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Speaker 1: here a podcast that is about fifty of the time
Speaker 1: introduced well and about fifty percent of the time us
Speaker 1: talking about how we're bad at introductions, and today it
Speaker 1: is it is just be Christopher, but with me is
Speaker 1: Hadley and Mike from Labelia Commons, who are here to
Speaker 1: talk about many things, one of which is there is
Speaker 1: the first edition of the earth Bound Farmers Almanac. Hey,
Speaker 1: how how are you two doing today? I heard I
Speaker 1: heard there's maybe a thunderstorm rolling in. Yeah, we're doing
Speaker 1: pretty good. Um, it's gonna be glad for the rain,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, it'll be good. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit first about Labilia Commons. So how did
Speaker 1: that project start? I know, I know was something from
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic, but had you all been
Speaker 1: working on this kind of stuff before? And yeah, I
Speaker 1: just wanted roasty a little bit of that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it kind of started um last year during the pandemic. Basically, UM.
Speaker 1: Basically at the beginning of the pandemic, we had UM
Speaker 1: that's like a surge of interest in these like kind
Speaker 1: of mutual a groups UM and the largest of which
Speaker 1: that formed in New Orleans specifically, which some of us
Speaker 1: helped form was called New Orleans Mutual, a group which
Speaker 1: was doing like food distribution. It kind of stemmed out
Speaker 1: of a project that was already UM running like a
Speaker 1: food share, basically getting excess produce that was coming into
Speaker 1: the port and distributing it for free in front of
Speaker 1: like one of the gentrifying grocery stores. UM. But within
Speaker 1: like I want to say, like a couple of weeks UM,
Speaker 1: there was such a surge of interest in doing that
Speaker 1: type of like volunteer or whatever UM where that there
Speaker 1: was like a ton of labor to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And that basically meant buying tons of produce eventually because
Speaker 1: the ports eventually shut down and there wasn't any produce
Speaker 1: coming from anywhere at the beginning of the the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: that basically buying tons of produce from like costco and
Speaker 1: that labor meant like waiting in lines for you know,
Speaker 1: wrapping around entire like massive like multi city block where
Speaker 1: the house stores. UM. And so that was basically doing
Speaker 1: like food distribution. So we took the opportunity to since
Speaker 1: there was so much labor happening, that we could go
Speaker 1: and start to adjust the question of like food production
Speaker 1: specifically and and try and do that in interesting ways. UM. So,
Speaker 1: we felt like it was pretty important to start like
Speaker 1: experimenting and different forms of food product chain and like
Speaker 1: like ways of relating to food production. UM So, I
Speaker 1: mean this first started with like a, um, we're basically
Speaker 1: just starting tons of seeds and delivering them all over
Speaker 1: the city, um, just driving around from we had like
Speaker 1: one centralized nursery that was run out of a warehouse
Speaker 1: um and that was a ton of labor as a
Speaker 1: really time consuming. It was super centralized, and so we
Speaker 1: moved from that into a number of other projects. Um.
Speaker 1: Short shortly thereafter, we put together like a like a
Speaker 1: collaborative mushroom production group where we were um getting people
Speaker 1: who had been growing mushrooms and teaching folks and she
Speaker 1: like doing skill shares to produce oyster mushrooms out of buckets.
Speaker 1: We started doing some like woodlock production of Chautaukis, which
Speaker 1: has like since expanded pretty dramatically. Um And yeah, just
Speaker 1: like kind of like things that that draw people's interests
Speaker 1: like that, and and and think about like how you
Speaker 1: can grow food in an urban or peri urban scenario
Speaker 1: fairly interestingly and like with joy um. Also, um. You know,
Speaker 1: after this, we we were reached out to by folks
Speaker 1: that were like, well, I want to grow herbs, and
Speaker 1: rather than specifically getting like a lot and covering it
Speaker 1: in different herbal medicines, we reached out had already had
Speaker 1: folks reaching out to us. UM. So someone came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of, well, let's just all grow in
Speaker 1: our backyard stuns of herbs, and let's find herbs that
Speaker 1: already grow abundantly around us to kind of collectively share
Speaker 1: the experience of harvesting and um and turning those into medicines. UM.
Speaker 1: And so now there's like this Herb Commons group that
Speaker 1: the labor is distributed. It's distributed geographically, um, but there's
Speaker 1: these like meet ups where they're bulk curbs are given up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: given out just like in a canal space and um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's skill shares happening there. And and so there's
Speaker 1: kind of some community being built around that. Um that
Speaker 1: that happens in a very decentralized manner. Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: very decentralized. There are working groups that are part of
Speaker 1: Lobelia Commons that I'm like, not entirely sure what they're
Speaker 1: doing any given day or you know, what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm involved in like a couple particular projects within it UM,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's really flexible for folks who
Speaker 1: are trying to get involved. They can kind of be
Speaker 1: involved at whatever level they want. Like, um, if somebody
Speaker 1: doesn't want to go to a bunch of garden work
Speaker 1: days or a bunch of meetings or something, which you
Speaker 1: know are have been a great way for us to
Speaker 1: like see each other and see our friends during the
Speaker 1: pandemic and stuff, is to get together for these work
Speaker 1: days outdoors or whatnot. But if somebody wants to just
Speaker 1: like do nothing but sprout plants at their own house
Speaker 1: and then somebody will come pick up those seedlings and
Speaker 1: and you know bring them to one of our decentralized
Speaker 1: nursery spots, that's great. Um. That's one of the other
Speaker 1: kind of projects we have we call the decentralized nursery,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like just something that people already
Speaker 1: do at a certain time of year. You know, gardeners
Speaker 1: will regularly start more plants than they need and then
Speaker 1: just kind of give them away to friends and neighbors
Speaker 1: and stuff. And we tried to just make it a
Speaker 1: little bit more of an intentional thing. Um. And this
Speaker 1: was also kind of growing out of like at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the pandemic, and we were actually doing
Speaker 1: seedling deliveries to people, which made sense of that time,
Speaker 1: but it was like very labor intensive. Um. So we
Speaker 1: kind of moved to this model of having just like
Speaker 1: free stands in front of houses on street corners in
Speaker 1: different places. Um. You know, there's already like a bunch
Speaker 1: of free fridges around New Orleans and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so this is kind of like the free plant
Speaker 1: version of that, and it's really easy for somebody to
Speaker 1: just set one up, um. And then that kind of
Speaker 1: also allows us to like work on this other aspect
Speaker 1: of of decentralizing food production, because like that's definitely one
Speaker 1: of our goals, right is to like not have a
Speaker 1: tiny percentage of the population be the only ones who
Speaker 1: know how to grow food and giving it under the
Speaker 1: control of the tiny number of corporations that own all
Speaker 1: the land. And you know, obviously we're trying to get
Speaker 1: away from that food system, and so one of the
Speaker 1: ways we can think about doing that is finding ways
Speaker 1: to really decentralize some of the skills that are UM
Speaker 1: that are necessary. So for example, like if somebody's growing
Speaker 1: avocados for our nurseries, UM, the thing about growing an
Speaker 1: avocado from a pit actually is that, uh, that tree
Speaker 1: probably won't produce fruit. It actually needs to be grafted. UM.
Speaker 1: So we can have people starting pits, and then we're
Speaker 1: also you know, sharing the knowledge of how to graph
Speaker 1: these things, UM because we kind of like see a
Speaker 1: future in which a lot more people um will need
Speaker 1: to be involved in food production. But also, like Mike
Speaker 1: was saying, like, we want this to be not like
Speaker 1: a job that it feels like people have, but this
Speaker 1: joyous kind of thing that's just a part of everyday life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the other things that I was I was
Speaker 1: interested in is you know, so so part of part
Speaker 1: of what I think the beginning of the Earth Performers
Speaker 1: Romanac is about is talking about how I guess people
Speaker 1: people have this tendency to sort of focus on climate
Speaker 1: change is just like the only sort of climate thing
Speaker 1: that's happening. And you know, I mean there's obviously the yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a bunch of sort of stuff that is
Speaker 1: climate change, But isn't the weather that are sort of
Speaker 1: you know, things like the phosphor cycle, things like the
Speaker 1: nitrogen cycle that are breaking. But simultaneously, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's also true that you know that that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and this is also something that's that's talked
Speaker 1: about in there is is going to have a large
Speaker 1: impact both on sort of like even just what what
Speaker 1: kind of biomas exist in the inner very short term.
