the Church had
Speaker 1: a long history of violence towards the left, and the
Speaker 1: left had equally long history of violence towards the church.
Speaker 1: The church had been part of brutal oppression of the
Speaker 1: working class, right victimization of people, especially of working class women,
Speaker 1: and as troops withdrew from the city in July, anarchists
Speaker 1: began to take revenge against the churches. Nun's corpses were disinterred,
Speaker 1: priests accused of collaboration were executed. By the afternoon, the
Speaker 1: sky began to fill with smoke. Churches burned all over
Speaker 1: the city. Sometimes they have these things called checkers, which
Speaker 1: are like revenutionary tribunals where they put the priests or
Speaker 1: the churches themselves. Later outside Madrid, there's a famous photo
Speaker 1: of them like executing a giant statue of Jesus tries
Speaker 1: so after put it on trial. That's watch in the
Speaker 1: future for Robert Evans is that is a pretty funny bit.
Speaker 1: It's good. There's a firing squad and everything. That is
Speaker 1: like a pretty good dedication to the bit. You've got it.
Speaker 1: Whether or not you agree with it, you have to
Speaker 1: respect it. Yeah, yeah, it's a good T shirt. Maybe
Speaker 1: we could return to merch and have that that image.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some Catholics rebuilt it. Daddy, it's it's no
Speaker 1: longer riddled with bullet holes in its face. Well, let's
Speaker 1: time to do well, yeah, you know what that means. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's time to kill God and storm heaven. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: redistribute all the stuff harps for everyone. Yeah. People wore robes. Actually,
Speaker 1: this became a bit of an issue because people will
Speaker 1: be like, lo, look at me, I'm wearing a robe.
Speaker 1: I pretend to be a priest. And then other people
Speaker 1: will be like, fuck you priest and shoot them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't do that. Actually, ropes for everyone. Bad idea.
Speaker 1: At a time of anti clerical violence. What you can
Speaker 1: do is drink all the communion wine, which is what
Speaker 1: they did. I'm sorry. All the blood of Christ is
Speaker 1: what they're donk. Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Actually, I guess
Speaker 1: it only becomes that in the stomach. Yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: a bad Catholic. I don't remember any of this. Or
Speaker 1: it's just wine until they until they do the thing
Speaker 1: and say the words, and then there's something special happens.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the the Eucharist. So it was the
Speaker 1: pre blood. Yeah, it's it's pretty glad. It's just sweet wine.
Speaker 1: M By the twenties, a July, the military was all
Speaker 1: but done for in a city, right, But they some
Speaker 1: of them had retreated back to their barracks immediately. They
Speaker 1: came out promptly, got shot up by a ship ton
Speaker 1: of people and went nope, and poll returned to the barracks.
Speaker 1: So smarter than the tourists at the hotel. Yes, although
Speaker 1: I know about that because these guys end up dying
Speaker 1: there and the tourists do not, the side one. But yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: idea true. Well I would be lying if I said
Speaker 1: the tourists do not, because one of those tourists does,
Speaker 1: a guy called Albert I'll Chacken. They called him chick.
Speaker 1: He was a coach of the team, community college professor actually,
Speaker 1: and he leaves, goes back to America and just can't
Speaker 1: deal with like missing. It's not so much at the
Speaker 1: guilt of not being there. It's and I think some
Speaker 1: of us maybe can relate to this in a way, right,
Speaker 1: like the missing of being there too, like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how special it feels roberts off. Robert can relate
Speaker 1: to this, right, like sometimes it's some time you feel
Speaker 1: the most alive is when you're trying not to be dead.
Speaker 1: But also like this was a fucking awesome time right,
Speaker 1: Like the cops have joined the working class, the churches
Speaker 1: are on fire, the bosses are running for the hills,
Speaker 1: and the army has just had its ass handed to
Speaker 1: it by like a bunch of men and women in
Speaker 1: blue overrules. Like I can imagine. It felt pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And so he goes home and then he decided to
Speaker 1: come back. He comes back with his wife. His wife
Speaker 1: wins the first art therapy program for children traumatized by conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the the pictures are ECSD. I used to go
Speaker 1: sit with them all the time, just kind of I
Speaker 1: don't feels like a special place, like a nice connection.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of stuff that gets like left out
Speaker 1: of history too much, too rights. These contributions like and
Speaker 1: these like developments that come from political articles that are
Speaker 1: like not just the gun the Robert you know, or
Speaker 1: the you know, season of workplaces, but the developing of
Speaker 1: art therapy for people dealing with traumatic event that rules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely right, Like these people made homeward bombs, but they
Speaker 1: also made it easier for kids to process their trauma
Speaker 1: and like that's what anarchism is, folks. But yeah, Jenny Burman,
Speaker 1: they hyphenated their last names Berman Chaken, uh yeah, advanced, Yeah,
Speaker 1: highly progressive. Yeah, his wife Jenny was definitely the radical
Speaker 1: and she she sort of brought him on and he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, fucking you got it. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: goes back. You can see the pictures at UCSD. They're
Speaker 1: online too. But Al dies in a sort of chaotic
Speaker 1: retreat to the International Brigade. No one knows where. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to write a book about him, have some
Speaker 1: of his diaries. Just an inspirational guy in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, very nice guy. He's also like he sort
Speaker 1: of draws a lot of disdain from the other passengers
Speaker 1: on the boat when they're crossing the first time, because
Speaker 1: the passages keep getting mad that the black folks and
Speaker 1: the white folks are eating at the same table at
Speaker 1: dinner from the popular Olympics team, and he's just like
Speaker 1: super mad at this and like why would you be
Speaker 1: that way? So it just keeps like getting And he
Speaker 1: is a wrestler, right, He's a collegiate wrestler. He at
Speaker 1: Olympic trials, just keeps getting in people's faces about it.
Speaker 1: I guess, which like, yeah, is I guess being an
Speaker 1: ally or something. But yes, Jenny Berman is in there's
Speaker 1: a film called The Good Fight, which is about the
Speaker 1: American volunteers, and you can see her talking about him. Cool,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think it's it's obviously pretty difficult experience
Speaker 1: for her talking about him, but I'm sure the whole
Speaker 1: thing it's pretty rough, given you know, the things that
Speaker 1: happened afterwards. But yeah, again, I'm a wonderful person. She's
Speaker 1: passed away now. But yeah, actually it's it's the interview.
Speaker 1: It's the full interview with her that I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: us I can write about him, and yes, she does.
Speaker 1: Look at The Good Fight. It's a good film. So
Speaker 1: on the twenty July, the anarchists are assembling outside these barracks. Right,
Speaker 1: they had to support of the police, but I didn't
Speaker 1: want it anymore, and so they assembled their own troops instead, right,
Speaker 1: Gati Olivier, Abat de Sanio, Lascasso and anesome Chad Shit,
Speaker 1: and they do what the anarchists did at this time,
Speaker 1: which is they lead a frontal charge on the barracks
Speaker 1: where they are still machine guns, and so they are
Speaker 1: brave but perhaps not tactically astute. I've read about this
Speaker 1: where basically one of the problems that people had, like
Speaker 1: strategically about the anarchists is that the anarchists in Spain
Speaker 1: were so uh fervent in their beliefs that they basically
Speaker 1: were like, hooray, soon I will be a murder and
Speaker 1: like all charged the machine guns and like weren't always
Speaker 1: the most strategic is that map to your understanding? Or
Speaker 1: in the early days of the civil war, they're like
Speaker 1: because they have been raised for decades of propaganda of
Speaker 1: the deed, right uh, And like propaganda of the deed
Speaker 1: is is saying like, you know, like you can die
Speaker 1: as a hero and become an example to the working
Speaker 1: class and you will elevate the cause. So it's close
Speaker 1: to martyrdom as you can get in an atheist political
Speaker 1: belief I think. And yes, so they would just like
Speaker 1: like Ascarsa Ascarso is a famous anarchist leader. Ascarso is
Speaker 1: a guy who dies like literally leading the charge frontly
Speaker 1: on a machine gun at this time, at this barracks, right,
Speaker 1: he dies in less than twenty four hours after the
Speaker 1: war started. And he's a member of this Nostos group
Speaker 1: with the Routine and others and Garthie Oliver, and he's
Speaker 1: the one who gives his name to the pistol. Right,
Speaker 1: So in Talassa, the CMT, the the anarchists, anarchis single
Speaker 1: guests take over an arms factory, taken over, the workers
Speaker 1: run the factory, and they start making these pistols with
Speaker 1: his name. It's like the only gun that is not
Speaker 1: in some way morally compromised. So I guess in that
Speaker 1: sense he goes on to kill a lot of fascists
Speaker 1: and yeah, but yeah, they don't want the help of
Speaker 1: the police, they don't want the tactical advice. The Routie
Speaker 1: actually later is very good at this. He had regular
Speaker 1: army officers embedded with his column and he listened to them,
Speaker 1: and that allows him to be more successful than the
Speaker 1: other anarchists. But yeah, here the battle cries Atlantembre, which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, forward, men of the c NT.
Speaker 1: They had women to but I guess that's not what
Speaker 1: they were going for. And they took the barracks along
Speaker 1: with thirty thousand rifles. Pretty much all of those would
Speaker 1: be in the hands of working people within a couple
Speaker 1: of days. Yeah, there's a vast like this is a
Speaker 1: decent slice of the Republic's weapons until they get resupplied later.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, like the Soviet Union and Mexico supply them,
Speaker 1: but they the Republican government in Madrid doesn't want people
Speaker 1: supplying the anarchists, so only um CZ overzor the Czech
Speaker 1: Gun Company are willing to elicitly violate two different arms
Speaker 1: embargoes to supply the anarchists. Later in the worst yeah
Speaker 1: based cz Yeah, maybe we can have them be the
Speaker 1: advert for this episode. Finally, a a solid case for
Speaker 1: the hammer fired arm and in in modern days they
Speaker 1: have to honor the legacy of c Z. Yeah. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: the only the only morally correct firearm to buy. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done that? Motherfucker's Nope, No, I don't see any
Speaker 1: glocks in an anarchist hands. Uh yeah. By thirty two
Speaker 1: a c P because it also killed Hitler. It's the
Speaker 1: most anti fascist you can you can. Hitler killed Hitler,
Speaker 1: but you know we don't have to go there fascist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: critical support to Hitler, or you could say, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know who else tried to kill Hitler? Hitler he
Speaker 1: did once before in nineteen three after the failed Munich putsch,
Speaker 1: but his friend puts the han Stengel's wife, who he
Speaker 1: had a crush on, from killing himself which was a mistake. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she let the team down. So see that's where cz
Speaker 1: came in, giving him an efficient way to kill himself
Speaker 1: with no wives around. Did have a wive around, didn't he? See? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Sez. Hitler's dead. And with that, let's go
Speaker 1: back to Spain Catalonia. I guess um. So the French
Speaker 1: Popular Olympics team left that day. They sang the International
Speaker 1: Aisle from the deck of their boat as they pulled
Speaker 1: out the port. A few days later, on the Rambler
Speaker 1: Parade was organized. The various nations of the Popular Olympics
Speaker 1: march down the street led inexplicably buy some bagpipers who
Speaker 1: had arrived with the British team. Hell yeah, that's another
Speaker 1: international bag page. Yeah yeah, yeah, why why not? I
Speaker 1: love that? Like, yeah, some anti fascist bagpipers had been
Speaker 1: recruited by this point, and they all sang the International
Speaker 1: in their own languages, did the race fist salute that
Speaker 1: would become the popular French salute. And they heard a
Speaker 1: speech and in the speech they were told, you've come
Speaker 1: for the Games, but you have remained for the greater
Speaker 1: front in battling in triumph. Now your task is clear.
Speaker 1: You'll go back to your countries and spread the word,
Speaker 1: the news of what you've seen in Spain. So some
Speaker 1: of them went back and some of them stayed. All
Speaker 1: in all, about two hundred of them actually uh stayed
Speaker 1: to fight or came back to fight. Um. Some of
Speaker 1: their names Bill Scott. He was an irishman who came
Speaker 1: for the games. He he went back and forth between
Speaker 1: Spain and Island. A bunch wrote in. Some wrote some
Speaker 1: letters to newspapers to encourage other people to join. His
Speaker 1: big slogan was a victory for fascism in Spain is
Speaker 1: a victory for fascism in Ireland. Um the that's the
Speaker 1: same slogan that the other side used to write. Yes,
Speaker 1: but the Irish volunteers who fought for the fascists were
Speaker 1: fucking exceptionally useless. Yeah yeah, and may have excelled more
Speaker 1: than Iris volunteers who fought for the anti fascists. A
Speaker 1: killing fascist, which I guess critical support to them. Um.
Speaker 1: He fights in the Battle of Madrid, Bill Scott, we
Speaker 1: gets shot in the neck? Or will style do they go? Robert?
Speaker 1: Maybe they really were sticking their next out m hm.
Speaker 1: And you've got Otto Bosch. Otto Bosch was a lover
Speaker 1: of novelists and poet Muriel Rook isiser. He was a
Speaker 1: cabinet maker, sprinter and literally an actual card carrying Antifa member,
Speaker 1: and now he was a soldier. Um, he also died.
Speaker 1: The sad part about this part of the war is
Speaker 1: everyone dies pretty quickly afterwards. Yeah, yeah, it's really sad.
Speaker 1: These people are, you know, as good as people came
Speaker 1: and they all end up dead. But let's not talk
Speaker 1: about that. I whant to focus on the victorious part. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that evening right, Ruccioli there, and about this Anthion
Speaker 1: go and meet with compounds. Ascaso is dead right because
Speaker 1: he was on his heroics nest in their monos. They're
Speaker 1: still covered in blood and they're still carrying their weapons
Speaker 1: with bitches away. One should meet with a politician. So
Speaker 1: he gives them this little speech and I, like some
Speaker 1: people say it's apocryphal. I don't really give a funk.
Speaker 1: I think it's nice. I'm going to read it. It's
Speaker 1: not very long. Um. Firstly, I must say that the
Speaker 1: C and T and the FI have never been treated
Speaker 1: as a true importance merited. You have always been halfhly persecuted.
Speaker 1: And I with much regret was forced by political necessity
Speaker 1: to oppose you, even though I always once with you.
Speaker 1: Today you are the masters of the city and of Catalonia,
Speaker 1: because you alone have conquered the fascist military. And I
Speaker 1: hope that you will not forget that you did not
Speaker 1: lack the help of the loyal members of my party.
Speaker 1: But you have one and orders in your power. If
Speaker 1: you do not need me as president of Catalonia, tell
Speaker 1: me now, and I will become just another soldier in
Speaker 1: the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand, and
Speaker 1: you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige
Speaker 1: could be of use, then you can depend on me
Speaker 1: in my yalty as a man who is convinced that
Speaker 1: the whole past of shame is dead. So that's nice.
Speaker 1: That that's cool. I mean, it's yeah, interesting, you know, right,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. I think it's the clearest we get to
Speaker 1: a person at a time, being Like in the last
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, I have gone from president to a
Speaker 1: guy who has to ask the anarchist for a rifle
Speaker 1: so I can fight. Yeah, And like it's a you know,
Speaker 1: people get on that the Lensky stuff, but this is
Speaker 1: kind of different. I guess you know, like it's good
Speaker 1: to find someone who cares about a cause more than power. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a rule, if it's your job to be in
Speaker 1: charge of people, I'm probably not a fan of that
Speaker 1: job existing. But if when it comes down to it,
Speaker 1: you you you throw down rather than the hide in
Speaker 1: a bunker or flee the country to live in exile
Speaker 1: in I don't know, whatever friendly country, then that's better
Speaker 1: than the alternative. Yeah, yeah, i'd agree, And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: being more attached to this and to your self preservation
Speaker 1: or your power, I think is admirable. M For example,
Speaker 1: if Joe Biden had burned down the Third Precinct himself,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would feel more positively
Speaker 1: towards him. He did, though we're not supposed to talk
Speaker 1: about this on the podcast, guys, all right, you're right,
Speaker 1: this is this is yeah again wraps until the midterms
Speaker 1: really start to heat up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's surprisive
Speaker 1: video of Joe Biden with a firebomb. I was told
Speaker 1: that he had a kind of ax body sprain of
Speaker 1: lighter mm hmmm. Yeah, that's how he normally roles when
Speaker 1: he's in block And al right, sorry, that image is
Speaker 1: like so cursed that I'm like Joe Biden and Block
Speaker 1: doing the smile like he's in the Camaro but just
Speaker 1: holding the ax body spin. But everyone can figure out
Speaker 1: it's him because he keeps touching people and everyone is
Speaker 1: get sniffing everybody's hair, asking if he can smell the
Speaker 1: inside of their bala clavas. Uncle Joe a hero, true
Speaker 1: anti fascist? Are you are you going dark Brandon on us? Oh? God,
Speaker 1: we are. We gonna have to explain what dark bread
Speaker 1: it is on the pod. I don't think we need to.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's ever going to be irrelevant. I
Speaker 1: think we'll just say let's go brand. Get up, kids,
Speaker 1: Just type dark Brandon into your Twitter search and see
Speaker 1: what happened and educate yourself right now. But please get yeah,
Speaker 1: please do because I don't have a clue. No, I
Speaker 1: have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: on the internet enough and I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: want to be um So things go differently wan across
Speaker 1: the country right um the Navy. I'm waiting to hear
Speaker 1: Margaret squeal or scream or cry. I just don't understand, Okay.
Speaker 1: I think it's that he's a vampire. Yes, go fucking
Speaker 1: go ahead, tell us about dark brand. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just weird. I don't want to know. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't need to know. It's fine, Okay, it's it's a
Speaker 1: good time. It's it's it's a good time on the internet.
Speaker 1: That's on the dark Brandon is all right. The Navy
Speaker 1: doesn't fall for the coup, right, and this leads to
Speaker 1: this spectacular exchange between the crew of Him the James,
Speaker 1: the first Battleship right of the Ministry of Marine, Crew
Speaker 1: to Ministry of Marine. We have encountered serious resistance from
Speaker 1: the commands and officers on board crew to Ministry of Marine.