Speaker 1: And you know, another product of that is, you know
Speaker 1: it is that the sort of increasing rate of storms.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you all could talk a
Speaker 1: bit about what happened after Ida and how both just
Speaker 1: sort of in the short term in the long term,
Speaker 1: that the sort of the increase of just hurricanes. And
Speaker 1: I hesitate to call natural disasters because you know that
Speaker 1: there's there's a whole thing about how these disasters are
Speaker 1: sort of manufactured in a lot of ways, but how
Speaker 1: how that's been affecting how y'all think are thinking about
Speaker 1: and working with these kind of mutual aid projects and
Speaker 1: food production. Yeah. So I think with IDA, it's kind
Speaker 1: of complicated because, um, you can almost look at it,
Speaker 1: look at it as like two different storms. Um, because
Speaker 1: what happened in New Orleans versus what happened and say
Speaker 1: like um Homa or the river parishes, UM, these areas
Speaker 1: that are you know, generally south and west of New Orleans,
Speaker 1: UM are are are kind of like two different UH
Speaker 1: animals in some ways, like what happened in New Orleans
Speaker 1: specifically relates to infrastructure. So like what you're saying, like
Speaker 1: the kind of quote unquote natural disasters thing that's UM,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a pretty commonplace way of looking. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not a very radical UM conception that like these
Speaker 1: aren't natural disasters wherever the disasters is created. As soon
Speaker 1: as UM there was the attempt to create a colonial
Speaker 1: New Orleans in the first place. UM. So this became
Speaker 1: honestly part of like national discourse as a result of Katrina,
Speaker 1: most famously because of the Army corp of Engineers failure
Speaker 1: UM teven five and UM so what happened this year
Speaker 1: UM was with with Hurricane Ida was one of the
Speaker 1: main transmission towers UM for the the energy Energy Corporation
Speaker 1: in New Worlds is called energy outside of the Gulf
Speaker 1: South aren't familiar with. So the entergy tower fell into
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River. You had that happening at the same
Speaker 1: time that thousands of power lines fell down. The power
Speaker 1: lines are are are on poles and very prone to
Speaker 1: getting knocked down even just during the during any day
Speaker 1: of the week, UM. And so there wasn't actually really
Speaker 1: much flooding UM that was happening. It was it was
Speaker 1: primarily wind damage. So that the tower falls into the river,
Speaker 1: power lines down. You had something like I believe fifty
Speaker 1: five barges in the Port of South Louisiana falling into
Speaker 1: their falling off their moorings and floating around just crashing
Speaker 1: into things, just crashing Like there's like several ferries that
Speaker 1: connect the east and west banks of the city. Um,
Speaker 1: those fell off their mornings. So, so like the physical
Speaker 1: infrastructure of the place and and how that relates to
Speaker 1: beyond New Orleans is New Orleans is located at the
Speaker 1: very um southern reach of the Mississippi Rivers Port of
Speaker 1: South Southern Louisiana, which is like a fifty five mile
Speaker 1: port I believe a fifty two port um that processes
Speaker 1: like six of all U S grain going to exports.
Speaker 1: So it's like a massive, really really important piece of
Speaker 1: American capitalist infrastructure. So that when when those boats follow
Speaker 1: their mornings. It's not like, oh this like whatever quaint
Speaker 1: like byou problem. It's a very serious imperial problem. UM.
Speaker 1: But so for for the average person living in New Orleans, UM,
Speaker 1: this looked like I think I think it ended up
Speaker 1: being for most people around a week and a half
Speaker 1: without power, which if anyone's lived even with air conditioning
Speaker 1: in New Orleans for a summer, UM, it's it's extremely
Speaker 1: difficult to live here during the summer. UM. It's that
Speaker 1: it's obviously not impossible when we have modern amenities, but
Speaker 1: when you're when you're without those, when you without the refrigerator,
Speaker 1: when we throughout without new freezer air conditioning, it's it's
Speaker 1: really really really hot, um. You know. So that's what
Speaker 1: was happening in New Orleans. There was some some damage
Speaker 1: to people's rooms, there was some you know, fairly fairly
Speaker 1: substantial damage to the structures. But what happened to the west,
Speaker 1: in cities like Laplace, UM, which is about thirty miles
Speaker 1: west of New Orleans, UM, that's where you started to
Speaker 1: see like very severe flooding, very severe UM damage to structures,
Speaker 1: places like Homer Lafitte, um Portchean, all these places that
Speaker 1: are closer to the coast. That's where you saw the
Speaker 1: real heavy destruction. So a lot of people have been
Speaker 1: framing what's happened down the Bayou and in the river
Speaker 1: parishes as we would say, um as like those places Katrina,
Speaker 1: because it's the destruction was was so total in that way. UM,
Speaker 1: So the way that you relate to UM, that type
Speaker 1: of again quote unquote disaster is much is much different,
Speaker 1: whereas what happened in New Orleans, UM is more of
Speaker 1: a continuation of of what could be called like a
Speaker 1: series of apocalypses that have been happening since colonization. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's an interesting point also that that
Speaker 1: that I want to talk about a little bit about
Speaker 1: US grain exports because I think that that's another part
Speaker 1: of this whole food system question that is important on
Speaker 1: a scale that I don't think people understand, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just for furvent background for listeners. So when when
Speaker 1: all of the sort of giant like free trade agreements
Speaker 1: went into effect, um, you know, so so the free
Speaker 1: trade comments are like, okay, you're you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to like have government subsidies of agricultural products.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a couple of carve outs that were
Speaker 1: put into this now almost all of them. There are exceptions,
Speaker 1: for there's a couple of like weird manufacturing stuff in
Speaker 1: like Italy and Germany that have carve outs. And the
Speaker 1: other big one is that the the the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government is allowed to just do enormous levels of agricultural
Speaker 1: subsidies that no one else like really in the world
Speaker 1: is allowed to like match or I mean do it.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you know if if if you try
Speaker 1: to have grand subsidies, right, it's like you know, the
Speaker 1: I m F will come after you, like you know,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to do it. But then you know,
Speaker 1: sometanious that you have the US producing all of this
Speaker 1: like this. I mean it it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: really cheap, right, but it's it's you know, this enormously
Speaker 1: subsidized grain that nobody can actually really compete with. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's like an interesting I was wondering what,
Speaker 1: like how how how do you guys think about that
Speaker 1: in terms of, you know, try trying to do decentralized
Speaker 1: I guess o your culture into play. That's to a
Speaker 1: large extent, this sort of like conduitive grain to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, but in a way that like
Speaker 1: also inhibits those places from actually you know, having their
Speaker 1: own kind of like essentialized agriculture. UM. I mean I
Speaker 1: can speak a little bit about like what that kind
Speaker 1: of does to our context of like making it, like
Speaker 1: especially when I see people in the kind of organic
Speaker 1: gardening farming world trying to go on this model of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make you know, regenerative agriculture profitable, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it somehow compete with conventional agriculture. UM. And
Speaker 1: I guess I just don't really think that that is
Speaker 1: feasible in that in that terrain. Like you know, if
Speaker 1: if we're trying to compete on that same terrain and
Speaker 1: we're competing with these absurd subsidies, it definitely just the
Speaker 1: same problem that you see around the world where people
Speaker 1: aren't able to afford to grow their own thing because
Speaker 1: there's no way they can they can sell it as
Speaker 1: cheaply as as us grain. UM. So I think it's
Speaker 1: more important to sort of like look at like there's
Speaker 1: there's a piece in the almanac actually that sort of
Speaker 1: gets into this this issue of like, well, are we
Speaker 1: really growing enough food in this regenerative way. Like you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't even hardly grow that many grains or
Speaker 1: that many high calorie things. A lot of things are
Speaker 1: just focused on vegetables and things like that. And like,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important critique. And also I
Speaker 1: think that the way out of it isn't just gonna
Speaker 1: be us trying harder or something or um. Like the
Speaker 1: future iron vision for us, like really changing the food
Speaker 1: system kind of involves like really large scale expropriation of
Speaker 1: that land where the grain is being produced and of
Speaker 1: those huge machineries, those huge like satellite powered or satellite
Speaker 1: directed you know, plows and tractors and whatnot that are
Speaker 1: that are doing this stuff. Um. And so like when
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about like the impact that a
Speaker 1: food project is having, or like a food justice project,
Speaker 1: I don't try to think like we're trying to replace
Speaker 1: uh aggro business on its own terms. I think like
Speaker 1: we're trying to be an ally or an aid to
Speaker 1: any kind of antagonistic sort of social movement that actually
Speaker 1: is going to create the conditions where like we can
Speaker 1: all get together and start to actually address these problems,
Speaker 1: um without being hindered by you know, things like private property.
Speaker 1: So I guess that that that that's a good point
Speaker 1: to to jump into the Almanac from. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: do do you want to just introduce the project a
Speaker 1: little bit and then we can talk about some of
Speaker 1: the stuff in it that I thought was really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Almanac kind of came out of like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a like partially is like a joke.
Speaker 1: You know, we're like, everyone gets the Almanac and kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it doesn't really relate too much to
Speaker 1: um like most of us what we would be growing. Um,
Speaker 1: So we had we had posited something like different, you know,
Speaker 1: something that that does kind of grapple with some of
Speaker 1: the questions of you know, growing food and kind of
Speaker 1: the conditions we live in. Maybe you can speak kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, I can even just I'll actually just read
Speaker 1: the back of it because I think it speaks to
Speaker 1: it pretty well. This is a farmer's almanac for the
Speaker 1: end of the world. Growing food used to be a
Speaker 1: lot more straightforward when you plant your okra at the
Speaker 1: same time every year like your grandpa did. Now we've
Speaker 1: got to be ready for anything. Late spring freezes, freak
Speaker 1: heat waves that bring plants out of dormancy to early
Speaker 1: fire season longer every year, the polar vortex. And if
Speaker 1: that wasn't enough, we've also got to contend with the
Speaker 1: fallout from breakages in the global supply chain. When millions
Speaker 1: of gallons of milk get poured down the drain and
Speaker 1: mountains of potatoes are left to rock, it's a world
Speaker 1: that calls for a new kind of farmers almanac. Today's
Speaker 1: crisis has roots in the earliest moments of land theft
Speaker 1: against Native people's, a process that has continued alongside hundreds
Speaker 1: of years of slavery and colonization. The way forward out
Speaker 1: of this mess will mean grappling with the crimes of
Speaker 1: the past, as well as charting a new course guided
Speaker 1: by black and Indigenous knowledge, creative experimentation and food production,
Speaker 1: and paying attention across generational and species devides. So I mean,
Speaker 1: what one like very concrete example of like how this
Speaker 1: farmer's on the neck is different than what you might
Speaker 1: see just from the standard almanac. Is um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we don't have like oh it's it's May, it's
Speaker 1: time to plant corn or whatever, because I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all that that was never that useful as for
Speaker 1: a publication that's meant to be used across this vast continent.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to be different everywhere, um, where
Speaker 1: you're going to plant things at which time, um. But
Speaker 1: also like those standard resources that we would go to
Speaker 1: like for here, for the Southeast for example, or wherever, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at something that was made a few
Speaker 1: decades ago, it's not going to actually be accurate or
Speaker 1: it's going to give you undo certainty about where the
Speaker 1: seasons line up and things like that. So you know,
Speaker 1: instead of telling people exactly when to plant their seeds,
Speaker 1: we have a chart that has the actual German Nation
Speaker 1: temperatures of like all the major annual vegetables that people
Speaker 1: would want to grow, um. And then we also have
Speaker 1: like the monthly notes from this local farm in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so you know, located in this area, you can you
Speaker 1: can also get a really precise view of like, oh,
Speaker 1: they were planning this, then they were harvesting this then. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that we hope to make something that was
Speaker 1: you know, our our original focus was something that was
Speaker 1: specific to New Orleans in the region, um, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Gulf South and the Southeast generally, because we
Speaker 1: are so or of the you know, the differences or
Speaker 1: what have you between growing through here and growing food
Speaker 1: in Ohio or something or whatever, and we all get
Speaker 1: these same seeds you know, out of Walmart or Lows
Speaker 1: or whatever and try and grow the exact same plants
Speaker 1: all over the place to trying to um hone in
Speaker 1: on some of that local perspective. UM with me really
Speaker 1: in terms of like getting some like folk tradition, getting
Speaker 1: some um, you know, anecdotal evidence about you know, things
Speaker 1: that worked with things that people are trying UM. And
Speaker 1: I think that that was that was fairly successful. UM.
Speaker 1: I think I think aside that we weren't really expecting
Speaker 1: as much was just the amount of national and even
Speaker 1: international UM kind of grasp that it had. UM. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people like could could use something
Speaker 1: like this in their area. UM. And it fostered some
Speaker 1: really interesting connections for people that are experimenting in New York,
Speaker 1: for people that are are growing things or thinking about
Speaker 1: maybe UM food systems and how they relate to prisons
Speaker 1: in California or UM even you know as far away
Speaker 1: as Brazil. UM. It's kind of began to foster a
Speaker 1: connection between Lobelia commons and a group called thee Bovos,
Speaker 1: which translates roughly to like the Web of People's UM
Speaker 1: in Brazil, so called Brazil UM, where it's kind of
Speaker 1: like experimental agroecology project that's very specific UM specifically focused
Speaker 1: on UM, you know, sovereignty, land stewardship, kind of following
Speaker 1: a little bit in the tradition of the Landless Workers movement.
Speaker 1: If anyone's familiar with mst UM, it's kind of following
Speaker 1: in that tradition a bit UM, but is heavily stewarded
Speaker 1: by black and Indigenous knowledges. Yeah, I was something I
Speaker 1: think of a like a kind of pleasant surprise out
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I thought that was that was really
Speaker 1: interesting way of looking at it, because I feel like
Speaker 1: there's this tendency in the US too, you know when
Speaker 1: when when when we talk about sort of a relationship
Speaker 1: to the land, which which something that comes up a
Speaker 1: lot in in the sort of essays that are are
Speaker 1: in the All Neck is about you know, like the
Speaker 1: there there there's a piece that I related to a lot,
Speaker 1: which is about someone from Guam trying to sort of
Speaker 1: deal with like I mean, particularly like legacies is or
Speaker 1: Japanese imperialism and being driven from their home. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, hey, look like this is yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: is this this is someone who experienced which when Japan
Speaker 1: went west. I was like, oh yeah, my family had
Speaker 1: this basically very similar thing when they went east. And
Speaker 1: you know, but but there's there's I think, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think it's very smartly you get you get to
Speaker 1: a point very quickly where you're trying to grapple with
Speaker 1: you know, how do how do you build connections to land?
Speaker 1: But then also how how does that work in a
Speaker 1: context in you know, in a context that's basically defined
Speaker 1: by southern colonialism and defined by by this by this occupation.
Speaker 1: And I think looking at the MSc, looking at a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff happened Latin America, I mean there there's
Speaker 1: very similar to what you guys were talking about. In Brazil.