Speaker 1: We have subdued them by force. Urgently request instructions as
Speaker 1: to bodies. Ministry to Marine to crew, lower the bodies
Speaker 1: overboard with respectable solemnity. What is your present position? So
Speaker 1: what they've done there is the officers have declared for
Speaker 1: the crew for the coup, and the minute the sailors
Speaker 1: on board the ship have killed them and throwing them
Speaker 1: over the edge. Subdued by force, what do we do
Speaker 1: with the people we have subdued? Just the most amazing
Speaker 1: radio message like the officers turned out to be Rudd's
Speaker 1: and then like, brief pause, what do you want us
Speaker 1: to do with their bodies? Again? King? Shit. So it's
Speaker 1: a few days before the battle lines really get drawn
Speaker 1: as to who is where, who's on what side of
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War. It's a few days before it
Speaker 1: becomes clear that this is a civil war because without boats,
Speaker 1: the rebels seemed to be in trouble, but the Fascists
Speaker 1: came to their abe with planes to where lift the
Speaker 1: troops from Africa. The Republic had more troops and more
Speaker 1: access to supplies, and it looked like they were going
Speaker 1: to win a war of attrition. That doesn't work out
Speaker 1: because France, the UK, and the United States abandoned Spain
Speaker 1: and the Fascists do not abandon Franca. I don't really
Speaker 1: want to finish there. I want to backtrack and think
Speaker 1: about how many times in the past or the present
Speaker 1: the working class of a city is spontaneously organized to
Speaker 1: prevent an army from entering that city, and it's actually
Speaker 1: in the age of the tank and the bomber. I
Speaker 1: can't already think of any and I know if you
Speaker 1: guys can, but I couldn't come up with one. I
Speaker 1: got nothing. Yeah, anyone, I mean other than Kiev kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, some of it was at least spontaneous, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't against their own army, like they had
Speaker 1: an army, no, that is, yeah, I mean you could
Speaker 1: there are pieces of that, and it was it was
Speaker 1: not as organized or clearly as successful in you know,
Speaker 1: the Holy Week uprisings and the Watts riots and stuff. Yeah, yeah, true, yeah,
Speaker 1: pieces of it. Yeah, I mean even like in Minneapolis, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: where the state didn't exist for a while. But uh, this,
Speaker 1: this revolution is somewhat unique at least in that right.
Speaker 1: And what happens afterwards and what happened in the Civil
Speaker 1: War isn't what I want to end on. You can
Speaker 1: see this kind of idea in ken Loach's film Land
Speaker 1: and Freedom, that that this was a romantic failure, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. I think that the the
Speaker 1: only way for the Civil Water succeed was doing what
Speaker 1: it did. For the Republic to succeed was doing what
Speaker 1: it did well, and what it did well with harnessing
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm and passion of the working class people to
Speaker 1: build a better world for themselves. When it became not
Speaker 1: worth fighting and dying for something. Then the war was
Speaker 1: already lost for a lot of people. Trying to mass
Speaker 1: behind a conventional war effort doesn't make sense when your
Speaker 1: enemy has every advantage in a conventional war effort. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to focus on that. I want to
Speaker 1: focus on the last week, when the cities in the
Speaker 1: hands of the people, when there are no cops and
Speaker 1: no bosses, but people go back to work as collectives,
Speaker 1: when there's no money, but people distribute food to people
Speaker 1: who need it all across Spain, and not just at
Speaker 1: the bar of a gun. People collectivized, the collectivizing castile,
Speaker 1: and the socialized industry and Lentcia And it's a remarkable
Speaker 1: moment in human history, and it doesn't last more than
Speaker 1: a year, but I think it shows us that this,
Speaker 1: this other future was possible. Right. The path we took
Speaker 1: from six to the present day was not the best one,
Speaker 1: but I like to think that, just for just for
Speaker 1: a little while, it could have done better. And and
Speaker 1: I think that's where I want to end really, is
Speaker 1: thinking about how we could do better. And if people
Speaker 1: want to read books, Sister has already been a long episode,
Speaker 1: I will say Helen Graham's very short introduction is very good. Um.
Speaker 1: Anthony Beavo's newer book is good, and you can get
Speaker 1: an audiobook. Julian Casa Nova. It's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: writers in Spanish and some of his stuff is translated
Speaker 1: into English. Augustine Giarmad's book Ready for the Revolution on
Speaker 1: the affinity groups of the CNT and and Chris ellen
Speaker 1: stuff on Barcelona is excellent. And if you're in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: Nick Lloyd's Walking Towards are excellent. Yeah, that's hope. That's
Speaker 1: enough there. You can watch kind of loches film. You
Speaker 1: can watch I think it's called Parallel Mothers. That's on Netflix.
Speaker 1: A couple of good films. Yeah, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Margaret again for joining me too, and hem me drone
Speaker 1: on about the Spanish Civil War for an hour and
Speaker 1: I'm into it. I didn't know, well, I I've only
Speaker 1: been learning the details more recently, you know, I've always
Speaker 1: just heard about it in in broad strokes and the like.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people like talking about what
Speaker 1: it means, right, But talking about what it means is cool.
Speaker 1: But the stuff that's like really interesting to me is
Speaker 1: the stuff that actually like makes it matter is the
Speaker 1: the person who shows up and you know, develops ways
Speaker 1: to deal with trauma by art therapy. And the people
Speaker 1: who bravely steal dynamite and become named named Rosa the Dynamite.
Speaker 1: What was what was her name? Yeah? Yeah, she los
Speaker 1: the hand. Yeah, it's better than Rose of the Riveter.
Speaker 1: I mean, no offense the Rose of the Riveter. But
Speaker 1: Rose of the Dynamiter is is is doing well? Um?
Speaker 1: What was it called? Dynamiter? Go after all of the libraries,
Speaker 1: keeping the books in prison free knowledge keepers of thought.
Speaker 1: I really like variants taken away get canceled, but I
Speaker 1: like libraries and librarians. You all aren't ready for this discourse, Margaret,
Speaker 1: But librarial comblematic. That's how we know you're a CIA
Speaker 1: asset because your pro library style. Yeah, exactly, classic capitalist infrastructure.
Speaker 1: What where did the CIA train all those people to
Speaker 1: overthrow governments? The School of the America's what does every
Speaker 1: school have library? Libraries? Is the problem because that's the
Speaker 1: School of America's is there's two things wrong with School
Speaker 1: of America's school and Americas. The problem is the school part.
Speaker 1: I think the real problem is School of the Americas
Speaker 1: that had school in the Dame and We can't have that.
Speaker 1: That is, that's an opressive, hierarchical system of learning. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: If America Vespucci never came here, maybe things would be different,
Speaker 1: maybe even better. Anti Italian slander, I'm here for it. Well,
Speaker 1: let's all end on that note. Fuck Italy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: funk traffic lights, Margaret. Do you have anything to plug?
Speaker 1: I do. People can get my they can pre order
Speaker 1: my book that is all about why traffic lights are bad. Um.
Speaker 1: It's called we Won't be here Tomorrow, and it's written
Speaker 1: from the point of view of a traffic light that no,
Speaker 1: it's knows it's about to be abolished. It's out from
Speaker 1: a k press Um who uses the red and black
Speaker 1: flag is the logo, and much like the anarchist in
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War who developed the red and black flag,
Speaker 1: which is to reference, of course, the negation of the red,
Speaker 1: because the red in the traffic light is what stops you, um,
Speaker 1: and so the black is the negation with the red
Speaker 1: in this in this case, and that's what happens when
Speaker 1: you disconnect a traffic light from power. It goes black. No,
Speaker 1: it's disconnecting ship, Robert. People are shooting the traffic light.
Speaker 1: And you know what a K Do you know what press?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Do you know what a k? Press? Cells?
Speaker 1: Books and and books? Where where do books get kept?
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, it's all. It's your everyone is
Speaker 1: in on it. Okay. Well, if you don't want to
Speaker 1: be part of the evil world, you can do what
Speaker 1: is clearly good, which is listened to podcasts and create
Speaker 1: para of social relationships. Yes, the proletic medium of podcasting.
Speaker 1: And if you want to create a para social relationship
Speaker 1: with me, you can listen to my podcasts, one of
Speaker 1: which is called Live Like the World Is Dying. It's
Speaker 1: an individual and community preparedness podcast. And the other one
Speaker 1: is called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is
Speaker 1: all about people who defend libraries from people like you,
Speaker 1: um and anti anti learning, nihilist radicals. Yeah, anti lib reaction.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. That's it. That's that's what that
Speaker 1: that is why I fly the black and gray. I'll
Speaker 1: just watching alight, alright, Thank you wants to make me
Speaker 1: an an arccho goth flag that was black and then
Speaker 1: black lace. That's great, Thanks for I would fly that
Speaker 1: al right, Well, thank you for listening. James. Where can
Speaker 1: people find you online? I'm on the internet. You can
Speaker 1: just put in my name at James Stout on Twitter. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I write things I will talk about in there. Great,
Speaker 1: well you can find me at I right, Okay, you
Speaker 1: can follow the show on by cool Stone Media and
Speaker 1: happened here pod and send any complaints to at Sorry
Speaker 1: no send no, send any complaints to. Okay, Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I don't read responses. Bye bye, bye, bye bye. It
Speaker 1: could happen here is the podcast that This is where
Speaker 1: we talk about things that are happening here. Generally things
Speaker 1: fallen apart um, sometimes things getting put back together. Today
Speaker 1: we have a story that I wasn't sure if we
Speaker 1: were ever going to cover. Um. In brief, we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about a group called Black Hammer that
Speaker 1: is on its surface a leftist anti colonial political organization UM,
Speaker 1: and in reality is more or less occult. Um. The
Speaker 1: reason we're talking about them is that at someone is
Speaker 1: now dead connected with them. The story is interesting and
Speaker 1: messy and says a lot about the way social media
Speaker 1: works today and the way that the United States is
Speaker 1: essentially like forty different cults in a trench coat. UM.
Speaker 1: So uh, today, I'm here with James Stout and we
Speaker 1: are talking with journalist W. F. Thomas. H. Thomas? What
Speaker 1: do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? How?
Speaker 1: How are you doing today? Uh? Today is a day. Um,
Speaker 1: this story is stuff is still coming out. About an
Speaker 1: hour ago, charges were finally posted, um for the cult leader. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's further a long Yeah the story. You hear
Speaker 1: chirping in the background, those are for live chickens. So
Speaker 1: my apologies a little babies. I just got rabbits that
Speaker 1: I have now living in my my chicken facility, and
Speaker 1: they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having
Speaker 1: little animals around all right, So who are Black Hammer
Speaker 1: and how did how did they get to the present position?
Speaker 1: So I think we should probably start with like nineteen right,
Speaker 1: is kind of when these these folks sort of start
Speaker 1: to come on the scene. Yeah, Um, you know you
Speaker 1: could take this story back a lot further. Let's do that. Um.
Speaker 1: So sometime in the late eighties, Um, Augustus Romaine Jr.
Speaker 1: Is born. Um, this is the person we're commonly known
Speaker 1: as Gazikazo. Um. They used they then pronouns too. Would
Speaker 1: go on to be the leader of this group. Um.
Speaker 1: You know Caso grew up in Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. UM,
Speaker 1: and in the early tens had kind of a lifestyle
Speaker 1: blogger YouTube thing going on. Um was a self professed
Speaker 1: Cosmos biggest fan, and generally seemed like they were trying
Speaker 1: to get famous. Yeah, like influencers style famous. Right, this
Speaker 1: was not at all political at this period. Yeah. And UM,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be kind of the red thread through this
Speaker 1: story is Caso. I'm gonna refer to them as Caso.
Speaker 1: I guess this remained junior. Um. Wanting to be famous
Speaker 1: is kind of, unfortunately the main thing that drives most
Speaker 1: of what has happened. Um. At some point, you know,
Speaker 1: in the mid um, Cardso took this turn and started
Speaker 1: making more incendiary videos. UM. I don't have them directly
Speaker 1: in front of me, so I don't want to misquote them. Um,
Speaker 1: but kind of like going out pushing this concept like
Speaker 1: white people are evil, going for this very specific type
Speaker 1: of leftism, and um Ghazi Caaso gets taken taken under
Speaker 1: the wing of and I'm going to mispronounce this name,
Speaker 1: uh O'Malley, Yes should tell um. And this is a
Speaker 1: person who is leading a group in St. Petersburg, Florida
Speaker 1: called the African People's Socialist Party UM and Africans People
Speaker 1: Socialist Party. It was part of this larger thing called
Speaker 1: the Huru Solidarity Movement. I don't know if they're still around,
Speaker 1: but you know their their ideology was third world communism,
Speaker 1: African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the word of Huru, because
Speaker 1: that's something if you if you've ever been in and
Speaker 1: around Proud Boys. First off, I'm sorry, it's not a
Speaker 1: fun experience generally, but they they like to shout at
Speaker 1: huru um. And I understand that that's kind of related
Speaker 1: one way or they outed the other to this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um, I don't have it directly in front of
Speaker 1: me what or whuru means. But you know the reason
Speaker 1: help ways say that is because of Gazi Cazo. There
Speaker 1: are times several times when Caso spoke made appearances with
Speaker 1: Gavin Mcinness, founder of the Proud Boys, and Cazo generally
Speaker 1: became and still is treated as a loll cow um
Speaker 1: kind of this target for derision to poke at to
Speaker 1: see what is this person doing, which is still happening
Speaker 1: right now. Unfortunately, UM. You know, Caso rose through the
Speaker 1: ranks of this group UM and then eventually found out
Speaker 1: that this is basically a cult. The African People's Socialist
Speaker 1: Party UM had a specific focus on membership from colonized people,
Speaker 1: people of color UM, but it turns out this was
Speaker 1: being steered entirely by a group of white people. So
Speaker 1: it's out of the ashes of this experience, this abusive
Speaker 1: experience UM, this Coli group, Corso along with some other
Speaker 1: people leave this group and they go onto for a
Speaker 1: Black Hammer in February of two thousand nineteen, which the
Speaker 1: originally was the Black Hammer Organization UM. And there's some
Speaker 1: really good write ups, especially read Voice. Definitely recommend that,
Speaker 1: and there are I think you broke out for a second.
Speaker 1: So the title of that article is the Devil Wears
Speaker 1: a Dashiki. It's like six seven parts, but it's really
Speaker 1: good comprehence and that gets into a lot of what
Speaker 1: that's where I get a lot of this information from UM,
Speaker 1: and there were Additionally, what would happen is some of
Speaker 1: these people who founded this grew Black Hammer Organization, who
Speaker 1: are also parts of the African People's Socialist Party UM
Speaker 1: would disavow GHAZI Kadza would disabout Black Hammer and have
Speaker 1: kind of their own statement about here's what happened, you know,
Speaker 1: and which they say, Hey, we never recovered from this
Speaker 1: experience in this traumatic group, in this cult like group,
Speaker 1: and instead of went on to found this new one,
Speaker 1: and we're very you know, it was kind of failed
Speaker 1: from the start to become this other cult like group.
Speaker 1: So just to clarify on the hurry thing that it
Speaker 1: comes from the African People's Socialist Party, right, and then
Speaker 1: he's they have taken it and run with it in
Speaker 1: the Black Hammer organization. So the African People's Socialist Party
Speaker 1: was part of this umbrella or group called the Who
Speaker 1: Solidarity Movement. This group is still around if you look
Speaker 1: at like the Channel five with Andrew Callen and has
Speaker 1: a video where they go to this march for reparations,
Speaker 1: and that group is the Huger Solidarity Movement. Got it,
Speaker 1: Okay if you're familiar with that. Yeah, so we get
Speaker 1: this organization founded and kind of from what my perusal
Speaker 1: of because I've also you can go to their website,
Speaker 1: Black Hammer has like a news site. Um, they are
Speaker 1: kind of building uh oh yeah, yeah, they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of for now Yeah. They bill themselves as like an
Speaker 1: anti colonial organization that is specifically like um, like one
Speaker 1: of the things they do is they have like a
Speaker 1: white people's auxiliary that like is for the purpose of
Speaker 1: people paying reparations. Um. They have. You know, they carried
Speaker 1: out a couple of actual direct actions during including like
Speaker 1: handing out masks and whatnot. Um, but for the most
Speaker 1: part they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to
Speaker 1: themselves and thus donations via social media. And yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's that's I think if you've if you've personally interacted
Speaker 1: with Blackhammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've
Speaker 1: seen someone on the internet talking about how Anne Frank
Speaker 1: is a Karen or something like that. Let's get into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I want
Speaker 1: to touch on something real quick that you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: in these comments from the people who found the organation,
Speaker 1: left the organization, these were these are still true believers
Speaker 1: who believe in this cause of de colonialization of African
Speaker 1: internationalism and who do want to build a better world
Speaker 1: and do good things. Um. You know, in talking with
Speaker 1: people have survived the cold, it sounds like Causo probably
Speaker 1: never was a true believer, but there weren't true believers
Speaker 1: around Causo who believed in this cause. Um and because
Speaker 1: about we're able to be abused, to be profoundly abused
Speaker 1: by Carso and the people working directly under Carso pozos
Speaker 1: behest um So April in a tweet, I believe uh,
Speaker 1: Caoso calls, and Frank Becky follows it up by how
Speaker 1: she's a Karen, which one is a ridiculous statement, two
Speaker 1: is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. Back at this time, there was acceptance
Speaker 1: of the Black Hammer organization in leftist circles, in that
Speaker 1: kind of online communist community, um, and there were people
Speaker 1: who came out kind of like, oh no, let's hear
Speaker 1: what they're saying about this, you know, talking about how victims.
Speaker 1: You know, the term genocide was invented to describe the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: but that term wasn't used to describe slavery that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, which, to be clear, is not the conversation
Speaker 1: that Caoso was trying to have. That was not, and
Speaker 1: that is a worthwhile conversation to have. Is like why,
Speaker 1: you know, like why is that not? Why is the
Speaker 1: the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number
Speaker 1: of African people not seen as an act of genocide.