Speaker 1: There there was a huge movement like this that was
Speaker 1: indigenous land recormation, sort of agrocology in in Columbia for
Speaker 1: example too in the nineties, and they they run into
Speaker 1: this problem of you know, there's there's a civil war
Speaker 1: growing on in Columbia and they a lot of them
Speaker 1: getting murdered by sort of state paramilitary is in the army.
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's a it's a really interesting
Speaker 1: way of of looking at what what does what does
Speaker 1: lampak actually look like? And how how do you deal
Speaker 1: with interacting with land? And also yeah, the lance workers
Speaker 1: in particular, they use a lot of methods, but you
Speaker 1: know they actually do just take a like an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of land like back from this state and sort
Speaker 1: of back from corporate things. So I'm interested in how
Speaker 1: we all started talking to a lot of these a
Speaker 1: lot of the Brazilian groups and how that sort of
Speaker 1: like that that perspective is shaped way that like this,
Speaker 1: this this whole sort of project turned out. Um. So
Speaker 1: we were specifically to their dispos um some previous connections
Speaker 1: that some of us had UM in Brazil had when
Speaker 1: talking about what we were doing and just kind of
Speaker 1: keeping up in exchange of um you know, just like
Speaker 1: kind of updates from from the Gulf when they would
Speaker 1: send updates from things going on down there. They kind
Speaker 1: of drew the connection for us and put us towards them.
Speaker 1: And I reached out to day Dispobos and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're doing this thing, and I you know,
Speaker 1: and inspired by what you're doing personally and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I I'd be curious to see what what what kind
Speaker 1: of relationship whatever we can foster, and they took it. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, also with with some inspirations, seeing that this
Speaker 1: very clear connection in terms of relationship with land historically,
Speaker 1: M this possession historically between the two continents across the Caribbean. UM.
Speaker 1: The implementation on a wide scale of plantation, monoculture UM.
Speaker 1: It that was fueled entirely by slavery and genocide. UM.
Speaker 1: And And I think that having that kind of like
Speaker 1: shared common history, I think gives us a good bedrock to,
Speaker 1: like UM exchange notes about where we are now kind
Speaker 1: of multiplied by the fact that the way that UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: so called emancipation happened here versus in Brazil radically different.
Speaker 1: And UM the UM like the for instance, the existence
Speaker 1: of PET or the Workers Party in Brazil being such
Speaker 1: a force after the dictatorship and having that like strong
Speaker 1: populist movement UM that was you know, rooted a very
Speaker 1: traditional left UM that that fueled MST. Well, you don't
Speaker 1: have anything like that here. You know that that happens
Speaker 1: at the same time that here, actually the workers movement
Speaker 1: in the US was was kind of getting defeated, I
Speaker 1: mean the up in the seventies. So with respect to
Speaker 1: like um land back specifically, UM, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you I don't know if you will see
Speaker 1: it in the same forms. I doubt at least obviously
Speaker 1: would totally be there cheering it on. And I'm happy
Speaker 1: to see it. Um. But I think it looks a
Speaker 1: lot more like during the uprising last year. You saw
Speaker 1: in Chicago, for instance, UM, the when when the trains
Speaker 1: were being expropriated as they were moving, taking goods out
Speaker 1: of these box cars, um, and just expropriate in tons
Speaker 1: of goods, taking you know, taking goods that would normally
Speaker 1: be going you know, just commodities normally going to court,
Speaker 1: just cut off in the middle of line or you know, UM,
Speaker 1: these these these these kind of like more um ah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say small scale, but UM focus
Speaker 1: more on like infrastructural choke points rather than necessarily um
Speaker 1: like having thousands of people swarming uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: massive industrial agriculture UM set up in Kansas or something.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah, I think it's great to imagine that.
Speaker 1: I think I really love sharing the history of mst
Speaker 1: with people in America who have never heard it before,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a great way to kind of
Speaker 1: expand the imaginary of like what is possible, like what
Speaker 1: kind of actions are actually at our disposal like it
Speaker 1: and it truly is not you to look exactly like that.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also really important for us to
Speaker 1: like not forget a lot of the similar histories here,
Speaker 1: like UM. Part of the inspiration for the Almanac or
Speaker 1: what kind of drove us to to make it was
Speaker 1: some of us were doing a reading group of this
Speaker 1: book called Freedom Farmers that's about kind of like various
Speaker 1: uh um black projects in the South for food autonomy
Speaker 1: after slavery, and a lot of it is about Fannie
Speaker 1: Lew Hammer and UM freedom Farms. And you know, we
Speaker 1: were definitely inspired for some of the litbilia things by
Speaker 1: um Fannie Lee Hammer's pig Bank, which was a really
Speaker 1: cool thing where they just like started with a bunch
Speaker 1: of pigs and if you were in the community, like
Speaker 1: you get you get your pigs from you get a
Speaker 1: couple of piglets from the pig bank, and then the
Speaker 1: interest on that is a couple of years later you
Speaker 1: got to give them a couple of pigs because you're
Speaker 1: producing your own pigs, and so the pig bank is
Speaker 1: like self sustaining. UM. And another thing from that book
Speaker 1: that was inspiring to us was um reading about George
Speaker 1: Washington Carver's public education projects out of Tuskegee University that were, um,
Speaker 1: just really inspiring in terms of like he was doing
Speaker 1: all of his own kind of independent research about soils
Speaker 1: and pests and all these different crops and everything, and
Speaker 1: creating these farm bulletins that were then being distributed to
Speaker 1: black farmers throughout the region to kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: share better practices, and a lot of the stuff was
Speaker 1: like agro ecology before people had that word. Like he
Speaker 1: was very far out of his time in terms of
Speaker 1: understanding soil dynamics and and passing things like that. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we we definitely try to try to lift
Speaker 1: up all that history as much as possible. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess whenever. The ether thing I thought was very interesting
Speaker 1: that you alluded to you briefly in this was Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's there's a session of this is talking about
Speaker 1: food in prisons, and I wonder if you could talk
Speaker 1: about that part a little bit more because that's a
Speaker 1: connection that I that I really don't think it's drawn
Speaker 1: very often here on me flipped to the piece, right,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to describe. I do love the visual that that
Speaker 1: we have for this piece, but yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just like the it's a striking image, you know, it's
Speaker 1: got like, um in the center, there's a picture of
Speaker 1: a really high density chicken operation and there's somebody wearing
Speaker 1: sort of like a full tibex suit suit and just
Speaker 1: walking through this like massive herd of chickens. And then
Speaker 1: that's superimposed over this just like really nasty looking close
Speaker 1: up photo of a prison food tray and just like
Speaker 1: the canned veggies and the everything, And like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I've been to jail a number of times,
Speaker 1: and the food is always terrible. It's always one of
Speaker 1: the things that you talk about or you can bond
Speaker 1: over or whatever. It's just how bad the food is.
Speaker 1: But I think people who haven't experienced that don't really
Speaker 1: think about just how much systematic like starvation is going
Speaker 1: on and the nutrition is going on, where it's like
Speaker 1: the only way you can possibly survive in these places
Speaker 1: is spending a bunch of extra money on commissary to
Speaker 1: get stuff that also isn't healthy, but at least you
Speaker 1: can get more calories and stuff. Um. And like I
Speaker 1: think that that there's like a lot of parallels between
Speaker 1: kind of the structure of prisons and the structure of
Speaker 1: our of our food system. UM. I mean one example
Speaker 1: that I used to talk about this is like the
Speaker 1: banana plantation um where like the you know, we have
Speaker 1: an entire variety of banana that's like basically stanct or
Speaker 1: it's it can't be grown commercially anymore because the banana industry,
Speaker 1: you know, functions by putting like warehousing these banas together
Speaker 1: and these like super tight plantation formations, you know, which
Speaker 1: really only makes sense if you're just trying to maximize
Speaker 1: your profits and get as much out of a a
Speaker 1: small space as possible. But what it does is is
Speaker 1: the exact same thing that happens in prisons during COVID
Speaker 1: or with any kind of uh, you know, pathogen like
Speaker 1: tuberculosis or whatever. Um. You know, It's it's like the
Speaker 1: trees are so close together that the fungus spread so rapidly,
Speaker 1: and then they're also like pumping all these things into
Speaker 1: to fight that, and they're actually breeding super funguses all
Speaker 1: the time, and at some point the banana that we
Speaker 1: eat now is going to also stop existing because of this.
Speaker 1: UM And I guess I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: draw anything deeper out of those similarities than the fact
Speaker 1: that there's this like overriding logic of capitalism that is
Speaker 1: just like has no respect for these beings, like whether
Speaker 1: it is a per person or a minatory, like it's
Speaker 1: all just commodities and things to be warehouse. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think UM to add on that, I mean this,
Speaker 1: this is the piece in there which is called the
Speaker 1: Struggle for good Food across Walls. UM. I think it
Speaker 1: does a nice job of talking about how like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're talking about quote unquote food, food
Speaker 1: justice or what have you like, UM Like, how can
Speaker 1: we talk about that on the outside of all forgetting
Speaker 1: about just the most deplorable um food conditions on the
Speaker 1: entire continent. UM. And I think that that it's it's
Speaker 1: really good at that. I think I would really like
Speaker 1: to see in the next year all the ways that um,
Speaker 1: the imaginaries of of inmates kind of go in like
Speaker 1: attack that UM. The like the logic of of prison
Speaker 1: and food being completely deplorable. Like you know, you have
Speaker 1: all these forms of creativity of like making tortillas and
Speaker 1: stuff and like doing wild things with like stuff that's
Speaker 1: in the commissary, you know, contraband kind of ways of
Speaker 1: of making kind of life a little bit more livable
Speaker 1: in there. And and if anyone has UM spent time
Speaker 1: in jail or prison, or or kept up a relationship
Speaker 1: with someone on the inside or what have you, UM,
Speaker 1: everyone has a story about a way of UM making
Speaker 1: making food more um interesting and joyful and and like
Speaker 1: there becomes whole cultures around them. One of the things
Speaker 1: that we're starting to do in one of the farm
Speaker 1: spaces we work with outside of the city is is
Speaker 1: um through pre existing relationships with inmates in Angola State
Speaker 1: Penitentiary in Louisiana, which, for those that don't know, UM
Speaker 1: was a plantation civil war happens two years after the
Speaker 1: civil War, it becomes a Louisiana scate p potentiary. It's
Speaker 1: still a plantation. It's you know, uh this many times
Speaker 1: descendants of the same enslaved folks who were on that
Speaker 1: plantation prior UM and you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: guard on a horseback riding around while those UM folks
Speaker 1: pulling cotton um. And so so, through some of these
Speaker 1: relationships with some of these inmates who are UM like
Speaker 1: kind of uh clandestine organizers, UM, we're starting to come
Speaker 1: up with ways to like grow food collaboratively with folks
Speaker 1: that are behind walls and and find ways to get
Speaker 1: food to either their family or maybe sell and get
Speaker 1: that into their commissary. Kind of just like trying to
Speaker 1: um spitball ideas about like different ways of producing food
Speaker 1: despite people's um incarceration. Yeah, that that seems that seems
Speaker 1: like a really I guess we're you can really say
Speaker 1: it is a a necessary way for for this sort of
Speaker 1: food politics to go, if it's going to actually deal
Speaker 1: with sort of both the land conditions and the conditions
Speaker 1: of just you know, the fact that we haven't in
Speaker 1: know that there's still just an enormous slafe population the US.
Speaker 1: And I think that kind of resistance in creativity, I
Speaker 1: think is how Yeah, y'all, are y'all are on the
Speaker 1: right track with with pushing it that way? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of a bleak note to
Speaker 1: end on, I think, but I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a hopeful one too,
Speaker 1: and where can people find but basically all of Youll's work.
Speaker 1: And then also you talked a little bit about trying
Speaker 1: to get submissions for and everything, So can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how that how that's gonna work. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so we're we're it's it's kind of been on hold
Speaker 1: a little bit because we've been like very active after IDA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, trying to make sure our people are
Speaker 1: all good and supporting UM in various places, UM kind
Speaker 1: of doing like different workshops and stuff. And and because
Speaker 1: that our focus isn't just on food production, it's also
Speaker 1: like neighborhood survival or whatever. So we've been um working
Speaker 1: with an old UM neighbor of one of ours, who
Speaker 1: um you know, she's already been kind of doing this
Speaker 1: mutual aid stuff you know by any other name for decades,
Speaker 1: you know, letting people stay in their house, UM, feeding people. UM.
Speaker 1: She's like kind of like a block MoMA and she's
Speaker 1: really one of the last UM black homeowners in her neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So we're really trying to like help her achieve some
Speaker 1: autonomy one way that we've been putting it is UM
Speaker 1: when all the airbnbs like lose their power because they're
Speaker 1: still reliant on the colonial world, well, miss Elfie I
Speaker 1: could still have her lights on because she's going to
Speaker 1: be totally autonomous from the system. So UM, I think
Speaker 1: that that is on our Instagram page if you click
Speaker 1: on the like UM the link or whatever, there's a
Speaker 1: go fund me that UM is UH where we've been
Speaker 1: putting a lot of our effort and really working with
Speaker 1: her on UM and then also like growing growing a
Speaker 1: garden like adjacent to her so that their people in
Speaker 1: that community are are food as as food autonomous as
Speaker 1: UM as we can get we can we can put
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Yeah, and the the handle
Speaker 1: for both Twitter and Instagram is at Lobilia Commons and
Speaker 1: the Almanac. You can find links to the Almanac pdf
Speaker 1: on through either of those UM if you want to
Speaker 1: just read it for free. And then UM there's also
Speaker 1: copies for sale on emergent Goods dot com. And for
Speaker 1: UM submissions. I mean, yeah, like I said, we've been
Speaker 1: really behind on this just because of all this stuff,
Speaker 1: But for submissions, we're really UM looking for folks. UM
Speaker 1: to contribute, throw us a pitch. UM. I think if
Speaker 1: you've seen the first one or I've listened to this,
Speaker 1: you probably get something of an idea of what we're
Speaker 1: looking for UM. And we're happy to like talk to
Speaker 1: people about, like, you know, different ideas and bear with
Speaker 1: us if we're a little slower to respawn because we're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of still weigst deep right now. But
Speaker 1: the submission for deadlines is the end of October UM,
Speaker 1: and you can email ideas or pitches or whatever to
Speaker 1: Lobelia Commons at proton mail dot com. And lastly, the
Speaker 1: project that I'm most focused on is the front Yard
Speaker 1: Orchard Initiative, where basically we just propagate as many fruit
Speaker 1: trees as cheaply as possible, things that are really easy
Speaker 1: for us to grow from cuttings like figs, s, mulberries,
Speaker 1: things they're easy to grow from seed, like papaya, maringa,
Speaker 1: pecan um. And we basically just have some nice flyers
Speaker 1: that we put up and we advertise a bit on
Speaker 1: social media and also just kind of go door to
Speaker 1: door in neighborhoods where we already have gardens or connections
Speaker 1: and offer to give free fruit trees out to people,
Speaker 1: and we're also happy to plant them for people and
Speaker 1: then kind of offer a consultation on how to take
Speaker 1: care of it or whatever. And also, if folks want
Speaker 1: to hear some of the pieces from the Earthbound Farmers
Speaker 1: Almanac read by some of the authors and then some
Speaker 1: interviews with those authors, you can check out this podcast
Speaker 1: called Partisan Gardens that did a really good episode that's
Speaker 1: kind of like an audio exploration of the Almanac. Cool. Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: people definitely definitely go read the Almanac. Is it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really good it's a really good
Speaker 1: piece of work. Um yeah, thank thank you too so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you for I'm Colleen what
Speaker 1: join me a host of Eating Wall Broke podcast While
Speaker 1: I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers
Speaker 1: and celebrities over a meal they once eight when they
Speaker 1: were broke. Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the
Speaker 1: official Princess of comfin Asia Kid and Assia. This is
Speaker 1: the professor. We're here on Eating Wall Broke and today
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break down my meal that got me through
Speaker 1: the time when I was broken. Listen to Eating wall
Speaker 1: Broke on the I Heart radio app, on Apple podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. I call the Union
Speaker 1: Hall as this matter of life and death. I think
Speaker 1: these peeples of planning to kill Dr King. On April four,
Speaker 1: Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis.