Speaker 1: Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not
Speaker 1: at all intersect with Anne Frank or how we think
Speaker 1: about the Holocaust. Yeah, and because we're living in hell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this fake you know, kind of propped up, not a
Speaker 1: real discussion. It's meant to just piss people off. Is
Speaker 1: back again. Oh good, what a great time. Yeah. Based
Speaker 1: on documents that have come out that are purported to
Speaker 1: be from internal Black Hammer documents, this is part of
Speaker 1: their operation Storm of White Tears, um christ which was
Speaker 1: seemingly this and again I don't know for sure if
Speaker 1: these documents are from them, but these documents that are
Speaker 1: purported to be from block Hammer UM lay out this
Speaker 1: strategy to cause division two, kind of bring other groups down,
Speaker 1: to elevate Blackhammer's own status by putting themselves as the
Speaker 1: center of attention in all of this that is happening UM,
Speaker 1: in this online fiasco UM. Because again, the ideology is
Speaker 1: not the point. The attention is the point. The control
Speaker 1: is the point. Along this way, there's there's you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of allegations out there there are
Speaker 1: you know, for example, allegations that false, false allegations of
Speaker 1: pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left
Speaker 1: the group, people who spoke out against the group, that
Speaker 1: they were recruiting people on tinder. Um. Yeah, So along
Speaker 1: the way, some more chapters form. Um. There's one believe
Speaker 1: near Aurora, Colorado, or at least in Colorado. There's a
Speaker 1: New York City and and kind of the group continues
Speaker 1: to rise as almost you know, you know, your typical
Speaker 1: revolutionary communist cell that we have wait a few of
Speaker 1: in the United States going on right now. Um. The
Speaker 1: structure they purport to structure themselves around the tenets of
Speaker 1: democratic centralism as some of these other groups do, UM,
Speaker 1: which to dump things down a lot, and there's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be left is screaming at me right now. Um.
Speaker 1: Was this idea from Lenin where a group takes a
Speaker 1: vote and then if that vote passes, they all agree
Speaker 1: to go along with that platform with usually about UM,
Speaker 1: so that there's not kind of the splitting off of faction.
Speaker 1: So it can lead to this very centralized and hierarchical
Speaker 1: control structure. That's certainly what happened in Black Hammer. Um.
Speaker 1: There are other democratic sexualt groups that have been in
Speaker 1: the news lately who use a similar strategy. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know what this meant is it allowed gold cause
Speaker 1: it allowed Cadso to run this group with an iron fist. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, on paper, there were there was a group
Speaker 1: of people leading the group. Um, someone else was in
Speaker 1: control of the money, but in fact it was Cadso
Speaker 1: controlling all of this. Um. They also had you know,
Speaker 1: shared living spaces where members of different chapters of Black
Speaker 1: Hammer lived Hammer houses. Um. And that's always going to end. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't Generally it's a good rule not to go live
Speaker 1: with the revolutionary cell you just joined. Yeah. If if
Speaker 1: you are joining a political party and they want everyone
Speaker 1: to live in the same space that is controlled by
Speaker 1: that political organization, you may in fact be joining a cult. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know there's there continues to be kind of
Speaker 1: trying to get more attention. At one point, you know,
Speaker 1: Caso starts beef with a local anti fascist crew in Colorado.
Speaker 1: You know, another thing to mention about this group is
Speaker 1: it's a lot of queer people in the group. You know,
Speaker 1: Gauzi identifies as non binary. There are you know, several
Speaker 1: many members who love people of the same sex. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that happens as Gauzi
Speaker 1: is beefing with the local anti fascist crew. Is something
Speaker 1: that people are probably thinking of when they hear the
Speaker 1: name Gazzi Kozo. Is this bizarre video of Caso running
Speaker 1: around in joker makeup talking about white anarchists and anti fascists,
Speaker 1: which the background is actually even more funked up than
Speaker 1: you would I think having just heard that, UM as
Speaker 1: outline read voice goes into this specifically, UM, there were
Speaker 1: members of the group who were, you know, practitioners of
Speaker 1: Yoruba um, an African religion UM. And one of them
Speaker 1: was a trained UM. I don't know the correct term,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna say practitioner of this religion had
Speaker 1: gone through an education process in that that took some time. UM.
Speaker 1: And this video of Gazi running around and joker makeup
Speaker 1: was Gazi's idea too channel the DD issue and my
Speaker 1: apologies on mispronounced now which is a Euroba deity, you know. UM.
Speaker 1: And before this happened, apparently Gazi had brought this up
Speaker 1: to the person and the person said, that is extremely
Speaker 1: disrespectful of my religion. Don't do that. And Gazi did
Speaker 1: it anyway. Um. And this is you know, another one
Speaker 1: of the things where this gets sent around all the time,
Speaker 1: as you know, treating black Hammer as a lull cow.
Speaker 1: But you know, even osis was going on, there was
Speaker 1: this abuse that was going on as well and people
Speaker 1: being preyed upon by this group. Black Ham announces that
Speaker 1: they are planning to build Hammer City, which is supposed
Speaker 1: to be this utopian settlement in the Rockies. Um, you
Speaker 1: look like you have something you want to say. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, look there, it's a perfectly normal dream to
Speaker 1: want to build a utopian settlement and the Rockies. There's
Speaker 1: some downsides to that. One of them is that the
Speaker 1: Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number
Speaker 1: of people to live. Um. And this is why repeatedly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements
Speaker 1: out in that part of the world, and they don't
Speaker 1: tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's always interesting when folks try, when
Speaker 1: folks want to do a commune type situation and then
Speaker 1: they immediately go for a place like that, because like
Speaker 1: the mountains is the hardest place to do it. If
Speaker 1: you want to have a self sufficient commune like fucking Kansas,
Speaker 1: you know, Arkansas, like somewhere where the soil is good
Speaker 1: for growing stuff and you can get like a flat
Speaker 1: track attractive land that can grow food as opposed to
Speaker 1: high alpine elevations where very little is gonna anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 1: This is compound talk, um, So yeah, there's there's If
Speaker 1: there's one thing you take away from this episode, don't
Speaker 1: build your compound in the Rockies. Don't build a compound
Speaker 1: in the Rockies. Look, Okay, that's all. That's all I got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a messages podcast, unless you're the tenaceous
Speaker 1: Unicorn Ryan, which case go right ahead. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you gotta think you know what they're doing, which
Speaker 1: is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like growing crops,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: see any advanced I was just looking at their at
Speaker 1: the Harmas City website. If they just told they just
Speaker 1: say sustainable farming, I can't see advanced plans. Pratt. They
Speaker 1: could raise a hundred and twelve thousand dollars. Yeah, according
Speaker 1: to their website, they raised dred and twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 1: so far. Okay, yeah, okay, that's more on this project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really interested to know how much money they actually raised. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe it was that much. The point is we don't
Speaker 1: really know because there's no there was no kind of
Speaker 1: open record keeping within this group. Um. And it was
Speaker 1: Cazo who was in control of the money. So the
Speaker 1: group found land to buy, and they actually began the
Speaker 1: process of a land deal in early they and and
Speaker 1: this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado
Speaker 1: Sun article about the whole Hammer City thing um that
Speaker 1: I also recommend if someone wants to read more in
Speaker 1: depth about this. So as the landual was in the
Speaker 1: process of going through, a portion of the group moved
Speaker 1: out there. So about two dozen people this was This
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, it was remote, but it wasn't on
Speaker 1: top of a mountain. This was in a subdivision that
Speaker 1: had parcels for sale, which leads to some problems. And
Speaker 1: this this is a subdivision with the homeowners association and
Speaker 1: strict limits on land use as well. So they didn't
Speaker 1: have water rights for one thing, Yeah, exactly, they didn't
Speaker 1: have water rights to land. Um, which I have not
Speaker 1: started compound, but I imagine water rights is something you
Speaker 1: want to have figured out if you if you just
Speaker 1: want to live in a plot of land in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want
Speaker 1: to grow crops, then yeah, having the ability to irrigate
Speaker 1: said crops is kind of important. Yeah. So another thing
Speaker 1: at this time is Black Hammer tends to be a
Speaker 1: pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out
Speaker 1: to this land. They were camping out. They're basically squatting
Speaker 1: on the land that they did not own, and brought
Speaker 1: their you know, armed security along with them. UM. And
Speaker 1: we're also like blogging road access for residents of the subdivision. UM.
Speaker 1: So they they had neighbors, you know, and UM. At
Speaker 1: one point, this leads to an altercation with a neighbor
Speaker 1: UM with three armed Black Hammer members UM. And a
Speaker 1: neighbor driving his car who you know, according to this
Speaker 1: Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and
Speaker 1: there's a standoff. This could have been one of those
Speaker 1: things that went really bad. It went about as good
Speaker 1: as you can hope a situation like that can go
Speaker 1: where UM, nobody got killed. UM. But while this was happening,
Speaker 1: the member of Black Hammer, who was responsible for the
Speaker 1: land deal. I forgot to sign or didn't sign the
Speaker 1: paperwork on time. Um and after information comes out about
Speaker 1: the standoff, the land deal completely falls through. There is
Speaker 1: no hammers to be that is going to be built
Speaker 1: UM and cadso was maintaining in black Hammer as a whole,
Speaker 1: is maintaining a superactive social media presence at this time
Speaker 1: as well. So you know, one of the other things
Speaker 1: that gets brought out is like this video of them
Speaker 1: talking about, oh, we built this bridge on our land,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a bunch of two by force
Speaker 1: across the ditch. Yeah. Are they planning to buy UM
Speaker 1: in and then as like an organization or as kinds
Speaker 1: are planning to buy themselves as an individual? Between know
Speaker 1: they This is actually something I did some research on UM.
Speaker 1: They did this fun thing. They created a front group,
Speaker 1: a front organization to buy the land nice which they
Speaker 1: called Hammerstone Industries Incorporated. Yeah, it's stealthy. They one of
Speaker 1: the member, one of the prominent members, was responsible for that.
Speaker 1: So power of Google. Yeah. I also found their bitcoin
Speaker 1: what what we were talking and it has never had
Speaker 1: any donations and it remains empty. Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one has it gone well? Ah? So after this
Speaker 1: land deal falls through, hammer City is not being built,
Speaker 1: a lot of people get really fucking piste. But also
Speaker 1: it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign
Speaker 1: on their way out of the stuff division. So on.
Speaker 1: On the seventeenth, that is when the group leaves hammer City. UM.
Speaker 1: So going back to what Robert mentioned earlier, UM, the
Speaker 1: group took a very i'll say interesting approach when COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen started, UM, which is the belief that COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: is real, that we should wear masks and be protected,
Speaker 1: but that they should not take the vaccine, and that
Speaker 1: fought Fauci was a liar, which comes out a bit later. So,
Speaker 1: so they were doing, for example, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: news article with a video of them doing mutual aid
Speaker 1: distribution of masks and food in Colorado. So lots of
Speaker 1: people are really fucking pissed UM when Hammer City falls through.
Speaker 1: There's also been you know, these allegations that have been
Speaker 1: coming up again and again UM. And at this point,
Speaker 1: several chapters break apart from Black Hammer, UM break away
Speaker 1: from Caso and kind of go off and do their
Speaker 1: own thing. UM, and Caso is left with this core
Speaker 1: group of members UM kind of true believers and says,
Speaker 1: fuck it, We're moving to Atlanta. So the group does
Speaker 1: a marathon drive on Colorado to the southern suburbs of
Speaker 1: Atlanta and outside of Atlanta's where cause that grew up
Speaker 1: on the east side, UM from the northeast. UM. And
Speaker 1: they keep going. They rent a house where everyone lives together,
Speaker 1: another one of their hammer houses. I believe at this
Speaker 1: time there is another active chapter that is still connected
Speaker 1: with CASO and the Carolinas as well. UM. But you
Speaker 1: know this is a when prophecy fails moment for Caso UM.
Speaker 1: And the people that are left behind are these true
Speaker 1: believers UM. And CASA doesn't take this well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take the failure of this deal well, becomes even more
Speaker 1: paranoid than they already were, more controlling and more abusive
Speaker 1: than they already were. So there's the Red Voice gets
Speaker 1: into some of the really wild allegations that come out
Speaker 1: at this time. Allegedly, CARSO has members sign over UM
Speaker 1: control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint, as
Speaker 1: people reveal personal information at gunpoint. And again these are allegations.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying godso did this UM that we get
Speaker 1: some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people
Speaker 1: to sit and listen to Caso kind of preach, having
Speaker 1: people constantly working, not getting enough to eat, um, having
Speaker 1: you know, love bombing where God where Caso makes you know,
Speaker 1: deep eye contract with the person, talks about how important
Speaker 1: they are, how much they love them, and the consumption
Speaker 1: of psychedelics as well. Cool, that's good. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: love to hear that. Um. Yeah, just a bunch of
Speaker 1: heavily armed people being cops for each other and drugging
Speaker 1: each other in support of I don't Charismatics seems like
Speaker 1: a weird word for ghazi, but it must be right, Like,
Speaker 1: clearly it works on some people. Yeah, I think they
Speaker 1: think they are charismatic, right, Like I think it's necessarily
Speaker 1: they are to be good to be charismatic, but no
Speaker 1: good as some people seem to be responding to their
Speaker 1: I don't know the way they present themselves. It's so
Speaker 1: I guess that's always the way with cults, right that,
Speaker 1: Like to the outside, the cult leader is always an
Speaker 1: obvious cult leader, but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable
Speaker 1: do and and for some people that's well. And I
Speaker 1: also I said, I think a lot of it is
Speaker 1: they have like presented themselves differently in different periods and them,
Speaker 1: I think from what I've been reading, it sounds like
Speaker 1: a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of
Speaker 1: most deeply wrapped up and it have been with it
Speaker 1: for a while, so they've kind of followed along with
Speaker 1: Ghazi as they've you know. Yeah, and this is a
Speaker 1: group that preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people,
Speaker 1: preyed upon on a house, people, preyed upon people of
Speaker 1: color who are out there in sections you know of
Speaker 1: oppression in our society, um, and disagree. Like most cults,
Speaker 1: it offered them a cause, a purpose, something to fight for,
Speaker 1: something to do, friends roof over their head even you know,
Speaker 1: um yep, which is a huge part of it, right
Speaker 1: because if you if this, if this place is not
Speaker 1: just your social circle but also your safety net, and
Speaker 1: like how you keep roof over your head and how
Speaker 1: you stay fed and you don't have close ties to
Speaker 1: family or maybe your family aren't people that you can trust.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, again, it's not a different story than
Speaker 1: you get in a bunch of other cults, but like
Speaker 1: this is yeah, it's it's it's a very frightening situation
Speaker 1: for those people to wind up in. And of course
Speaker 1: one of the things that is unfortunate is that so
Speaker 1: much of the stuff that the Blackham Organization said and
Speaker 1: did is so absurd that like it leads to this
Speaker 1: kind of mockery of anybody who gets wrapped up in
Speaker 1: it and the people who are very much vic dyms
Speaker 1: of it, which I think is also one of the
Speaker 1: things that makes it harder to leave, right, is that
Speaker 1: siege mentel and outside. That's where the term collegnitive dissonance
Speaker 1: comes from, specifically people, right, you know, when when things
Speaker 1: that go according to plan stick with this group and
Speaker 1: you know, have already given always so much of their time,
Speaker 1: so much of their life in any of their connections,
Speaker 1: that they just roll with it. Yeah, And then there's
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking back to a story I wrote years ago.
Speaker 1: Were fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert
Speaker 1: on these small cults, and they had actually been a
Speaker 1: survivor of I think it was a trotsky Is cult,
Speaker 1: so they were very familiar. They like, this group exhibits
Speaker 1: all those patterns, right, like the charismatic leader that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the use of their own language, the control of their
Speaker 1: relationships and their contacts inside and outside the group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they mirror this like very positive. It seemed
Speaker 1: to like, just look at their aesthetics after you mentioned
Speaker 1: it that they're definitely sort of seeking to mirror that
Speaker 1: like Black Panther Party as sthetic, right, which is obviously
Speaker 1: something that has, for good reasons, very postive associations for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So I can see they've constructed
Speaker 1: it's very appealing package. But yeah, and now there's a
Speaker 1: body right now, a person has died connected, let's get
Speaker 1: to the station. So yeah, let's talk about this. So
Speaker 1: in Atlanta is where things get really wacky basically, as
Speaker 1: is often the case with Atlanta, has is often the
Speaker 1: case with this beautiful, beautiful city owned by Coca Cola
Speaker 1: and home depot with with I have to admit it
Speaker 1: as a Texan the best barbecue in the South, that's true.
Speaker 1: Excellent Ethiopian food as well. I was there this weekend. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking amazing, fucking amazing Ethiopian Ethiopian food. Yeah. Big refugee population,
Speaker 1: that's besides the point. So you know, cause I was
Speaker 1: found themselves in this city without a ton of money, um,
Speaker 1: and so needs to get more attention, needs to appeal
Speaker 1: to more people. So this is when Causo announces that
Speaker 1: Black Hammer is forming a coalition with the Proud Boys,
Speaker 1: which is one of those things that comes out and
Speaker 1: really sensationalized headlines but doesn't actually happen. What happens is
Speaker 1: cause of goes on a podcast with Gavin McGinnis and
Speaker 1: they talked about we have so much in common and
Speaker 1: there's you know, a little toast evidence of actual organizing
Speaker 1: or work together between the two groups. But with this
Speaker 1: group like this, no, especially because Gavin doesn't organizing anymorevolving
Speaker 1: problems anymore. What was the podcast they went on? Stead
Speaker 1: of interest? Daniel cut that and add in the entire
Speaker 1: audio from b movie condensed into a two second blast
Speaker 1: like we talked about, you know, the group gets more
Speaker 1: attention to that. UM. They start talking about how great
Speaker 1: Trump is, how much do they love Trump, how Fauci
Speaker 1: is evil? UM. Because again, ideology is not the point.