Speaker 1: A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He
Speaker 1: pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of
Speaker 1: his life in prison. Case closed right, James Hill Ray
Speaker 1: was upon for the official story. The authorities would parade
Speaker 1: all we found a gone the James Old Ray bald
Speaker 1: in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it wasn't the
Speaker 1: gun that killed Dr King. One of the problems that
Speaker 1: came out when I got the Ray case was that
Speaker 1: some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned,
Speaker 1: did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes.
Speaker 1: The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I
Speaker 1: Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
Speaker 1: of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
Speaker 1: On the podcast nine O two one, OMG joined Jenny
Speaker 1: Garth and Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the hit
Speaker 1: series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh. From the
Speaker 1: very beginning, we get to tell the fans all of
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes stories to actually happen, so they
Speaker 1: know what happened on camera, obviously, but we can tell
Speaker 1: them all the good stuff that happened off camera. Get
Speaker 1: all the juicy details of every episode that you've been
Speaker 1: wondering about for decades. As nine O two one oh,
Speaker 1: super fan and radio host Sissany sits in with Jenny
Speaker 1: and Tory too reminisce, reflect and relive each moment, from
Speaker 1: Brandon and Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates,
Speaker 1: you have an amazing memory. You remember everything about the
Speaker 1: entire ten years that we filmed that show, and you
Speaker 1: remember absolutely nothing of the ten years that we film
Speaker 1: that show. Listen to nine O two one OMG on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. You suddenly wake up to the loud
Speaker 1: growling of a tactical vehicle. Must have left your window open.
Speaker 1: A few streets away. You can hear the troopers doing
Speaker 1: their morning patrols. This is closing in on week four
Speaker 1: of the all day curfew cops and state troopers have
Speaker 1: put checkpoints at every bridge and on all major streets
Speaker 1: for about every ten blocks. Your friends and the city's
Speaker 1: local liberal majority are now calling this what it is.
Speaker 1: You're a city is functioning as a full on police state.
Speaker 1: National establishment media has been more hesitants to use that term,
Speaker 1: but your Fox watching conservative family from out of state
Speaker 1: has been texting you about how good it is that
Speaker 1: someone is finally establishing law and order and taking back
Speaker 1: the town. After months of senseless looting and destructive riots,
Speaker 1: You've been mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit
Speaker 1: your job when the recent amount of protests started up,
Speaker 1: which now means you don't qualify for the working hours
Speaker 1: exemption of the curfew. You've got enough money saved up
Speaker 1: for another month, but you're looking to get a grocery
Speaker 1: delivery job, which would have the added benefit of allowing
Speaker 1: you to go outside during the day. Luckily, you've been
Speaker 1: able to sneak out at night to do rooftopping and
Speaker 1: surveil the police's checkpoints and patrol routes in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You've noticed that the cops rarely look up. You've been
Speaker 1: feeding your intel into a surveillance database shared on a
Speaker 1: telegram channel ran by some various activists. After lying in
Speaker 1: bed gathering your thoughts for a few minutes, you finally
Speaker 1: roll out and pick out your clothes. Dark loose pants,
Speaker 1: a plane shirt, beanie, and a high his jacket. Ordinarily,
Speaker 1: you'd break into your red bull stache for morning caffeine,
Speaker 1: but you've already got plenty of energy. Today it's your
Speaker 1: boyfriend's birthday, and for the past week you've been planning
Speaker 1: to surprise him. You think there's finally enough information in
Speaker 1: the surveillance database to plan a trip across town with
Speaker 1: little to no law enforcement interaction. Between the in person
Speaker 1: reconnaissance and hacking into the city's traffic cams, which was
Speaker 1: surprisingly easy, you've been able to figure out a route
Speaker 1: using city buses and on foot that should be able
Speaker 1: to avoid checkpoints and the regular patrol routes from what
Speaker 1: you've seen online. Bus drivers won't ask for your work
Speaker 1: authorization card, and you're hoping the highvis jacket will make
Speaker 1: it look like you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you
Speaker 1: grab your small yellow messenger bag and jam in a
Speaker 1: water bottle plus a ten of a half a dozen cupcakes.
Speaker 1: Deep breaths, slowly twist the handle of your door and
Speaker 1: stare down in your apartment hallway. You're on your way,
Speaker 1: you keep telling yourself, just act like you belong. After
Speaker 1: taking the stairs down to ground level, you make your
Speaker 1: way street side. This part you feel more confident about.
Speaker 1: You've been able to study the patrol patterns around your
Speaker 1: media area more carefully. The bus stop you're going to
Speaker 1: is just four blocks away. You can zig zig through
Speaker 1: two streets and to avoid the main drags. As you
Speaker 1: walk through the sidewalks, you keep your head down, but
Speaker 1: your eyes are darting side to side to get a
Speaker 1: lay of the land. Don't walk too fast or too slow.
Speaker 1: Match the people around you. Obviously, not many people are
Speaker 1: out right now, but there are enough to mirror their
Speaker 1: movement and pace. It feels like it took forever, but
Speaker 1: you get to the bus stop without incident or seeing
Speaker 1: a single cop waiting at bus stops. It feels like
Speaker 1: an eternity, but today it's worse. Within a few minutes,
Speaker 1: the blue metro bus does pull up. The bus driver
Speaker 1: gestures you want The electronic ticketing system isn't turned on.
Speaker 1: You peek up to the driver. The look in her
Speaker 1: eyes is telling you just a head on back. At
Speaker 1: least you know she's probably on your side. You picked
Speaker 1: this bus not because it's the most direct route to
Speaker 1: your boyfriend's place. It's not, but because he gets you
Speaker 1: close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and your internet
Speaker 1: buddies have mapped out. It's a slower, more jagged route,
Speaker 1: but at least you get to relax for a while
Speaker 1: and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can get an
Speaker 1: in person look at the rest of the city under
Speaker 1: the curfew and police occupation. The ride is now closing
Speaker 1: in on a little over half an hour, About ten
Speaker 1: more minutes until you get off. Your heart's racing you
Speaker 1: might actually do this. In your flash of nervous excitement,
Speaker 1: you look up ahead on the road and your face drops.
Speaker 1: About half a mile up ahead, you spot a checkpoint.
Speaker 1: Fuck no, this, this is wrong. This wasn't on the map.
Speaker 1: The checkpoint on this street was supposed to be further
Speaker 1: up the road. After you get off, your mind flashes
Speaker 1: through different possibilities. Did the cops change the checkpoint this morning? Wait?
Speaker 1: Did the police find the database map on telegram? And
Speaker 1: are getting at false info? You stop yourself from thinking.
Speaker 1: Because you realize you need to act now and think later.
Speaker 1: You jump out of your seat and sprint up the
Speaker 1: bus towards the driver. You blurt out, I need to
Speaker 1: get off this right now. Please. The driver looks ahead,
Speaker 1: looks at you, and tilts her head down and pulls
Speaker 1: over quick. That's all she says to you. You dart
Speaker 1: out of the bus and into the half residential, half
Speaker 1: retail labyrinth, and as you're running, you hear sirens. Fuck
Speaker 1: they saw you. Your head swivels around to catch a glance.