Speaker 1: The attention is. And this is how you continue get
Speaker 1: attention by acting ridiculous, UM, by asking Trump voters to
Speaker 1: donate money to you. UM. And at this time they
Speaker 1: also begin an extremely aggressive fundraising campaign in the city
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. So there's a park in downtown Atlantic called
Speaker 1: Woodroff Park that has a huge on housed population. Because
Speaker 1: our city is about at being a city and it's
Speaker 1: it's just back but Black Hammer there there are other groups.
Speaker 1: There are other e leftist groups that do mutual aid
Speaker 1: that help people out in the park. Black Hammer says,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this too, you know. So they'll go
Speaker 1: there and have these sessions where they're screaming into a
Speaker 1: megaphone about whatever, UM and you know, handing out clothes
Speaker 1: and some food to unhoused people. UM. And they also
Speaker 1: start setting there. The members of their group pretty much
Speaker 1: every day of the week two go out into the
Speaker 1: Steve Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets UH,
Speaker 1: in their matching branded Blackhammer t shirts and masks. A
Speaker 1: site to see and yeah, so this is what they
Speaker 1: call their robin Hood campaign. UM. They specifically target college
Speaker 1: campuses at Georgia State University and Georgia Tech especially UM
Speaker 1: with the idea that college kids have a lot of
Speaker 1: money to give away. It's not a great idea, UM,
Speaker 1: but they do this aggressive fundraising where they you know,
Speaker 1: follow people and if they don't take no Franchwis say, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't care about homeless people, you don't care about
Speaker 1: unhoused people. Um, you know, you just have so much
Speaker 1: white privilege and really attacking people. Um, which is great.
Speaker 1: When you're coming home, you're riding your bike home and
Speaker 1: then you keep passing Black Hammer members m outside of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, on your commute home. Not fun. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they appear, you know, on the belt Line, which is
Speaker 1: this kind of public green space and shared walking space
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Um. They do this outside of concert venues.
Speaker 1: You know. I went to see The Dead Kennedy's and
Speaker 1: as I was walking into the venue, a Black Hammer
Speaker 1: guy asked me for money. I have to explain to
Speaker 1: the guy in front of me handing them five dollars,
Speaker 1: this is an anti semitic colt. You don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. And they they're also taking in unhoused people. Um.
Speaker 1: You know there's this video of of one of the
Speaker 1: lieutenants saying, you know, we want to get you, the
Speaker 1: unhoused people to come fundraise for us. You know, if
Speaker 1: you come fund raise for us, you can keep half
Speaker 1: of it slay and whoever fundraises the most in this
Speaker 1: week gets to cume live with us at the Hammer House,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty fucked up, you know. Um there's a
Speaker 1: case where a professor at Georgia State University, because these
Speaker 1: people the blood can't remembers out there every day all day. Um,
Speaker 1: this is what they do, this is their job, this
Speaker 1: is how the group makes money, you know, calls them
Speaker 1: out and says, hey, stop asking for money here. I
Speaker 1: know you're a cult. And a member follows the professor
Speaker 1: and films her, you know, and specifically films her license
Speaker 1: plate and says, we got you. For example, members are
Speaker 1: arrested for having a megaphone in Woodruff Park and get
Speaker 1: some of their guns taken away when the rest because
Speaker 1: they're in the park with a bunch of guns. You
Speaker 1: just have guns out. Yeah, Yeah, it's Georgia, which sometimes
Speaker 1: is cool when the Proud Boys show up and anti
Speaker 1: fascists have guns, but it's not not great when black
Speaker 1: hammers doing that. Definitely, tracking following people who criticize you
Speaker 1: in taking pictures of their license plate to try to
Speaker 1: docks them online is not at all cult behavior. They
Speaker 1: attack X members. They leak the addresses of the family
Speaker 1: of X members and their social Security numbers as well
Speaker 1: because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: They seem to get very close to encouraging people to
Speaker 1: shoot cops in a couple of pieces on their website
Speaker 1: as well, they talked about killing white people a lot.
Speaker 1: Eventually in Yeah, in two, they have this rally outside
Speaker 1: of the CNN Center and solidarity with the January six
Speaker 1: political prisoners. UM. Along the way in Gauzy claims to
Speaker 1: find have found Jesus and uh, Black Camera becomes a
Speaker 1: religious group, you know. They they turned their mutual aid
Speaker 1: distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church, which of
Speaker 1: course is filmed in live streamed. They have several live
Speaker 1: streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are
Speaker 1: mandatory for members to attend. UM. You know, there there
Speaker 1: is corporal punishment going on within the group of people
Speaker 1: living at the house UM and and the people that
Speaker 1: they're picking up off the street. It's not just adults,
Speaker 1: it's kids as well, UM cause of claims to have
Speaker 1: the sixteen year old that they have adopted. UM and
Speaker 1: you know, cause of post these videos of them giving
Speaker 1: the sixteen year old guns and money and clothes to
Speaker 1: where um the kid gets taken into state custody, um,
Speaker 1: before the current thing that we're taught talking about. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be important later on in
Speaker 1: the story. Um. Yeah. So there are also these stories
Speaker 1: from members who have escaped, who have to do these
Speaker 1: elaborate escape attempts to get out because they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to leave, who have to kind of run away in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night with none of their stuff
Speaker 1: through a thunderstorm to get out. So this is what
Speaker 1: we're dealing with. All right, everyone, it's James here, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to correct a couple of things from
Speaker 1: the episode or add to them. One of them was
Speaker 1: the date of that shooting, be it murder or death
Speaker 1: Bay suicide. That was the nine of July, note of February,
Speaker 1: and so it happened about a week ago at the
Speaker 1: time that you will hear this if you hear this
Speaker 1: on the day that we put out. Secondly, I also
Speaker 1: just wanted to give some context to the word huru.
Speaker 1: It's Swahili word means freedom or independence, and it was
Speaker 1: used as part of a a backronym, which is when
Speaker 1: when a group has a name with them, they create
Speaker 1: an acronym that fits to that name, and the word
Speaker 1: huru was part of a backronym for a group called
Speaker 1: the Mau Mau Revolutionary anti colonial group who existed in Kenya,
Speaker 1: and the word of Huru was used a decent amount
Speaker 1: of ACTI colonial struggles in Kenya in the backronym. The
Speaker 1: backronym is miszoom end Ufrica Party or Huru let the
Speaker 1: foreigners go home, Africa should be independent, will be independent.
Speaker 1: I suppose I just wanted to give that context. And
Speaker 1: obviously it's been appropriated now by by the Proud Boys,
Speaker 1: but that is part of the etymology of the word.
Speaker 1: And then we get to um, what happened on February two. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, this is an ongoing story, so the fact
Speaker 1: what we know might be changing. But early in the morning,
Speaker 1: someone is one and talks about being held hostage by
Speaker 1: an organization, by a group. They don't give the address,
Speaker 1: but the police are the authorities are able to track
Speaker 1: the number to this house in Fayetteville stuburb south of Atlanta. UM,
Speaker 1: and show up and they see someone is outside walking
Speaker 1: a dog who runs away. That person gets arrested. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a member of Black Hammer. They see someone kind
Speaker 1: of waving from the garage seemingly in distress. UM and
Speaker 1: the police are able to get that person out, they
Speaker 1: asked that the rest the people in the house come
Speaker 1: out as well. UM. About ten people come out and
Speaker 1: one person remains inside. Now by about two pm, with
Speaker 1: the use of an explosives ordinance, with the use of
Speaker 1: an EO D A bomb robot UM, the police enter
Speaker 1: the building. UM. The SWAT team goes in and they
Speaker 1: find one person dead of a gunshot wounds to the head,
Speaker 1: which we at this current time we don't know the
Speaker 1: full details on that might not ever hopefully something comes out.
Speaker 1: Carso is being held, you know, the group is kind
Speaker 1: of like sitting around outside, not in handcuffs, but being
Speaker 1: held by the group. UM and Caso does what Causo
Speaker 1: does and starts to live stream. So here's a clip
Speaker 1: from this thirty minute live stream Facebook live that Causo does. Look,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of media girls, so this is just
Speaker 1: going to build me up at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: So thank you. H SO. If you think that no
Speaker 1: I am concerned anything like that, you're out of your mind.
Speaker 1: M at the end of the day, they're still breath
Speaker 1: in my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party,
Speaker 1: our community is epping with us, and now all these
Speaker 1: news channels are going to want to interview us, and
Speaker 1: we're going to get to communicate about all the great
Speaker 1: work that we are doing here. So this is great
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. So my chickens coming
Speaker 1: home to roost is more more media, more followers, more
Speaker 1: you know, advancement of work, more movement, more greatness, and
Speaker 1: so be it, sweetheart. Things like this have a non stops.
Speaker 1: Movements are readers before, so not even overcome. This is
Speaker 1: a great moment, right comment. This is a great moment,
Speaker 1: a moment where no voices will be amplified and our
Speaker 1: mission cause will be informed. Well that's cool. I like
Speaker 1: that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of
Speaker 1: a human life. So I will say this is probably
Speaker 1: before it became someone was dead. But the point is
Speaker 1: that this is exactly what Cauds have wanted, was this attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah they seem pumped. They seem pumped and also like deranged.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that wasn't how it envisioned them speaking
Speaker 1: at all. It's sort of very almost like calming, and
Speaker 1: they seem very very calm in a tone of voice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean calm, but like, I don't know, I see
Speaker 1: an edge to him, but maybe that's any reading. Um,
Speaker 1: so do we know more detail about, like what happened
Speaker 1: with that person who died? Oh, I don't want to
Speaker 1: mention the name of the person. Um this place, this
Speaker 1: is a minor too, right. This is so the person
Speaker 1: who is killed, who's dead now, was not was not
Speaker 1: the sixteen year old. The sixteen year old was already
Speaker 1: in state custody weeks ago. I believe, Um, this is
Speaker 1: an eight According to the what the group has said
Speaker 1: and other survivors that I have spoken with, this is
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old the group took in off of
Speaker 1: the street. Um, there's a kid, you know who wanted
Speaker 1: to be a rapper, who had dreams. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: according to black cameras, own media, they made this person
Speaker 1: their minister of defense. That's a good job for an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old who's dead now because of this group,
Speaker 1: potentially from a self inflicted gunshot wound, which that is
Speaker 1: the case came about because of KASO putting that eighteen
Speaker 1: year old in this situation. Yeah, so dirty south right,
Speaker 1: watch the news. They have a really good threat that
Speaker 1: I also recommend about this happening. It seems like the
Speaker 1: local news they started covering the story and the am
Speaker 1: when it was happening, but didn't quite make the connection.
Speaker 1: There's there's one article it's out there from a local
Speaker 1: news site that just interviews Gazzi Kozo, homeowner of the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that happens, one of the members of the group
Speaker 1: is immediately charged and booked. It's a really fucked up situation,
Speaker 1: you know. There there's like an unhoused individual who that
Speaker 1: who who other good activists were in touch with, who
Speaker 1: are at the house when this happened, because this person
Speaker 1: had no other choice but it was live outside or
Speaker 1: go with black Hammer went through all of this happening
Speaker 1: um and then it was still on how it was
Speaker 1: still on housed. After all this happened, Canso was arrest
Speaker 1: did and booked. The charges didn't come out until an
Speaker 1: hour before we started recording. The charges are two accounts
Speaker 1: of participation in streaking activity, two accounts of aggravated assault,
Speaker 1: two accounts of kidnapping, two accounts of false imprisonment, two
Speaker 1: accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about this one one account of sodomy which in Georgia,
Speaker 1: the sodomy law refers to non consensual oral or anal
Speaker 1: sex or oral and anal sex performed with the minor
Speaker 1: got you so one way or the other that they're
Speaker 1: being accused of sexual assault. Yes, the other person arrested
Speaker 1: um was charged with the same crimes, except not sodomy
Speaker 1: officer instruction instead, presumably because they fled. And that's where
Speaker 1: we're at. That's where we're at right now. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: that's rough. Yeah, it's it's a pretty bleak story. But
Speaker 1: I don't know at this point. We will probably be
Speaker 1: hearing more as this case blows up, and there's always
Speaker 1: the chance that you know, the rights going to wind
Speaker 1: up adopting it to try to, you know, make it
Speaker 1: into a left wing bad kind of deal. So when
Speaker 1: we yeah, yeah, I mean, we'll see what kind of
Speaker 1: legs it gets. But it's important to understand both what's
Speaker 1: happening here because a person is dead and a lot
Speaker 1: of people have been hurt, and also kind of broadly
Speaker 1: the trends that are at play here, the way like
Speaker 1: cult dynamics can intersect with radical politics, I think is
Speaker 1: important for people to be aware of because this kind
Speaker 1: of thing isn't going to get less common as ship
Speaker 1: continues to unravel. Yeah, and if there's some takeaways, if
Speaker 1: someone can leave this with you know a few points
Speaker 1: that the people who we're in this group, they are
Speaker 1: victims in the situation. They were preyed upon by this
Speaker 1: abuse of person because they were in a vulnerable state. Um. Anyone.
Speaker 1: This could happen to anyone who falls on hard times,
Speaker 1: who has a bad enough day and then someone comes
Speaker 1: in and offers them this that they say yes, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: The the other thing is to know about groups that
Speaker 1: are out there before you get involved. Do your research,
Speaker 1: listen to voices that might be critical of the group. Um,
Speaker 1: I know what you're getting yourself into. There are other
Speaker 1: sensibly left as groups out there who will not as
Speaker 1: abuse of as Black Hammer. Um, have cases of abuse
Speaker 1: coming out of them that gets covered up. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: might be good for us just to just to suggested
Speaker 1: if folks find themselves in a difficult situation on someone
Speaker 1: they know is in is in one of these situations,
Speaker 1: like maybe we can linked to some resources in the
Speaker 1: notes or something. Yeah, aren't Yep, there's not there's not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of committed to me that I've been
Speaker 1: trying to find. It's probably Stephen Hassan's book, which um
Speaker 1: sawn is also he's an expert in the field, but
Speaker 1: he's also the guy who talked about how Trainning Hitno
Speaker 1: Mind Control porn was. Yeah, he's got he's problematic. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean part of the reason that this is such
Speaker 1: a problem is that there's very little in terms of
Speaker 1: good resources or good writing. One of the things that is, like,
Speaker 1: there's good writing analyzing cults, very little of it will
Speaker 1: give you much that's useful in terms of how to
Speaker 1: get people out of cults, for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: including the fact that, as we talked about earlier, what
Speaker 1: makes people vulnerable, people aren't vulnerable to cults broadly usually,
Speaker 1: I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like,
Speaker 1: as a general rule, people who get trapped in a
Speaker 1: cult get trapped in a specific cult because it is
Speaker 1: something that they are specifically vulnerable to. And so if
Speaker 1: you don't like it's more or less a matter of like,
Speaker 1: if you want to get someone out of a cult, um,
Speaker 1: are you close with that person? Like are they someone
Speaker 1: that you know? Are they someone that you have a
Speaker 1: deep relationship with because if so, like that relationship and
Speaker 1: the care that you have for them is primarily the
Speaker 1: thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out.
Speaker 1: Which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet, but like, there's
Speaker 1: no reliable way to get people out of colts yep,
Speaker 1: I'm a I do. I do step recovery stuff UM
Speaker 1: for different reasons. But the closest analogy that I can
Speaker 1: think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drug and
Speaker 1: alcohol in your life. You can't force anyone to stop,
Speaker 1: You can't make any moe. When people talk about cult deprogramming,
Speaker 1: what that entails kidnapping someone and then putting them through
Speaker 1: more abuse. So there is a magic bullet. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of extremity problematic ship gets offered to people who
Speaker 1: understandably concerned for their friends and family members, and I
Speaker 1: just want to help. The best time to get someone
Speaker 1: out of a cult is before they join, you know,
Speaker 1: is to raise awareness about abuse in communities UM and
Speaker 1: share that information and take these things seriously. I truly
Speaker 1: believe so much of how this was able to happen
Speaker 1: is because people we're just laughing at them and didn't
Speaker 1: take it seriously. That this could get someone killed, that
Speaker 1: this was ruining lives, that's still happening. People are treating
Speaker 1: this as a joke, not yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things if you're like I don't know
Speaker 1: a parent or or somebody who otherwise works with their
Speaker 1: interfaces with there is raising young people, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to think about how you can make them less vulnerable
Speaker 1: to this. It is a mix of educating them about
Speaker 1: cults and not in a way that's like laughing or
Speaker 1: mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually
Speaker 1: to discussing the very real reasons why people fall in
Speaker 1: for this stuff, because that's that's the important one of
Speaker 1: the most important things. It's the same as COVID. Really,
Speaker 1: one of the most important things for protecting yourself is
Speaker 1: not thinking that you're immune, which is a natural thing.
Speaker 1: Most people who have fallen into cults earlier in their
Speaker 1: life when they heard about colts, said well, that's stupid
Speaker 1: as hell. I would never get trapped in something like that,
Speaker 1: and then they did. And that's basically a hundred percent
Speaker 1: of COAT membership. You know, um, because yeah, if there's
Speaker 1: if I can recommend some resources for parents, Shannon fully
Speaker 1: Martinez who is on Twitter, is you know, was involved
Speaker 1: in extreme right skinhead stuff unless it is committed her
Speaker 1: life to helping people leave extremist movements. The same things
Speaker 1: you know that are going to make someone easily preyed
Speaker 1: upon by Colt and by an extremist group. Those are
Speaker 1: the same things. Um. And Shannon has some good resources
Speaker 1: out there. She has a Patreon as well. The resources
Speaker 1: are available for free. You don't need to join on
Speaker 1: her patreon. Awesome. Yeah, Shannon is awesome. UM. And other
Speaker 1: than that, you know, don't ye. Try to avoid falling
Speaker 1: for a cult, um except for you know this podcast.
Speaker 1: Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of
Speaker 1: your life. Have no friends of the nuts for in
Speaker 1: para social relationships with us? Uh huh, Well we're the
Speaker 1: only We're the only people you can trust. I think
Speaker 1: that's clear. Ye. Yeah. Would you like to plug anything
Speaker 1: before we carry off? Thomas? Yeah, I'm at Twitter at
Speaker 1: w underscore f underscore, Thomas. Don't be weird on Twitter. Um,
Speaker 1: have empathy for the people around you. Almost gonna plug
Speaker 1: HASHTA un housed people because they know what best can
Speaker 1: help them. Yeah, fucking provide people with options for housing,
Speaker 1: so that they're not. Yeah, having a could be the
Speaker 1: best thing they can do. But yeah, yep, I'm not
Speaker 1: a happy note. Thanks for having me. Yeah, checking onund
Speaker 1: your friends, debanding people when they're in difficult times. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could happen, It could happen here. That was my
Speaker 1: Robert Evans impression. Thank you very much. Hopefully that wasn't
Speaker 1: an assault in you. Um yeah, drums, but here we are, here,
Speaker 1: we are. I am Andrew, and this is it can
Speaker 1: happen in And this is the podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: about stuff that happened in places. And I'll be yes
Speaker 1: listening this episode. This is the Andruism segment where I
Speaker 1: talk about whatever comes to mind. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: open up this episode with a question, honestly, genuinely, how
Speaker 1: are you all doing? Well? There's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on right now. Um, you know, not not the
Speaker 1: best time, um inside this country or really around the world.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, not, I would say, not ideal, not idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm everything bad is happening and also being compounded that
Speaker 1: I have been. I have been once again awoken at
Speaker 1: it a genuinely egregiously early hour by someone pounding a
Speaker 1: hammer about eight inches from my head, which is fun
Speaker 1: and good and cool. So without context, without context all
Speaker 1: a wild thing to say. I am giving no context
Speaker 1: about that. This is literally true. So yeah, basically it's
Speaker 1: like that, but for everything. Yeah, I respect that. Not
Speaker 1: ideal is the perfect explanation. Yeah, yeah, not ideal, not ideal. Personally,
Speaker 1: I feel like i'm, you know, cost being pulled in
Speaker 1: a bunch of different directions and it's exhausted. And I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say upfront, I do have the privilege of having
Speaker 1: more control over my will day than a lot of
Speaker 1: other people do, and that's not something I take lightly.
Speaker 1: I'm very appreciative of that. UM shout out to my
Speaker 1: Patreon supporters. But you know, between all my online responsibilities
Speaker 1: and offline responsibilities and obligations and demands I might time,
Speaker 1: it really is not easy. And that's not even getting
Speaker 1: into like the social and politicals to the world right now.
Speaker 1: To Coach and Smith, you know, that's that's something I
Speaker 1: think we can all relate to on some level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, some weeks are much harder than others, but
Speaker 1: the through line has been stress and that is the
Speaker 1: subject of today's episode. That's so stressful that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about stressful. Yeah, a discussion about stress. It
Speaker 1: really could happen here. Um. Stress is not something that's
Speaker 1: new to me, al really to most people. Me perasonally.
Speaker 1: My plasonality is very much lending itself to that um
Speaker 1: sort of outcome because I'm constantly like spinning a bunch
Speaker 1: of plates at the same time, and every time, like
Speaker 1: I dropped one, I put one down, I pick up
Speaker 1: the next one. And I'm not very good at relaxing usually.
Speaker 1: All right, I've basically been going non stop for a
Speaker 1: long long time, and I'm not alone because of adults
Speaker 1: suffer from chronic stress and to night to a sense
Speaker 1: of doctors visits are stress related and it's trash. You know,
Speaker 1: he feels in your skin and your muscle, in your bones.
Speaker 1: I remember this one. Someone was working at that same
Speaker 1: winery I was talking about in a recent episode. I
Speaker 1: was in UM and I'm sure my experience, it really
Speaker 1: felt like my blood was running into water, like I
Speaker 1: was barely eaten. It wasn't getting enough water, I wasn't
Speaker 1: perfectly hydrated and was just going We call that, we
Speaker 1: call that a reverse Jesus. When you're when you're I mean,
Speaker 1: I think when Jesus was stabbed. He did like bleed
Speaker 1: water for some reason. Yeah, treat ring. You know, they
Speaker 1: tell the story and I think all bodies tell the
Speaker 1: story as well, and for a lot of us that
Speaker 1: story is stress rather because of events or thoughts or
Speaker 1: circumstances that needs frustration. Angle new business, do you mistress?
Speaker 1: What would you guys say, is some of your like
Speaker 1: mean stress triggers? I was going to say family, most
Speaker 1: of it's probably work related, based on the type of
Speaker 1: things I surround myself with for over twelve hours a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think for me it's it's work, and then it's
Speaker 1: a lot of just sort of like personal life stuff.
Speaker 1: I have to do stuff which is just like like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move right now, and that's like incredibly stressful.
Speaker 1: And yeah, a medical stuff that's been that's been a
Speaker 1: holy hell. Yeah, we are excited that Chris is finally
Speaker 1: moving out of the hammer factory into the into the
Speaker 1: into the electric drill factory. So the audio will still
Speaker 1: be a bit weird. I mean, look, if if if
Speaker 1: it's if it's anything like college, it'll be twelve hours
Speaker 1: a day of a guy with a jackhammer directly below
Speaker 1: my window. Which you'll all get to hear an incredibly
Speaker 1: large amount of It's gonna be great. That's fantastic. That's
Speaker 1: a perfect encapsulation of exactly the topic we'll talk kind
Speaker 1: of about. It's like a jackhammer on your brain constantly.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's on the only form of stress. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a stress that comes from like loss stress, it
Speaker 1: comes from like social drift stress. It comes from like
Speaker 1: this consumers rotteries, um, you know, mental illness, just general
Speaker 1: uncutainty and change and grief and guilt and trauma, um,
Speaker 1: you know, dicty to ship that a lot of people
Speaker 1: are subject to, and of course climate change go to
Speaker 1: a climate change. I think more and more people need
Speaker 1: to realize there was a stress is a symptom of
Speaker 1: like systemic violence. You know, when we're dealing with these
Speaker 1: headaches and sleep problems and muscle opinions and digestive problems
Speaker 1: and sex problems and blood pressures, use and moodliness and
Speaker 1: restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all
Speaker 1: these other responses and consequences. It's just the outcome of
Speaker 1: daily systemic violence, of the way that this system deprives
Speaker 1: us of support and care that how it atomizes us,
Speaker 1: how it contro rules us and really squeezes us forward worth.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not to say that like there's no
Speaker 1: stress outside of capitalism, or that stress is a capitalist invention.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. I mean stress in small doses to be
Speaker 1: a good indicator in certains vibal situations that need to
Speaker 1: change the situation um motivation to act, you know. But
Speaker 1: and the capitalism is really pathological, and yet you gotta
Speaker 1: keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending that
Speaker 1: everything is okay. I mean, we all know how deeply
Speaker 1: unhealthy this society is, how deeply an equalist society is.
Speaker 1: Many people didn't stress related illnesses. Are people don't like
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance? Are we a constantly scanning this urban jungle
Speaker 1: for threats? But of of insecurity and decimation of public
Speaker 1: life and of entire economies in sectors as like well
Speaker 1: held in captivity. I will say one thing, and that
Speaker 1: is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress, it
Speaker 1: was so alleviates stress by producing an economy organized around
Speaker 1: the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices of
Speaker 1: all these different vices that you know, people pick up.
Speaker 1: I mean if you look at the roots of capitalism
Speaker 1: and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation
Speaker 1: economies and the Caribbean and the rest of America's um
Speaker 1: you know, growing like sugar and tobacco and you know,
Speaker 1: producing all these spirits and chocolate and coffee. The thing
Speaker 1: that that that that helped bring capitalism to fruition and
Speaker 1: helped fund industrial capitalist soon is the thing that people
Speaker 1: are using to self medicate in response the effects of
Speaker 1: the now global capitalist dominance. And people love off their
Speaker 1: chocolate and their coffee. Personally, I'm not a big fan
Speaker 1: of coffee. I think it's tastes disgusting, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I tried it once and it was like it tastes
Speaker 1: like the sensation of burning. You know, I just wasn't
Speaker 1: having it. I like the smell for some reason, like
Speaker 1: the smell of coffee beans, but the actual taste is
Speaker 1: like nah. And surprisingly, I actually used to not like
Speaker 1: chocolate as a child. It is only when I matured
Speaker 1: my taste buds that I actually came around to it. Ironically,
Speaker 1: and of course we don't think of these things as
Speaker 1: you know, spaces or medications, but they're like small pleasures
Speaker 1: that help us get through our day. Practically everybody is
Speaker 1: some level of alcoholic these days. And of course there's
Speaker 1: social media, which is like algorithmically teelered and tuned to
Speaker 1: keep us on it, to keep us like it. Basically
Speaker 1: like like a puppet master controuls the highs and lows
Speaker 1: of all emotions on a daily basis. It basically functions
Speaker 1: as an addictive drug. It just the drug is just
Speaker 1: is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain, but
Speaker 1: it's manipulating your brain into causing it to happen um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a very similar addictive process that has like,
Speaker 1: you know, a reward system. You know that. That's why,
Speaker 1: like around a decade ago, a lot of social media
Speaker 1: companies changed their UM loading style to be like you
Speaker 1: like scroll it down and it flicks back up, which
Speaker 1: was specifically it was specifically copying a slot machine. Because
Speaker 1: it is it's it's like an addictive pattern that's ingrained
Speaker 1: into what we find pleasurable. So it's it's all like
Speaker 1: none of this is this isn't new information to a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but like it's all obviously very intentional
Speaker 1: to it's designed to be extremely addictive. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: this is just like this is just like what like
Speaker 1: most of gaming is now too where it's like, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: like you're playing a video game, right yeah, but like
Speaker 1: yeah and now and now literally like the the the
Speaker 1: revenue model of the gaming industry is selling gambling to children.
Speaker 1: You know that. That is My one who complained about
Speaker 1: casinos is that eight year olds couldn't spend thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars of their parents money on skins. Now, thanks thanks
Speaker 1: to the wonders of gaming, eight year olds too can
Speaker 1: basically just live in a casino in their own bedroom
Speaker 1: all the time. Modern society. Okay, there's there's there's conflicting
Speaker 1: accounts about this, but there's there's a new like free
Speaker 1: to play Dio Diablo game. And yes, that the the
Speaker 1: amount of money it would take to get like a
Speaker 1: max level character in this game I have seen. Okay,
Speaker 1: I I've I've the latest calculation I've seen is saying
Speaker 1: it would take over five thousand dollars. The lowest range
Speaker 1: calculation of how much it would cost I've seen was
Speaker 1: about fifty tho it's probably at least a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to literally get the guy's level characters in games.
Speaker 1: It is like like this is this problem is exactly
Speaker 1: where why that's problem is exactly why. Um, the only
Speaker 1: mobile games I play us to do a Google on
Speaker 1: mine sweep and even those have ads. Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: have a brief for it until among us, but that, um,
Speaker 1: that period has has ended. Un Plus, this is also
Speaker 1: why I tend to you know, sail the high seas,
Speaker 1: if you know what I'm saying. The funny thing is
Speaker 1: that we don't have to do this, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of all the us. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's a phrase I'm looking forward, like it doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be said, but it also kind of needs to
Speaker 1: be said. That we built We built this society, and
Speaker 1: as people within it, we do have the power to
Speaker 1: change it. We don't have to work as much as
Speaker 1: we do. We don't have to you know, structure and
Speaker 1: attend school the way that we do. I mean, even
Speaker 1: under capitalism, there there are people who are starting to
Speaker 1: shift from that hour a week day which we had
Speaker 1: to fight for a lot of people died for, um
Speaker 1: till you know, three to six hours a day, which
Speaker 1: or four hours pretty it depends. UM. I think that's
Speaker 1: the one on experiment was like six hour days, four
Speaker 1: days a week or something like that. But despite you know,
Speaker 1: studies coming out and saying that humans grooling is sup
Speaker 1: productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: you know, despite the fact that you know, productivity decreases,
Speaker 1: it's not like productivity rises or the amount to hours
Speaker 1: you work. It doesn't matter. I mean, I remember when
Speaker 1: I was working in a um an insurance company. I
Speaker 1: was a people pusher, just like scanning documents and uploading
Speaker 1: documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading
Speaker 1: those documents, and then every once in a while I
Speaker 1: got to print documents. Exciting um but I was dealing
Speaker 1: with like a backlog of documents, and I was typically
Speaker 1: able to get like a decent chunk of the work
Speaker 1: done within like the first two to three hours, as
Speaker 1: in like having it fully sorted, scanned, uploaded, completed, you know.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately I had to be there for eight hours,
Speaker 1: and so I had to drag out my day, you know,
Speaker 1: typically by listening to like the Communist Manifesto and audiobook
Speaker 1: yea or The Conquest of Bread and audiobook. I had
Speaker 1: to find things to do, is like make myself look busy,
Speaker 1: um what to like tovvy up my tasks and extend
Speaker 1: them and artificially stretch them out. Because instead of doing
Speaker 1: this BS job because I'm not doing this BS job
Speaker 1: at all, or instead of doing this b S job
Speaker 1: based on tasks completed rather than time spent, I had
Speaker 1: to rely on the time spent in the contractual hours.
Speaker 1: And of course the pay was terrible, but I mean
Speaker 1: that was expected at this point. But the whole point
Speaker 1: is really to like squeeze all our time and energy,
Speaker 1: so that's we're stressed out so that we don't have
Speaker 1: any leisure, so that you know, we look for convenience,
Speaker 1: and convenience is profitable. I mean, who really has the
Speaker 1: energy to fight for their rights when they don't even
Speaker 1: have the energy to cook a meal when they get home,
Speaker 1: you know. And it wasn't always like this. The social
Speaker 1: bond was broken by capitalism and replaced with the bond
Speaker 1: to money, and until we like sever that bond, nothing's
Speaker 1: going to change. The question is how can we address stress? Right,
Speaker 1: and so capitalism has an answer, um and then there's
Speaker 1: like an actual proper, real systemic answer, And personally, I
Speaker 1: deal with stressed by just not thinking about it. Um,
Speaker 1: But I mean, what what do you guys do be
Speaker 1: really sad? I was talking about like like mitigation strategies
Speaker 1: you know that I don't know, Like when it's nice already,
Speaker 1: like I go take walks, Um, looks are nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a have a shark that I got from
Speaker 1: somewhere that's like it's like the like the squashy phone material,
Speaker 1: but just a shark it rules. Do you have an
Speaker 1: idea shark? No? No, no, no, no, it's okay, it's
Speaker 1: all right. It's like a stress ball. But about to
Speaker 1: just like yeah, that's very funny. I don't have a
Speaker 1: whatever that I don't know what. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to say it either. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get back into doing more park
Speaker 1: or training when I'm stressed, but honestly, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of the time I just do stuff that I know
Speaker 1: I am capable of, which oftentimes is the same thing
Speaker 1: that kind of caused me to get stressed in the
Speaker 1: first place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it, writing
Speaker 1: about like different like philosophies around Doumerism, and like because
Speaker 1: those are things I just my my brain can just
Speaker 1: do with little efforts. So it's almost it's almost peaceful
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, it's it's it's bizarre. Mean in
Speaker 1: some ways you would think that these things are what's
Speaker 1: causing me to have problems, but also in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways that kind of calms me down. Um, to
Speaker 1: look at a whole bunch of this type of thing,
Speaker 1: or to write about it, or to like try to
Speaker 1: like you know, just do like formatting inside like a
Speaker 1: Google doc about it. Um, I don't know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like sorting out this stuff. It's almost like this
Speaker 1: this idea, This is like um thing called knowling. It's
Speaker 1: when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on
Speaker 1: the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done
Speaker 1: with like Lego a lot if you dump a giant
Speaker 1: like box of Lego for all these different legal pieces, Um,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna annul them, you're gonna take all the
Speaker 1: pieces that are like the same color or size and
Speaker 1: sort them into their little places. It's it's it's so
Speaker 1: it's I kind of do that but with like ideas,
Speaker 1: um and like and like with writing projects, I dump
Speaker 1: out all the things I'm currently thinking about into like
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet or a Google doc and sort them into
Speaker 1: related topics to be like, Okay, here's how this thing
Speaker 1: leads into this thing, and I just it's like that
Speaker 1: kind of like organizational thing. Um. So like like how
Speaker 1: organizing is kind of like a therapeutic thing. So it's
Speaker 1: like I can do that with all of the random
Speaker 1: stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try to
Speaker 1: like just sort of out. Even if it doesn't get
Speaker 1: turned into like a work project, it's still like it's
Speaker 1: like an external way to sort out my thoughts, right, Sufie,
Speaker 1: I have a dog, very good dog of a dog.
Speaker 1: We listen to music, we go outside. We'll like to
Speaker 1: go to the park and listen to music outside. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the basically work a lot. But work is also
Speaker 1: like if I don't work, I'm more stressed exactly exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely relate. I relate to that, which is like
Speaker 1: a lapdog for I know, right, Like it's not something
Speaker 1: that like proud of, but also like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: lucky enough. Nothing that's indicative of the problem, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not like people don't necessarily like to work, don't
Speaker 1: necessarily like to leave, Yes, she was like not having
Speaker 1: what's one to me? You know, because I mean if
Speaker 1: most of the things I do for work now are
Speaker 1: things that I've been doing for years unpaid because I
Speaker 1: was just interested in them. So you know, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about theorizing about like a post work world, yeah,
Speaker 1: people are still going to do all kinds of ship.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's questions around, you know, tasks which are not
Speaker 1: like not the most fun to do. As we've had
Speaker 1: discussions on antiwork stuff before, but for a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: everyone has little interests in little skills that they find
Speaker 1: kind of slightly therapeutic. And also like you know, it's
Speaker 1: in terms of us to know what wants to do.