Speaker 1: One car from the checkpoint is headed your way. You
Speaker 1: hope the bus driver doesn't get in trouble, but right
Speaker 1: now that's not your problem, you think. First thing you
Speaker 1: need to do is prevent the vehicle from pursuing you.
Speaker 1: So off the big streets. You take a second to
Speaker 1: tighten the messenger bag around your body. And here we
Speaker 1: go to You're right. You see a walled courtyard for
Speaker 1: a small two story apartment. Estimate the wall is eight
Speaker 1: feet tall. Doable. You turn out the street and run
Speaker 1: towards the wall, slowly gaining speed, jump up and plunch
Speaker 1: your foot on the side. Then your arms reach up
Speaker 1: and grab the top. It's a bit of a struggle
Speaker 1: to pull yourself up. You've got some stuff weighing you
Speaker 1: down and you're a bit out of practice, but you
Speaker 1: get up. You hop down onto the other side and
Speaker 1: keep going for now. You barrow through some dense bushes
Speaker 1: and vault a few small railings as you traverse the
Speaker 1: side streets. Soon enough you're far enough away from the car,
Speaker 1: with plenty of obstacles in between you and it that
Speaker 1: you feel like you can catch a quick breather. Now
Speaker 1: you have a choice hide it out here for a
Speaker 1: bit or figure out a way to your boyfriends. You
Speaker 1: still got a decent sense of where you are. The
Speaker 1: destination should be only about ten blocks away. Now, in
Speaker 1: a diagonal direction, you'll get plenty of time to rest
Speaker 1: your boyfriend's place, so you figure you should continue on.
Speaker 1: As you're about to head on your way to armored
Speaker 1: state troopers turned the corner on foot. You remember you're
Speaker 1: still pretty close to the checkpoint. One look at you
Speaker 1: with your hands on your knees. As you pant, the
Speaker 1: cops know you're out of place. Stop, yells the cop.
Speaker 1: You're being detained. Fuck time to book it, gonna have
Speaker 1: to think as you run, good news is is that
Speaker 1: they're in armor. Bad news is that you're tired and
Speaker 1: your outfit is blown. You can change clothes once you
Speaker 1: get to your boyfriends, so you decide the best course
Speaker 1: of action now is to make it hard for two
Speaker 1: people in armor to follow you. Time to put some
Speaker 1: obstacles between you and them. You're already mostly out of
Speaker 1: the retail area, which means it's time to hop some
Speaker 1: backyard fencees Ferris Bueller's Day Off Shit. You make a
Speaker 1: sharp left turn behind the car and into someone's yard,
Speaker 1: up and over their fence. One hand grabs on top,
Speaker 1: one hand goes to the far side, and you flip
Speaker 1: your body over. Next few fences are shorter, regular speed
Speaker 1: vaults will do. The sound of the clinky tactle boots
Speaker 1: chasing you gets quieter as you traverse through the yards
Speaker 1: and zig zigging around blocks. Before you know it, you're
Speaker 1: on the back street of your partner's place. Only a
Speaker 1: few more steps and you can see their backyard in
Speaker 1: the distance. You quick to in your head and look around.
Speaker 1: From what you can see, you've lost the State troopers.
Speaker 1: You scurry through four more yards before you reach your target.
Speaker 1: You let it a sigh of relief. You jogged past
Speaker 1: the side yard towards the front. You probably should use
Speaker 1: the front door before you knock. You take a look
Speaker 1: inside your messenger bag. You unclipped the latch, and inside
Speaker 1: lies a smashed pile of cupcake crumbs with pink frosting
Speaker 1: coating the insides of your bag. Well, at least I
Speaker 1: made it in one piece, you say out loud. After
Speaker 1: an exhausting trek, you finally knock on the door. It
Speaker 1: could happen in here podcast. Robert Evans. Sophie is not
Speaker 1: here today, so I get to open the episode with
Speaker 1: a tonal grunting um because she was unable to stop me. Uh,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast that this is talking about things
Speaker 1: falling apart? How to you know, make it not? Maybe? Uh?
Speaker 1: My guest today, well, my my co host today. First
Speaker 1: is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how you doing today? I'm doing
Speaker 1: good good. We have a little bit of a fun update.
Speaker 1: This actually happened last week, but this will be the
Speaker 1: first episode we're recording since it happened. Um last week.
Speaker 1: We put up some links to ago fund me and
Speaker 1: a couple of different episodes of Bastards and of It
Speaker 1: could happen here to try to help a woman named
Speaker 1: Ruba who lives in Portland, UM and is a community
Speaker 1: activists save her house. UM. When we started the fundraiser,
Speaker 1: she'd raised about twenty eight grand to to you know,
Speaker 1: get basically keep her home. UM, and it's up to
Speaker 1: the fifty grand she needed. Y'all did that in about
Speaker 1: three days. UM. So you've you've you've kept a woman
Speaker 1: in her home UM and allowed her and her family
Speaker 1: to stay where they are. And I'm just extremely grateful
Speaker 1: to everybody who donated, who shared, UM, it's just awesome. UM.
Speaker 1: You know this comes after earlier in this year you
Speaker 1: all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. UM. I just continue
Speaker 1: to be very impressed with with how how much people
Speaker 1: who listen to these shows are willing to throw down
Speaker 1: to help people out. So thank you all. UH. And
Speaker 1: now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison,
Speaker 1: what are we? What are we? What are we? What
Speaker 1: are we? What are we? What are we talking about? Today?
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna be talking about and discussing two
Speaker 1: of kind of my favorite practical skill sets. Hey been
Speaker 1: training for I don't know seven eight, I think almost
Speaker 1: eight years now Um, and it's what, yeah, one of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's
Speaker 1: also useful for fun. We're talking about uh parkour, which
Speaker 1: people may have heard me discussed before, but also just
Speaker 1: kind of like stealth in general, UM, and how to
Speaker 1: be mindful of your presence among other people. UM. As
Speaker 1: a big, clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in
Speaker 1: aggressive situations, I can confirm that your parkour is very,
Speaker 1: very effective because you are a fast little set of
Speaker 1: a bitch, very good at getting away from the cops
Speaker 1: and getting to where you need to be. At the
Speaker 1: film things, it was always, um kind of amazing, as
Speaker 1: frustrating as it was sometimes when you would when you
Speaker 1: would start out ahead of everybody, but I can't argue
Speaker 1: with the results. So and to help us kind of
Speaker 1: talk about Parkorn stealth, I have brought on a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who is the person who mostly taught me
Speaker 1: UM Parker and stealth, my friend Rick, who has been
Speaker 1: teaching Parker for a long time. UM, say hi, Rick,
Speaker 1: that that that's right. Rick is very uh not super social,
Speaker 1: so it's I think it's amazing that I was able
Speaker 1: to convince him to come in a podcast pretty funny. Um.
Speaker 1: First off, Rick, do you want to kind of just
Speaker 1: like give your definition of like Parker in general, because
Speaker 1: I know whenever we say Parker, everyone just thinks to
Speaker 1: the office, um, which I know you find frustrating. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for people who maybe aren't as into it as us,
Speaker 1: don't want just give the kind of a brief overview
Speaker 1: of of Parker as like a concept. Uh, Parker is
Speaker 1: a really annoying concept to actually pin down. UM. But
Speaker 1: basically speaking, it's movement with purpose. You are somewhere, you
Speaker 1: want to get somewhere, and you're trying to find the
Speaker 1: best way of doing that. When we're training, we kind
Speaker 1: of focus on efficiency, safety, speed, and the reason behind
Speaker 1: the movement. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's thinking of it
Speaker 1: more as like the movement with purpose or like like
Speaker 1: intentional move meant um is much better than thinking of
Speaker 1: it's like like parkour isn't like flips. Like flips and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff is more of what we call
Speaker 1: like um, free running. It's it's more of like a
Speaker 1: creative expression. It's more of like a kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like a sport where it's like parkorse more usually,
Speaker 1: I mean there's always gonna people that are going to
Speaker 1: fight you on this in the park work in the
Speaker 1: Parker community, but it's generally Parker is kind of more
Speaker 1: based on utility. So like last last summer at the protests,
Speaker 1: I I I used you know, Parker in a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways, both to like you know, get somewhere
Speaker 1: specifically or park Horse grade. It is like a recovery tool,
Speaker 1: like if you get pushed over by cops. Um, park
Speaker 1: Work could be very useful for like getting up very fast.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like all that kind of more practical
Speaker 1: side of things. And I've used Parker you know before
Speaker 1: I was doing filming at different kind of activism related
Speaker 1: type things. It's just it's a super useful skill to have, UM.