Speaker 1: Like I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago because my landlord it's not going to
Speaker 1: do that. So like, you know, people when you when
Speaker 1: when you have to do something, you kind of become
Speaker 1: capable of it. That's fair. I think one of the
Speaker 1: most popular responses, like the stress is COMPLISSM and pooses
Speaker 1: is like this concept of self care, you know, this
Speaker 1: way of escape from from the grind of it all
Speaker 1: and sure dealing with you know, with issues by like
Speaker 1: getting to bed early and eating well and physical exercise,
Speaker 1: which I've been doing a lots of, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and and all that we have to change your little
Speaker 1: drug into like into like the chat version. Well I
Speaker 1: actually did that recently. That's great. Yeah, it's definitely you
Speaker 1: know this thing also things like like Jornane and meditation
Speaker 1: and yoka and all that. As I mean, you never
Speaker 1: never really got into meditation because I tried it a
Speaker 1: couple of times and every time I do, I kind
Speaker 1: of fall asleep. I definitely do some meditation stuff, um,
Speaker 1: but that's what's kind of slightly part of my like
Speaker 1: metaphysics interest um. And I mean also mean like in
Speaker 1: terms of like self care practices in that vein that
Speaker 1: can help you kind of relax. There's obviously stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, mushrooms are m D M A, which if
Speaker 1: done and you know proper, you know, it's space spaced out,
Speaker 1: not not doing them all the time, but doing them
Speaker 1: at certain intervals, um, can definitely be be therapeutic in
Speaker 1: their own way. Or Drey Lord, one of the foremost
Speaker 1: black feminist scholars of our time, one set and I
Speaker 1: returned to it is cool to lot um. Karen for
Speaker 1: myself is not an act of self intelligence. It is
Speaker 1: self preservation, and that is an active political warfare. Self
Speaker 1: care used to me in prison, on yourself in a
Speaker 1: world hostility, very identity community. We have life event not
Speaker 1: we gin yourself to an early grieve, you know, practicing
Speaker 1: say and new and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers.
Speaker 1: And then you know, as white corporate feminism does, white
Speaker 1: corporate feminism appropriated it and turned it into a industry
Speaker 1: now worth a start or and eleven billion dollars. I
Speaker 1: mean now self care. When people think of self care,
Speaker 1: it's all about intelligent cosmetics and serious bodies and overpriced
Speaker 1: candles and quintin expensive qualities and subscriptions to social media
Speaker 1: apps that are about like and it's it's turned into
Speaker 1: this own like grifting industry almost like that that the
Speaker 1: self care industry. It's like self care influencers and self
Speaker 1: care content creators and like it's just like it. It
Speaker 1: just gets it gets the same icky de realization for
Speaker 1: think that everything else under capitalism is slowly getting Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they even have like their own self care funds,
Speaker 1: like if you not. Just a lot of self care
Speaker 1: content has a very specific visual style yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean hashtog self can Instagram just like a bottomless
Speaker 1: screwl of graphics and products. It just makes me feel
Speaker 1: kind of unsettled. It kind of has this like uncanny
Speaker 1: aspect to it, Yeah, because it's almost as of self
Speaker 1: care is unaccessible to the wise was creepy to help
Speaker 1: the moves. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the fundamental part of the uncanny is that is that
Speaker 1: disconnect where they the gap between the phenomenon and the
Speaker 1: thing is really is really big and you can't really
Speaker 1: understand why it's uncanny, but if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's because that gap between the thing what's supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing is so large. So yeah, this thing that's
Speaker 1: supposed to help all these people is now of white
Speaker 1: millennial like like up like middle upper class like aesthetic. Now, um,
Speaker 1: and that sucks exactly. I mean these days, the people
Speaker 1: like it's mostly a salve for like white collar workers
Speaker 1: whose jobs are also sucked in with their time managing creativity.
Speaker 1: But the people who are actually in the blue collar workers,
Speaker 1: they often have the time or money to be able
Speaker 1: to invest in themselves, not way self care and work
Speaker 1: collars and basically two sides of the same coin. Right,
Speaker 1: it's preserve yourself so you can produce small It's a
Speaker 1: solution to capitalism. Within capitalism, the solution doesn't actually alleviate
Speaker 1: the conditions and stress, but lines pockets and fuels the
Speaker 1: economic system that creates it in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're selling self care helps that you've got a
Speaker 1: constant supply of customers living in perpetual anxiety and wellness
Speaker 1: rather than means of resistance to the system. It's been
Speaker 1: recognized by the system. It's become this performative thing we
Speaker 1: put on, this image of put togethernes where you carefully
Speaker 1: curate your feed and your Instagram stories in your highlights
Speaker 1: and as an individualized solutions systemic issues is it's like
Speaker 1: the system telling you to calm down. Why I continue
Speaker 1: to denegrate and and exploit you. None of these things
Speaker 1: address stress systematically. I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad
Speaker 1: to address stress individually, because everybody has their own personal conditions,
Speaker 1: but without dealing with the broader material conditions, Without addressing
Speaker 1: people's lack of free time, lack of access to social connection,
Speaker 1: lack of access to housing and healthy food, and fudable
Speaker 1: medical care. You know it, it misses the point. And
Speaker 1: I haven't I haven't read much um in the field
Speaker 1: of I believe there's some NICUs was when a lot
Speaker 1: of time writing and talking about it, but I haven't
Speaker 1: read much in the field of like psychotherapy and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But it's it's kind of a realization
Speaker 1: of me that therapy is basically focus in on fixing
Speaker 1: an individuals would just to a sick society, rather than
Speaker 1: healing the society itself, fixing the society itself. I mean,
Speaker 1: so much about their therapy is about, you know, addressing
Speaker 1: things that are impairing your functionality to complete your work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's all the base of mental healthness is
Speaker 1: is it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's
Speaker 1: when it becomes a problem, and the only way to
Speaker 1: solve it is through it. Like, like what what deems
Speaker 1: a success is if you're able to complete your job
Speaker 1: at a high level of functioning. Again, it's not actually
Speaker 1: about your mental state, it's about how much you can
Speaker 1: produce center the calp C list framework. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean not to say that that medication doesn't have a
Speaker 1: tremendous benefits in people's lives and you know, helping them
Speaker 1: get back on track and take control of their circumstances.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you have a society that has
Speaker 1: distress and misery and loneliness woven into it, um into
Speaker 1: its core, trying to adjust people and adapt people to
Speaker 1: that is just responding to sickness and more sickness. And
Speaker 1: you know me, I like to try and keep things
Speaker 1: on the practical, um helpful, positive side. You know, it
Speaker 1: could happen here and genuinely with a smiling face, you know,
Speaker 1: like it could happen here. Um. And so I just
Speaker 1: wanted to put forward some recommendations. I guess yeah, um.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we can't afford to wait until capitalism
Speaker 1: has been abolished to be happy. That's just ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's long term cure for a lot of the moralities
Speaker 1: and and it's used people are facing um. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, when assigned the roots of our stress in
Speaker 1: these systems can make the personal political and drive us
Speaker 1: to act and connect with people who can support us.
Speaker 1: I think that in organize in spaces, they need to
Speaker 1: be special attention but towards creating support groups that have
Speaker 1: allowed for solidarity to be built, you know, allowing people
Speaker 1: to share their feelings and work through the challenges together.
Speaker 1: Self care kind of frames things in a way that
Speaker 1: makes it seem as though healing has done on an
Speaker 1: individual level. When healing is communal, like you don't have
Speaker 1: to go through all this alone healing. It's an act
Speaker 1: of communion and the world must be force to change
Speaker 1: to reflect that, recognize that we have each other, and
Speaker 1: recognize that south care and community care and extricably linked.
Speaker 1: And once those facts at the forefront, once we put
Speaker 1: community care at the forefront, outside of the close of
Speaker 1: the market, accessible to all um, I think we can
Speaker 1: find hoope, you know. And it really it can start
Speaker 1: with something as simple as just reaching out, you know, um,
Speaker 1: grabbing groceries or twin dishes or watching kids. All the
Speaker 1: care work that is stept to the side when we
Speaker 1: think about organizing and what it means to organize, but
Speaker 1: with an your home, money, neighborhood, or at work or
Speaker 1: at school, because I think in especially neighborhood settings, developing
Speaker 1: that sense of new bliness consideringly help even something like
Speaker 1: a community garden being able to connect with Nietzsche again
Speaker 1: well at all for the first time. You can really
Speaker 1: help lifeheart and we don't have to make it harder
Speaker 1: for each other. So you can follow me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I don't discuss seeming Drew on YouTube dot com, slash
Speaker 1: andreids m pature dot com slash seemed True and I
Speaker 1: have been your host of It Could Happen You Pece Hey.
Speaker 1: It's it Could Happen Here, a podcast about usually bad
Speaker 1: things happening, all the bad things that are happening everywhere,
Speaker 1: but occasionally about good things happening and people doing cool
Speaker 1: stuff to make a better world. And this Lucky you,
Speaker 1: Lucky all of us happens to be one of the
Speaker 1: latter kinds of episodes when we talk about good things happening.
Speaker 1: UH with me in the studio, which is more of
Speaker 1: an a femoral concept than a physical studio because there's
Speaker 1: a plague going on. Is James Stout and Garrison Davis
Speaker 1: co hosting the podcast Hello Fellas Now Today. The thing
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. UM, we we had about a
Speaker 1: week or so two weeks ago represent a couple of
Speaker 1: representatives from the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Dallas,
Speaker 1: Texas come in UH, and they had been providing armed
Speaker 1: security at a couple of different Dallas area protests against
Speaker 1: Christian nationalists. UM. I do recommend checking out those episodes.
Speaker 1: This week, we have one representative from that organization back
Speaker 1: on and what we'll be talking about is there have
Speaker 1: been a series of attempted sweeps in Dallas at a
Speaker 1: homeless camp UM. And if you're not familiar with the concept, basically,
Speaker 1: people who are experiencing homelessness set up encampments in order
Speaker 1: to live with some degree of comfort and have you know,
Speaker 1: their stuff with them. UM. These are generally in places
Speaker 1: like parks, under overpasses, that kind of situation, and periodically
Speaker 1: the city will come through and sweep them. The city's
Speaker 1: language is always very much focused towards we're trying to
Speaker 1: help them, you know, get into some sort of situation
Speaker 1: where they can find help. But what usually winds up
Speaker 1: happening is the city takes a bunch of people's stuff
Speaker 1: and throws it in the trash, often before extreme weather events. UM.
Speaker 1: It's a really gnarly thing to experience, and activists in
Speaker 1: a number of cities have experimented with different tactics to
Speaker 1: try and stop and delay sweeps. And what we've had
Speaker 1: happening lately. Over the last week in Dallas is representatives
Speaker 1: of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club have been
Speaker 1: showing up armed alongside activists with Say It with Your
Speaker 1: Chest Dallas, And the kind of thing that's been spreading
Speaker 1: on Twitter is, of course the fact that activists have
Speaker 1: shown up with guns to stop the sweeps and the
Speaker 1: Dallas police have not shown up to do the sweeps.
Speaker 1: The thing that often gets missed in this kind of
Speaker 1: Twitter level discourse, although is covered in a pretty good
Speaker 1: Dallas Morning News article on the subject, is that there
Speaker 1: have also been activists, as I said, from the Say
Speaker 1: It with Your Chest movement, who have been showing up
Speaker 1: to help people, to provide laundry service, transportation, food and water.
Speaker 1: And essentially what they've been doing is trying to help
Speaker 1: people get things together and organized to move to a
Speaker 1: new location, um, in a manner that allows them to
Speaker 1: do so with like dignity and comfort and not get
Speaker 1: their stuff thrown out by the city or experienced violence
Speaker 1: from the police while it's happening. So um, that is
Speaker 1: the broad situation. I'm not gonna say anymore myself. I
Speaker 1: want to introduce Danny from Say with Your Chest Dallas
Speaker 1: and Bubble from the um Fort John Brown Gun Club.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for being on the show, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me, Thank you for having us. Um was that
Speaker 1: a broadly accurate summary of events? Um? Yeah, for the
Speaker 1: for the most part, the city has actually been sweeping
Speaker 1: several They're they're cracking down on houselessness right now, very
Speaker 1: very aggressive. And so it's not just that one camp
Speaker 1: that we were defending the other day, but um, the
Speaker 1: monday before we were defending another camp. And UM, I've
Speaker 1: never seen this many sweeps happen at one time, and
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for a little over two years now.
Speaker 1: I want to actually go a little bit into how
Speaker 1: your organization formed, but before that, do you have any
Speaker 1: kind of can you posit why the city has suddenly
Speaker 1: ramped up sweeps so aggressively in Dallas so uh normally
Speaker 1: talking to the residents, I've never I've never seen it
Speaker 1: happen like multiple times in the week. Usually they'll do
Speaker 1: one uh way a little bit we'll hear a couple
Speaker 1: years later or something, but multiple in a week at
Speaker 1: different spots is definitely, um, definitely new to us. UM
Speaker 1: As for why the typical reason are like you know,
Speaker 1: the state there comes up in October, so they'll try
Speaker 1: to sweep then. UM. Or they'll do it um usually
Speaker 1: like a housing development UM and things like that, where
Speaker 1: like the land is brought up or you know something.
Speaker 1: But recently, UM, the motivations have been a little bit
Speaker 1: more unclear with the aggression. UM. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: the city in terms of how they execute sweeps. It
Speaker 1: used to be that code compliance could not touch people's belongings.
Speaker 1: Recently it has shifted to take everything, throw away everything. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we still don't know why all happening yet.
Speaker 1: It is certainly like part of a nationwide trend because
Speaker 1: we're having the same things happen in Portland increasingly. And
Speaker 1: obviously Portland and Dallas aren't the only cities were sweeps
Speaker 1: have been ramped up. UM. And of course you also
Speaker 1: have oh gosh, I I just ran across the article
Speaker 1: today that like there's discussion in certain cities about like, yes,
Speaker 1: somewhere in Florida about like putting houseless people in like
Speaker 1: essentially an island compound and whatnot, like basically like a
Speaker 1: concentration camp. Right. Yeah, that's been also mentioned by people
Speaker 1: affiliated with like the Portland City Council in the Mayor's office.
Speaker 1: It's like essentially getting a concentrated collection of homeless people
Speaker 1: in one closed off area and you're like, uh, I wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder what they mean by that. Yeah, it's it's unsettling.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious because obviously I think what y'all are
Speaker 1: doing in Dallas right now is extremely important, and you've
Speaker 1: been having a lot of success so far. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about how your organization because
Speaker 1: we we chatted with the John Brown Gun Club folks
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago about how they started organizing.
Speaker 1: How did say it with your chest get off the ground? Um,
Speaker 1: so that was interesting. Stay with your Chest originally started
Speaker 1: along with a lot of orcs and mutually at works
Speaker 1: in Dallas. Um after George Floyd was more murdered back
Speaker 1: in June of like, um, we started. Um. I was
Speaker 1: in play Now at the time, which is like a
Speaker 1: suburb Yeah, where I grew up. Oh really Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wasn't playing at the time, and uh, you know, I,
Speaker 1: me and my friends were kind of like these suburban
Speaker 1: people can turn off their TVs and not really have
Speaker 1: to worry about the protest going on. Downtown and things
Speaker 1: like that. So we would protest on street corners and
Speaker 1: just yell at you know, white people in their Mercedes
Speaker 1: and you know, make them uncomfortable on purpose. Um. Then
Speaker 1: we started linking up with other mutual aid orcs in Dallas,
Speaker 1: and you know it was just shaping food, trying to
Speaker 1: carry that stuff up north. Um. And then uh then
Speaker 1: we um, well I started going to Camp Ronda UM,
Speaker 1: which was like a probably the first and like it
Speaker 1: was a very solid example of a self sustating, houseless
Speaker 1: encampment where we're just allowed to be and left alone.
Speaker 1: We're helping people left at them and recovery and things
Speaker 1: like that, and um, everyone looked out for each other.
Speaker 1: It was a really great community for that was such
Speaker 1: a rad project. Um. Not to derail it too much,
Speaker 1: but I want to tell you guys about Camp Randa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's tically organized on houses camp. The organizers outside
Speaker 1: organizers were there everyday helping. The camp itself was organized
Speaker 1: amongst themselves. They had political theory meetings, they had community
Speaker 1: meetings to solve issues and resolve inter personal problems. Fucking
Speaker 1: rad um. And it stayed together for nine months. It
Speaker 1: was it lasted for a minute. I know it was
Speaker 1: a proximate. It was over six I believe. But it
Speaker 1: lasted for a while at one location and then it
Speaker 1: had to move and then um the next location we
Speaker 1: ended up moving all the people to. They stayed there
Speaker 1: first all ten months before um the city sold the
Speaker 1: land and like some under the table deal and showed
Speaker 1: up and swept everybody. It reminds me quite a bit
Speaker 1: of a place I I worked out in Seattle for
Speaker 1: a while, Nicholsville, which was a plot of land, a
Speaker 1: couple of acres large where houseless people had set up
Speaker 1: basically built like a tiny home village for themselves. They
Speaker 1: provided solar power, um, they had arranged their own like
Speaker 1: trash pick up. Um. It was safe and uh, very
Speaker 1: well organized and very comfortable, like an actual fairly high
Speaker 1: standard of living UM good level like good good wastewater
Speaker 1: treatment and all that kind of stuff. Um, which existed
Speaker 1: for a couple of years before the city came in
Speaker 1: and swept it and destroyed everybody's houses and force them,
Speaker 1: you know into again kind of a series of camping situations. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is you know, you get these It's it's very
Speaker 1: frustrating because there's this understanding that like, well, we want
Speaker 1: them in And part of the understanding you get from
Speaker 1: a number of cities is like, well, we do want
Speaker 1: them in one place, and we want them in something
Speaker 1: that's more permanent than you know, a bunch of tents.
Speaker 1: But if they set that up on their own and
Speaker 1: have autonomy and have the ability to like exist with
Speaker 1: any kind of personal freedom, then we don't want that,
Speaker 1: and we will send armed men and to break it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the city is like, oh yeah, well I don't
Speaker 1: I genuinely do not think that you Dallas wants to
Speaker 1: house people. Um. Otherwise the Office of Homo Solutions simply
Speaker 1: would not exist and they wouldn't have a way to
Speaker 1: just have money sitting around um, and all those people
Speaker 1: would lose their jobs, you know, because it's not not
Speaker 1: housing people. You know, people are like, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? It's not hard, it's not difficult. The city
Speaker 1: is spending what two billion dollars. I'm innovating the convention
Speaker 1: center that could house every house this person in Dallas
Speaker 1: for years, you know. But but then we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to have all of the wonderful things. Someone who
Speaker 1: lived in Dallas fifteen years I can remember one, maybe
Speaker 1: even two times when I went to the convention center.
Speaker 1: What would we do? I think maybe one time? What's
Speaker 1: along with it to where we had like it's Dallas
Speaker 1: prioritizes developers over anything else, and that is more than
Speaker 1: a parent in how they treat the house's population. Um,
Speaker 1: they're definitely because it's like my my problem, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: if the city, the city is gonna do sweeps, that's
Speaker 1: something that I can't really necessarily stop them from doing
Speaker 1: on my own, but we can and alleviate some of
Speaker 1: the effects of you know, Um, but when this is
Speaker 1: sweeping people in the heat like that, we're in the cold, elderly,
Speaker 1: just a people, It's like, y'all really are just telling
Speaker 1: them to die in the least you could do. And
Speaker 1: I've emailed Marcy Jackson, who's the community outreach chair for OHS,
Speaker 1: you know, She's been like, well, they can go to
Speaker 1: the shelter. It's it's about it's within three miles, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, you you're gonna walk three You're telling somebody
Speaker 1: who's older than this able to walk three miles in
Speaker 1: a hundred and seven degree heat to get to a
Speaker 1: cooling station. That is only open to like five. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the city. Just
Speaker 1: for a little bit of reference too, because like we
Speaker 1: have cooling stations and stuff up in Portland and you
Speaker 1: have similar problems. One thing that is a benefit to
Speaker 1: folks in a place like ore Agon is that after
Speaker 1: five six pm, when like this cooling stations start to
Speaker 1: call down, it actually does cool down here, Like it
Speaker 1: gets cool at night even when it's a hundred outside.
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen in Dallas during this Yeah, I've literally
Speaker 1: had it be triple digits at midnight in fu Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 1: Like that's the place it is. No, so you're still
Speaker 1: it's it's still a threat to life and limb even
Speaker 1: when the sun's not beating down on you. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: it was cooling shelters, I know. Certainly, like here, we
Speaker 1: have a bunch of issues with shelters and calling shelters
Speaker 1: and stuff, like you don't have privacy, you can't bring
Speaker 1: your pets. They want you to look all your possessions
Speaker 1: up somewhere else. There are like a number of other
Speaker 1: things that really limit people's ability to feel safe accessing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the same there, but like
Speaker 1: it's not that there's necessarily a place where someone would
Speaker 1: feel safe and I'm not going there. It's when I
Speaker 1: made that clear. Pets are a big issue, and this
Speaker 1: is something that again when I was at Nicholsville, people
Speaker 1: would point out that, like folks would accuse them of
Speaker 1: being like abusive because they had a cat or a dog,
Speaker 1: you know, that was living with them in the encampment.
Speaker 1: And they'd be like, well, number one, like it's okay
Speaker 1: for me to live this way, but it's not okay
Speaker 1: for like a cat or a dog. And also just
Speaker 1: like do I not deserve companionship and love in my life?
Speaker 1: Like this is what this animal is one of the
Speaker 1: is one of the things that helps keep me. And
Speaker 1: I talked to a number of folks who got back
Speaker 1: into housing who were like, if we had not had
Speaker 1: our cat with us, like, I don't know that we
Speaker 1: would have made it, because just having that animal with
Speaker 1: us like helped. Like it's it's for the same reason
Speaker 1: everybody has animals, right, Like every single house, this person
Speaker 1: that has a pet has a service animal has as
Speaker 1: a service animals far as I'm concerned, would you separate
Speaker 1: somebody who is disabled from their wheelchair. Would you separate
Speaker 1: somebody from there, like their service animal, their dog that
Speaker 1: they eat, you know, And it's like when you're out there, UM,
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people will have dogs
Speaker 1: for comfort, but also dogs are protection, they are security
Speaker 1: in such a dangerous environment UM, where people are always
Speaker 1: you know, like it's just it's just it is unfathomable
Speaker 1: how much trauma UM goes into being houseless, especially in Dallas,
Speaker 1: in places like Dalla. UM. So I'd like to ask
Speaker 1: you a little bit, so you have been Is this
Speaker 1: kind of the first collaboration this last week or so,
Speaker 1: let's say it with your chest has had with the
Speaker 1: the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. Have you guys
Speaker 1: been working together prior to this? Uh? Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: we UM I originally met members of Elm Fork when
Speaker 1: UM Camp Ronda first started, uh back in UM and
Speaker 1: we were collaborating on like getting people's supplies, UM tents
Speaker 1: and things like that. I would run laundry UM with
Speaker 1: my org uh and yeah, we were we just you know,
Speaker 1: always collaborated to make sure like the people could get
Speaker 1: what they need. If somebody had supplied, someone was able
Speaker 1: to show up and we couldn't you know, UM just
Speaker 1: working together again And I'm curious, UM, could you kind
Speaker 1: of walk us through sort of how what you see
Speaker 1: is the benefit of having folks who are visibly armed
Speaker 1: UM for this kind of for these kind of actions,
Speaker 1: Like how did how did number one sweep defense tend
Speaker 1: to work before y'all were doing that, and how has
Speaker 1: that altered kind of the way in which you're seeing
Speaker 1: this activism like take effect. UM. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: people from members of ELM four because I have always
Speaker 1: shown up with UM firearms in some capacity, whether it's
Speaker 1: concealed or open. But UM, there was a noticeable difference
Speaker 1: with the open carry UM. I know that back in
Speaker 1: Chad you worry when one of our other camps was
Speaker 1: getting swept UM and they showed up Like afterwards, we
Speaker 1: had a meeting with the director of UM Home Solutions,
Speaker 1: Christine Crosley. She sucks UM and uh. She was like,
Speaker 1: people were like, we were hearing reports of people that
Speaker 1: were openly armed, and we want to we really care
Speaker 1: about the safety of like the unhoused residents out there,
Speaker 1: And I was like they were more afraid of the
Speaker 1: cops than of the five people out here with with rifles,
Speaker 1: and that's that's something It's like, if you're gonna show
Speaker 1: up with twelve dudes with guns, what's the problem with
Speaker 1: some of us showing up with like a little something
Speaker 1: just in case? You know, the state should not be
Speaker 1: the only one to have access to firearms that very dangerous. UM.
Speaker 1: But also I don't mean that in a to a
Speaker 1: kind of way if that makes sensitive. Yeah, that does
Speaker 1: kind of bring up an interesting point, which is if
Speaker 1: you're showing as you're showing up kind of in this
Speaker 1: capacity with both activists to kind of help folks with
Speaker 1: their stuff, with with laundry and other needs, but also
Speaker 1: people who are are carrying are fifteens and wearing plate carriers.
Speaker 1: I imagine there's like a degree to which you are
Speaker 1: trying to give people a heads up before just so
Speaker 1: they don't be like, oh, suddenly there's folks with guns.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Right? Can you kind of walk us
Speaker 1: through the community outreach explaining sort of like how you
Speaker 1: how you actually go about letting people know what's going
Speaker 1: to be happening and stuff and and what the folks
Speaker 1: showing up are doing well when it comes to sweeps
Speaker 1: UM and normally I focus a lot on just making
Speaker 1: sure that people are okay and defending them. Um. When
Speaker 1: I I do not necessarily like ask for work to
Speaker 1: show up with guns. I'm more like I assume if
Speaker 1: y'all are going to be there, they are going to
Speaker 1: be um, you know. And sometimes there was Usually the
Speaker 1: residents are like the residents have some of the residents
Speaker 1: have firearms themselves, you know, so they're like, well aware. Um,
Speaker 1: there are some cases where like people will get a
Speaker 1: little bit anxious about it, and you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of have to be like, if you really don't want
Speaker 1: the guns here, then that's fine, we can move them.
Speaker 1: But in the past, with this track record, like usually
Speaker 1: the city kind of backs off a little bit when
Speaker 1: they know that y'all are actolutely protected, you know, because um,
Speaker 1: the city is the city is a bully. They really
Speaker 1: do like picking on people who the most vulnerable of us,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And so lately the guns have been
Speaker 1: seeming to have them back off a little bit. I
Speaker 1: know when they pulled up, Like when ELM we're pulled
Speaker 1: up and hopped out the car with the rifles, all
Speaker 1: of the cops are at we squatted up into like
Speaker 1: a little a little I don't know, pick circle and
Speaker 1: they started talking, uh, and they were genuinely like what
Speaker 1: do we do? Hold on? You know? Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of the that's kind of the
Speaker 1: story as we're coming into it right now, which is
Speaker 1: there were supposed to be a sweep. What is it
Speaker 1: five days ago now, Friday? Yeah, almost a week and
Speaker 1: you all have been showing up a couple of times
Speaker 1: in that period to help people get there, get things
Speaker 1: together and whatnot and get get which is an important
Speaker 1: The fact that you're helping them kind of move and
Speaker 1: and doing it more in kind of their own time
Speaker 1: frame as opposed to the city shows up and you've
Speaker 1: got to like grab what you can or lose everything, um,
Speaker 1: is important because you're also you're not just showing up
Speaker 1: with activists with guns and saying like the city we're
Speaker 1: not going to let any like no one's going to move,
Speaker 1: and we're like we're we're drawing a line in the sand,
Speaker 1: which is not would not be a particularly safe call.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think my my main priority out there, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of black and brown bodies out there
Speaker 1: people is making sure we are safe and um, even
Speaker 1: before this last one, Like a lot of us were
Speaker 1: concerned about the guns because like we didn't want things
Speaker 1: to escalate, and we never know with police, sometimes they
Speaker 1: get really excited and then sometimes they back off. It's really, uh,
Speaker 1: we really don't know. Um, So we were also taking
Speaker 1: that into consideration. UM. And I was kind of like
Speaker 1: the unfork No, like, listen, there's a lot of black
Speaker 1: and brown people out here, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: escalate anything and you know, put people in danger. Um.
Speaker 1: And it seems like this time, the city I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to mess with that. So that's good, but
Speaker 1: it's always important to keep that in mind any time
Speaker 1: you have firearms. Oh yes, population And I'm curious, um, bubble,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about the how this
Speaker 1: kind of organizing is sort of different than the stuff
Speaker 1: you've been doing at at counterprotesting events. Like what are
Speaker 1: kind of the different things that y'all are keeping in
Speaker 1: mind as you as you make action plans for days
Speaker 1: like this compared to when you know you're showing up
Speaker 1: to at a at a protest to kind of counter
Speaker 1: groups of Proud Boys or whatever. Yeah, it's pretty different, um,
Speaker 1: in that when we're doing security for marches, or um,
Speaker 1: you know, protecting pride events. Uh, it's not like a
Speaker 1: direct confrontation with so it's it's a bit it's a
Speaker 1: bit different. It's a little bit more high stakes. Um.
Speaker 1: When we do stop the sweep things, you know, we
Speaker 1: want to we want to push back, but at the
Speaker 1: same um, you know, not be the first to cross
Speaker 1: any lines. Um. So it is, you know, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a more sensitive situation. I think it requires
Speaker 1: different kind of planning. Um. And of course there's there's
Speaker 1: all these bystanders, there's all of the residents there who
Speaker 1: were there the help that we don't want to endanger
Speaker 1: in any way. Um. Like Danny was saying. I actually
Speaker 1: had um what ended up being a pretty cool conversation
Speaker 1: with a resident afterward. But he was kind of an
Speaker 1: organizer in the camp and he was talking to me
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I don't think we want
Speaker 1: the guns, like, we don't want any trouble. And I
Speaker 1: leaned over to him and I whispered to him, Look,
Speaker 1: we're just here with guns to try to get the
Speaker 1: cops to back off. Um. I think they're actually backing
Speaker 1: off now because we had actually just heard the cops
Speaker 1: that we're going to leave. I said, I think they're
Speaker 1: backing off. We're gone, don't worry about it. And he said,
Speaker 1: wait wait, you know, don't leave yet, wait till they leave. Um.
Speaker 1: And now that that's uh, I am interested like as
Speaker 1: the uh the actual folks showing up armed bubble. Do
Speaker 1: you guys have kind of a like standard set of
Speaker 1: responses and stuff that you work through ahead of time
Speaker 1: to kind of explain things to people and make sure
Speaker 1: everyone's on the same page in terms of how they're
Speaker 1: doing it. Um. Yeah, we have some of that worked out.
Speaker 1: That's an evolving thing where we're trying to standardize. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Worked a long time with a core group of people
Speaker 1: that knows each other really well. Um. So we have
Speaker 1: like seen each other at you know, dozens of these
Speaker 1: things and we know how each other operate. With some
Speaker 1: newer people coming in, you know, we are working now
Speaker 1: on kind of standardizing those responses and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing our past experiences and are thinking and all that. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: question for for both Slash either of you, as you've
Speaker 1: gotten more into do sweep defenses, what have been some
Speaker 1: of kind of the lessons learned things that have been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we went into it thinking like this was a good
Speaker 1: idea and it turned out that like that doesn't work
Speaker 1: very well. So we've had to do this like just
Speaker 1: things that have kind of um best practices that have
Speaker 1: kind of evolved over time doing this UM. Honestly a
Speaker 1: lot of it a lot when when tensions are really
Speaker 1: high like that, UM, because you come to sweeps like
Speaker 1: I'm the one kind of like dealing with UM a
Speaker 1: lot of like overseeing and stuff like that, and when
Speaker 1: tensions are really high like that. Honestly, the thing is
Speaker 1: harm reduction. Harm Reduction is at the pinnacle of it's
Speaker 1: at the core of like whatever we do, and part
Speaker 1: of that is meeting people where they're at UM and
Speaker 1: making sure that we UM help the people I show up,
Speaker 1: I shoot you not. One of the best things that
Speaker 1: we started doing is showing up with packs of Newports
Speaker 1: on God. It makes it a lot UM. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're going through trauma like that, UM and someone
Speaker 1: hands you a cigarette, that's something that not only helps
Speaker 1: you kind of regulate yourself when you're experiencing this high
Speaker 1: stress situation where you're being evicted from your home and
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose your stuff and you're afraid people are
Speaker 1: gonna steal things, and it's a whole lot that helps
Speaker 1: bring people back and it makes it a lot easier
Speaker 1: for us to UM work with people and UM still
Speaker 1: maintain the bonds that we've created and maintain the levels
Speaker 1: of trust that we have with the community. UM literally
Speaker 1: some simple things like handing out cigarettes, UM during because
Speaker 1: that's a way that we're like, hey, we're here for you,
Speaker 1: we know what you need, yeah, and we're not We're
Speaker 1: also we're not here to like judge what's best for you,
Speaker 1: you know, and do some like nanny state ship, like
Speaker 1: you need a cigarette right now, right like it's stressful,
Speaker 1: not really like hell, I would need a cigarette to
Speaker 1: you know. At that point, UM, there was somebody who
Speaker 1: was like, you're asking people for newports. You need to
Speaker 1: stop doing that, Like that's really unhealthy. And I thought
Speaker 1: you were trying to say these people and it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say for starters. M. We're not
Speaker 1: Captain America. We're not no avengers. Okay, we are regular
Speaker 1: people fulfilling a responsibility, and that responsibility is to be
Speaker 1: there for our neighbors. That's how movements happen, That's how
Speaker 1: anything happens, and all of that is rooted in you know,
Speaker 1: indigenous UM communalism and theory and stuff like that that
Speaker 1: I think is really important. It's just fulfilling that responsibility
Speaker 1: and being there for people and when it comes to
Speaker 1: because you know, we always try to provide folks listening
Speaker 1: in other towns and stuff who maybe like inspired by this,
Speaker 1: with options for how they might move forward on trying
Speaker 1: to replicate some of y'all's successes. If people are looking
Speaker 1: at okay, I would like to help do sweep defensive
Speaker 1: I would like to do, you know, work kind of
Speaker 1: like this in my own community. How do you recommend
Speaker 1: because obviously there's you know, how how to build organizations
Speaker 1: is another matter, But like, if you've got a group
Speaker 1: together to help folks, how do you recommend kind of
Speaker 1: starting the process of introducing yourself Because you can't just
Speaker 1: like show up and be like hey, like just be like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna certainly not with guns, but yeah, and don't
Speaker 1: um you have to develop a really really strong report
Speaker 1: with your community first, and you also need to make
Speaker 1: sure that's your community. Like you know, um, I I've
Speaker 1: spent a really long time creating relationships with the housed
Speaker 1: populations of South Dallas, and that took literal years, you know,
Speaker 1: expecting people to trust you off the bat, and expecting
Speaker 1: people to just like I feel like, oh, you're one
Speaker 1: of the good guys. It's not going to happen, especially
Speaker 1: if you're white. Like, honestly, if we'd be if we're
Speaker 1: keeping in a book, because like, there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of black and brown people out there in these vulnerable communities,
Speaker 1: and usually the white people that they see are the
Speaker 1: white people who are talking down to them and not
Speaker 1: treating them as human beings. The main thing that people,
Speaker 1: the people out there need most is consistency from you,
Speaker 1: even if you don't even if one day you don't
Speaker 1: have anything and you can just hand out water there
Speaker 1: with them and developing community that way, you know. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that people tell me a lot
Speaker 1: is that just it was It's been very shocking to
Speaker 1: me how much I've heard it is people are like,
Speaker 1: you don't talk to us like how other people talk
Speaker 1: to us. You talk to us like people. And the
Speaker 1: sheer amount of time I was really shocked by how
Speaker 1: many times about stare that because I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't really think I talked much differently from anybody else.
Speaker 1: But then when I go out there and see other people,
Speaker 1: just random people handing out macgriddles or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a switch. Like if you were talking to
Speaker 1: a pet or to a child, you know, um, like
Speaker 1: you pity something, people will not want you around because honestly,
Speaker 1: they don't want your pity. What they want is bottles
Speaker 1: of water. You know. If you're just only showing up
Speaker 1: when ships going down, um, you don't actually have the
Speaker 1: people's trust. And I think, if anything, that that hurts
Speaker 1: it a little bit because it's like, oh, I am
Speaker 1: only here to make you feel good about yourself. You
Speaker 1: want to be the one saving everybody. It's like you've
Speaker 1: got to dismantle your savior complex first before you do anything.
Speaker 1: And I think it's good to talk about, um kind
Speaker 1: of how this actually how these actions actually look on
Speaker 1: the ground, because again, the thing that sort of has
Speaker 1: gone semiviral on Twitter has been the fact that like,
Speaker 1: you know, people with guns stood off the cops. But
Speaker 1: if you're imagining some sort of like big armed standoff,
Speaker 1: like that's not how this has looked. Which is the
Speaker 1: thing I liked about the Dallas Morning News article, Um,
Speaker 1: which we will do you mean the article or the
Speaker 1: opinion piece. Sorry, yes, um, I am pulling it up
Speaker 1: right now, just to have that we have an opinion already. Oh,
Speaker 1: any time on howse people pop up in the discourse,
Speaker 1: someone is ready to write and I again, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the the article, the article armed activists block Dallas workers
Speaker 1: from cleaning a homeless camp. That's an acceptable opinion. That's
Speaker 1: That's not the one I was talking about. The one
Speaker 1: I'm talking about is titled and it is a news
Speaker 1: article Dallas delays moving homeless camp after activists show up,
Speaker 1: which did a good job of not kind of over
Speaker 1: emphasizing the armed part and talking about the actual work
Speaker 1: y'all we're doing in the community. I was kind of
Speaker 1: impressed with it, especially given the Dallas Morning News is
Speaker 1: most recent like general trends, shall we say, and considering
Speaker 1: their opinion piece they published yesterday. Yeah, I hadn't seen
Speaker 1: that one. Could you talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: these these actions have actually looked on the ground during
Speaker 1: the day of Yeah, so on the ground, Um, some
Speaker 1: people arrived very early, and you really never know when
Speaker 1: the cops in the city are going to show up.
Speaker 1: So ELM Fork showed up close to nine and they
Speaker 1: are already like four cops there, UM, and that you know,
Speaker 1: that's unfortunate. We probably should have shown up earlier. We
Speaker 1: you know, if if we're going to go to protect
Speaker 1: the other activists, you know, you don't want to leave
Speaker 1: the unarmed activists exposed to um police violence. UM. But
Speaker 1: either way, you know, we we formed up. It was
Speaker 1: maybe two unarmed activists for every armed activist, and we
Speaker 1: discussed what to do. Some people decided to block off
Speaker 1: the streets with their vehicles. UM. The cops were there
Speaker 1: for a solid hour and a half before almost Solution
Speaker 1: or the Office of Homeless Solutions and Code Compliance started arriving.
Speaker 1: So by that time, UM, a good number of armed
Speaker 1: activists were there and the cops had been discussing amongst themselves, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is that they were talking about.
Speaker 1: But when oh HS and Code got there, they talked
Speaker 1: with the cops for about thirty minutes and then they
Speaker 1: started leaving. During that time, the unarmed activists were packing
Speaker 1: things up, UM get you know, getting people ready to move.
Speaker 1: If those people wanted to move, UH. One thing to
Speaker 1: to kind of go back a little bit. One thing
Speaker 1: that we've learned carrying is it's very difficult to do
Speaker 1: the same things that we were doing as an armed activists. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we don't really want to be carrying
Speaker 1: tents and stuff while also trying to negotiate, you know,
Speaker 1: having a rifle in our arms. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's kind of a division of labor there. But you know,
Speaker 1: before two hours had even passed, basically the sweep was
Speaker 1: called off. The city and the cops left and the
Speaker 1: mutual aid work continued Throughout the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: H Elm Fork had some members switching out. You know,
Speaker 1: some people had to go to work. Some people arrived
Speaker 1: around noon that was kind of the main switch out point,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, a lesser number of people but
Speaker 1: still a significant amount stayed there until four or five
Speaker 1: pm whenever four comes with guns. The main thing that
Speaker 1: I like to have them do is surveillance and be
Speaker 1: watching so that way we can focus on, um, having
Speaker 1: other volunteers actually help people, you know, and like have
Speaker 1: them help them move and stuff. And the surveillance definitely
Speaker 1: helps because what happens when the cops leave and when
Speaker 1: the city leaves is that they'll still have people like
Speaker 1: watching um and driving around and trying to surveil us UM,
Speaker 1: and so having more eyes on that situation and having
Speaker 1: them know like, yeah, we're still here is really helpful. Great, Um,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Did anybody else have additional questions to ask? James?
Speaker 1: You had one or two more things? Yeah, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in and maybe asking bubble this because I'm
Speaker 1: just looking at the pictures on the on the Dallas
Speaker 1: Morning News story And incredibly they didn't lead with a
Speaker 1: picture of you all sort of suited and booted in
Speaker 1: full battle rattle, which I think is good on that part, um,
Speaker 1: But how do you present an event like this? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: obviously I think we should probably mention that, Like I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it's legal to open carry where you are, Uh,
Speaker 1: so you're not like immediately criming and therefore provoking a
Speaker 1: superfining confrontation with the police. Um, although obviously the police
Speaker 1: are always turning up armed um and that always brings
Speaker 1: violence into the equation. But are you like masque? Do
Speaker 1: you full like this person I'm seeing is like masked, helmet, goggles,
Speaker 1: plate carrier? Is that generally how you present or is
Speaker 1: that just left up to individuals I wonder, Um, we
Speaker 1: try to be pretty uniform, but it definitely varies by action.
Speaker 1: I think the last time we came out armed, um,
Speaker 1: we were not in helmets and plate carriers. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know everyone has one now and uh, we discussed
Speaker 1: it beforehand. We decided to go that way. Um. We
Speaker 1: try not to arc directly where we're going to get seen,
Speaker 1: you know, if all possible, Um, because we do need
Speaker 1: to get out Europe, you know, walk over in all
Speaker 1: our stuff. Um. But yeah, I think you know, for
Speaker 1: a lot of actions now, including security, that's kind of
Speaker 1: been our uh go to way of presenting. The full
Speaker 1: masks are very important. We've moved from like you know,
Speaker 1: medical style masks too, all the clava style masks, just
Speaker 1: to get more skin coverage, protect our identities better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. And one other thing I just wanted
Speaker 1: to ask and perhaps like explaining in a context it
Speaker 1: might might not be read of in Texas. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: in California, at least you need two proofs of address
Speaker 1: to a firearm, right um. Uh, and if you're inhoused
Speaker 1: you might not have those, and therefore people alienated from
Speaker 1: what it's theoretically they're right. Um, whether you want to
Speaker 1: see that as a universe or right or constitutional right,
Speaker 1: is that the case there or at these people? But
Speaker 1: if they to Texas, Texas, you don't. You don't have
Speaker 1: to file a four four seven three to buy a
Speaker 1: gun in the state of Texas. My gun literally was
Speaker 1: just given to me by somebody. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: do a DAL transfer or nothing. Like. Guns are so
Speaker 1: easy to get in Texas, it's actually really scary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: private sale, you can basically do whatever you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is hard not to wind up owning a gun
Speaker 1: in the States. Easier than owning a place to stay. Definitely,
Speaker 1: way easier. Yeah, what a country method in the house? Okay, magnificent. Okay,
Speaker 1: well yeah, not the case in other states. I guess
Speaker 1: to know. And and nothing that we've said here should
Speaker 1: be taken as legal advice, are e, how to protest
Speaker 1: or partake an armed activism, because that can vary. That
Speaker 1: varies wildly based on your zip code. And everything we've
Speaker 1: talked about today is a massive series of felonies and
Speaker 1: a number of other parts of the United States, like,
Speaker 1: you're not You're not going to be providing sweep defense
Speaker 1: in New York City in this manner. You know, you
Speaker 1: do this where I live in show up into consideration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so take obviously, I mean that's a big part of
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Those you have to take the situation
Speaker 1: on the ground. You have to take the situation with
Speaker 1: these people's individuals into You can't just you can't just
Speaker 1: go in and impose like this is how we're going
Speaker 1: to do sweep defense. You have to go in there
Speaker 1: like being willing to learn and adapt because, um, this
Speaker 1: is not you know, your day to day life, and
Speaker 1: it is life for folks there, and you have to
Speaker 1: come in willing to learn and understand what they need
Speaker 1: rather than like what you think they need. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: we never know what the city is going to show
Speaker 1: up with each time. Like the Monday sweep before this
Speaker 1: past one, it was all marshals. It wasn't even act
Speaker 1: like regular dp D. It was all marshals. They were
Speaker 1: ready to arrest. They had bulldozers and cranes and all
Speaker 1: types of ship. Um. And that was also that was
Speaker 1: kind of often because I was like, wow, y'all are
Speaker 1: being mad aggressive this time. I think we just pissed
Speaker 1: them off too much to the point where they were like,
Speaker 1: we have to be you know, meaner about it. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, but we ain't been arrested yet, So yeah,
Speaker 1: fingers crossed. I do want to win. I do want
Speaker 1: to mention one more thing. I know we've talked about
Speaker 1: how this kind of pertains to Dallas, and you know,
Speaker 1: had the similar you know situations on increasing sweeps across
Speaker 1: the country in Portland. I think last month there was
Speaker 1: an episode on this show about a homeless encampment in
Speaker 1: Ohio and in terms of like similar stuff that has
Speaker 1: happened to kind of demonstrate this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the thing going on all across the country. UH.
Speaker 1: There was a really interesting situation in Boise, Idaho earlier
Speaker 1: this year that we may want to cover more in
Speaker 1: depth in the future. But in January, when it was
Speaker 1: freezing outside, protesters and UH and homeless people launched an
Speaker 1: encampment in front of the Boise State Capital UH to
Speaker 1: kind of both provide you know, some type of shelter
Speaker 1: and community to help keep each other warm, but also
Speaker 1: in front of the capitol as like a protest to
Speaker 1: demand access to shelter. Um. You know, and when while
Speaker 1: in the middle of like a pretty bad housing crisis
Speaker 1: and as it's freezing outside. UH. People at the camp
Speaker 1: faced a lot of basically NonStop harassment from the state,
Speaker 1: whether that's police or like state state police. UH. They
Speaker 1: also faced a lot of UH problems from far right
Speaker 1: militia groups. The Idaho Liberty Dogs showed up to harass people.
Speaker 1: There was you know, militia showing up with guns. UM.
Speaker 1: So you can see like another instance where something that
Speaker 1: you know arm where another instance where armed community defense
Speaker 1: could be UH could be a part in trying to
Speaker 1: key of situations like that from not escalating if done properly. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if done improperly, that can escalate situations. It was up
Speaker 1: to you know, you have to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: with people who are you, who you know, who you trust,
Speaker 1: and who are responsible. But it's just it's it's another
Speaker 1: instance of stuff like this happening. UH. Anti fascists and
Speaker 1: other activists were able to push were able to keep
Speaker 1: conflicts from these militia groups to be relatively low at
Speaker 1: at the at the encampment and after a few months
Speaker 1: and like courts were trying to shut the protest. That
Speaker 1: was unsuccessful because of certain laws around camping on on
Speaker 1: like Capital grounds for protests. But after a few months
Speaker 1: the protest was able to end and the city is
Speaker 1: now been pushed by the protest to open up possibly
Speaker 1: hundreds of units of shelter in the near future. So
Speaker 1: you see other instances of of these types of protests
Speaker 1: that you know, rely on, a lot of like radical
Speaker 1: mutual aid, a lot of resistance to the state violence,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of resistance to far right
Speaker 1: violence actually being some like successful. Um, so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of places to learn from in this type of
Speaker 1: thing around homeless encampments and encountering state violence. Would recommend, uh,
Speaker 1: It's going down, has a lot of good coverage of
Speaker 1: the Boys the Idaho thing. So yeah, that's just like
Speaker 1: a whole whole other angle to this, to this sort
Speaker 1: of trend that we've been seeing the past year. I
Speaker 1: would like to say that you are not for the
Speaker 1: al Castro. You know, you are not the revolutionary leader.
Speaker 1: You are not the one you know like, and you
Speaker 1: need to keep that in mind when you're moving in
Speaker 1: these spaces and doing this type of work. Is if
Speaker 1: your goal is to try and be like the guy
Speaker 1: you know, uh that does way more harm than good,
Speaker 1: and that's really important to keep in mind, UM and
Speaker 1: dismantling your save your complex as part of that. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, in that case, you know, the house is
Speaker 1: people uh residents, were you know, consenting to it and
Speaker 1: things like that. But please do take into account the
Speaker 1: amount of danger that you're putting very the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: populations into. Um. It is not necessarily a good idea,
Speaker 1: we're morally okay, idea to uh make houseless people into
Speaker 1: your people's army, you know that is not And I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that everybody you know listening is
Speaker 1: also well aware of like, that is the wrong way
Speaker 1: to go about this. The people's army should be people
Speaker 1: like us, not the most vulnerable of us, because they
Speaker 1: are already fighting very hard. So that means that's like
Speaker 1: it's the same thing like saying white people should be
Speaker 1: at the front lines protecting black and brown people during protests.
Speaker 1: It's the same exact concept. You protect the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: of the group. You do not make them, um, you know,
Speaker 1: your army and try to convert them into something and
Speaker 1: be the leader of that either. Um, that is that
Speaker 1: is not the way to go about that. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're if you're entering into this relationship with
Speaker 1: the plan that like, this is a way for us
Speaker 1: to build power for whatever end, as opposed to we're
Speaker 1: here to help these people. Um, then you're you're putting
Speaker 1: them second to whatever your political goals are, which is
Speaker 1: bad broadly speaking. I mean, and I know I know
Speaker 1: at least in the case of the IDA of of
Speaker 1: in the Ohio encampment that we talked about earlier this month, um,
Speaker 1: and the IDA who want as well a large number
Speaker 1: of people who are like leading up that project and
Speaker 1: in prominent ortization rules where houses people who are living
Speaker 1: at those camps, Like, it is very important to have
Speaker 1: people who are like you don't want to go in
Speaker 1: as someone with stable housing and be like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: in charge of this thing now. No, it's like the
Speaker 1: people that are actually experiencing it need to be the
Speaker 1: like a critical role in actually how it functions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there we've had not we but like there was
Speaker 1: somebody who tried to do that, um, and it definitely
Speaker 1: did more harm than good. Um, putting your political goals
Speaker 1: over just the people is always going to fail every
Speaker 1: single time. Yeah, listen to the people. If they're not
Speaker 1: leading it, don't do it. You know, like at that
Speaker 1: point your only priority should be getting them what they
Speaker 1: need and defending them if necessary. Trying to lead stuff
Speaker 1: and you know, have them putting them into more vulnerable
Speaker 1: situations than they're already at without like fully being transparent
Speaker 1: with people or being transparent with all the risks involved.
Speaker 1: You know, like it's that's real, grimy, real, not okay behavior. Um,
Speaker 1: So that's just something I also want to caution people against.
Speaker 1: And all of that definitely roots back to dismantling your
Speaker 1: savior complex. And there's um a lot of good um
Speaker 1: resources out there, um for starting with that process if
Speaker 1: you have not already, some of them wrong with your
Speaker 1: chest Instagram Also you get out and follow us or something?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, yeah, do you wanna I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm I'm at the out of questions personally,
Speaker 1: do we want to um uh end with kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: how folks can follow you and stay in touch with
Speaker 1: what y'all are doing or potentially even support you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are at say it with your chest dt X
Speaker 1: on Instagram. UM. I also organized with the Dallas Seberation Movement,
Speaker 1: which is a bigger or that mobilizes across the nine
Speaker 1: thousand square miles of d FW. UM. I run that
Speaker 1: with three of my good friends and organizers. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so you can follow us at Dallas Liberation m b
Speaker 1: MPT on Instagram. UM. Oh, if you're willing, able and
Speaker 1: financially stable, throw us some cash please and listen to
Speaker 1: black women. Listen to black and indigenous women. That's all
Speaker 1: I got, all right, um, bubble, did you have anything
Speaker 1: to add? I think it's important to have diverse collection
Speaker 1: of groups. UM. You know, Danny's a hero, she's out
Speaker 1: there almost every day. UM. For ELM Fork, we do
Speaker 1: a lot of trainings, we do a lot of classes,
Speaker 1: UM that take up our resources, but we have these
Speaker 1: longstanding relationships so that we can support each other UM
Speaker 1: when need be. UM. You know, take care of your
Speaker 1: take care of your spaces, take care of your communities.
Speaker 1: Like Danny said, UM, focus on the people in those
Speaker 1: spacesther that be UH and housed people or your own organizers, activists.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta keep you gotta keep things safe.
Speaker 1: It's hot out here. There's been a lot of stress
Speaker 1: and conflicts, and you always have to practice UM restorative
Speaker 1: justice and accountability. UM. And you know just keep fighting,
Speaker 1: keep keep loving each other. All right, Well that's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for everybody here at It could happen here today.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, go go go do something good. Hey, We'll
Speaker 1: be back Monday with more episodes every week from now
Speaker 1: and totally heat death of the Universe. It could Happen
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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Speaker 1: for listening.