Speaker 1: And today I wanted to talk talk a bit about
Speaker 1: like Parkorse practical application in you know, conflict ish scenarios,
Speaker 1: but also wanted to touch on stealth UM as you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't need Parker and if you can avoid
Speaker 1: a scenario where you have to use it would be
Speaker 1: kind of great. So I've asked Rick to kind of
Speaker 1: prepare a few things on stealth, which then we'll kind
Speaker 1: of you know, bounce off each other and talk kind
Speaker 1: of a general discussion of Parker and stealth in general
Speaker 1: and how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. Um. So, Rick,
Speaker 1: where would you like to start for you know, a
Speaker 1: stealth overview. Well, in conflict with other people, there's like
Speaker 1: three different levels of the conflict um and all of
Speaker 1: these get trained in different places. Usually there's the actual
Speaker 1: um like conflict. The combat, which is more of a
Speaker 1: martial arts or gun training or weapon training of any
Speaker 1: kind as well, compares you for that beneath that is
Speaker 1: the Parker level, where you can avoid getting into the
Speaker 1: conflict in the first place. If you can get away
Speaker 1: from the situation. Yeah, if you're more of an arm's
Speaker 1: length of way, then you can create more distance between
Speaker 1: you and someone it's trying to hurt you. And in
Speaker 1: nine percent of conflict situations, that's going to be a
Speaker 1: better self defense option than literally any weapon you could carry.
Speaker 1: Getting the hell away is always the preferred There's there's
Speaker 1: there's a really good comic um It's it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a like like a comedy
Speaker 1: comic of like someone someone trying to get into like
Speaker 1: a knife fight and you're just like, nope, I'm running
Speaker 1: away because there's no there's no winner in a knife fight.
Speaker 1: The only way to win a knife fight is to
Speaker 1: be oh far away from someone with a knife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean literally, Again, the only justified situation I can
Speaker 1: think of to physically getting into a knife fight is
Speaker 1: like what happened on the Portland Max train. When someone
Speaker 1: else can't get away, Yeah, you're still gonna stick them.
Speaker 1: And the two guys who did that died. They died.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, not that they did the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: they did the only thing they could. But that's what
Speaker 1: a knife it is. So yeah, it's being able to
Speaker 1: get the funk away as the best self defense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I carry weapons with me wherever I go, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to ever use them. My first response is
Speaker 1: always going to be look for an escape path. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: A weapon is only for if you can't get away
Speaker 1: or if someone else can't get away. So pretty much
Speaker 1: like yeah, well yeah, I've always been interested because again
Speaker 1: I've watched you know, Garrison hop away from cops over
Speaker 1: fences where I had to like, you know, fall over
Speaker 1: the fence, essentially because I'm not nearly as good. I'm
Speaker 1: someone who exercises. But like number one, is it even
Speaker 1: possible to like learn this stuff without fucking your thirty
Speaker 1: three year old body up a bunch in the process.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of scared of is like over sixty,
Speaker 1: and he's good, very good. He's actually like one of
Speaker 1: my high intermediate, low advanced students, honestly, and he started
Speaker 1: when he was like fifty. How do you uh, I
Speaker 1: mean like it it just seems like injury, I guess
Speaker 1: because my my my stereotypical view of it is like
Speaker 1: a bunch of jumping up on buildings and leaping over
Speaker 1: stuff like, um, it seems like injuries would be a
Speaker 1: pretty common fact. Um. So I guess that's kind of
Speaker 1: like always been my first concern there, like how do
Speaker 1: you how do you how do you train people to
Speaker 1: do this stuff with a minimum of risk? Well, that's
Speaker 1: kind of always the focus of my teaching. There certainly
Speaker 1: are other instructors out there, like the guy who taught
Speaker 1: me Parker was basically this is a con vault. This
Speaker 1: is what it looks like. Do it my training? Like
Speaker 1: I sucked at Parker when I started, So my teaching
Speaker 1: method has been coming at this as a sort of Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to break this down into as many
Speaker 1: pieces as I can, and I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: keep you completely safe. Um, Bumps and bruises do happen
Speaker 1: when you're training park or that's just unavoidable. It's learning
Speaker 1: how to do walking but fancy so you get bruised
Speaker 1: when you're learning how to walk. You get bruised when
Speaker 1: you're learning every technique in parker. But I've been doing
Speaker 1: it for fourteen years now and I've never broken any
Speaker 1: of my bones. If you do it right, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to stay safe when training you. Definitely, if
Speaker 1: you can get someone who's more experienced, getting them to
Speaker 1: break down steps for you is very useful, whether that
Speaker 1: be like a park or gym in your area or
Speaker 1: just like a friend that that's that's been that's been
Speaker 1: messing around trying to like train with somebody is probably
Speaker 1: one of the most important things, um, is to have
Speaker 1: someone else there both if you want to get hurt
Speaker 1: and need help, but to to kind of prevent to
Speaker 1: help prevent that from even happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of like very simple moves that
Speaker 1: can be introduced in very safe environments. I've I've I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to get Roberts down to the gym for
Speaker 1: like over a year now just to go over like
Speaker 1: a few basic kind of stuff that's just really really useful,
Speaker 1: pretty and like pretty easy. Like we're not we're not
Speaker 1: jumping to like you know, doing like roof topping right
Speaker 1: where we're like jumping from one roof to another. We're
Speaker 1: starting by we're starting by being like, here's like a
Speaker 1: concrete barricade. What's the safest way of getting over this
Speaker 1: if you're under pressure? Right? It's it's it's it's that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that's specifically useful and like conflict scenarios, right,
Speaker 1: because like when we're when we're facing in a riot line,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be doing like flips and cart wheels
Speaker 1: to like get over fences. I'm trying to be like,
Speaker 1: what's the safest, fastest way I can get over this thing? Well,
Speaker 1: making sure I'm not going to get like shot with
Speaker 1: the rubber bullet, right, that's kind of it's it's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's very different from like what you see on YouTube, right,
Speaker 1: YouTube is very like showy people are like trying to
Speaker 1: like basically when what you see on YouTube is people
Speaker 1: are doing people are doing like a choreographic performance, whereas
Speaker 1: Parker from a utility standpoint is very different from what
Speaker 1: you see online. Yeah, and that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that we try to train too when we're training Parkore
Speaker 1: is we just give ourselves an environment and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going now, yeah, and like do it over and
Speaker 1: over again and try to figure out what's the best
Speaker 1: way of getting over this specific path. Right if you
Speaker 1: can like make a designed path, be like, you know,
Speaker 1: even doing this at like a playground or like any
Speaker 1: any place with like logs, you know, you can do
Speaker 1: Parker in the forest and stuff. Be like I'm just
Speaker 1: like set this path and experiment with how many ways
Speaker 1: can I move through this kind of set set of obstacles, um,
Speaker 1: And you can kind of figure out Parker on your own,
Speaker 1: on in in in that kind of way, because because
Speaker 1: your body knows what it's gonna do, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: people have been moving like this for thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of years. It's only in the past few hundred years
Speaker 1: where we have like kind of lost this ability or
Speaker 1: it's like become it's become less necessary. So like we
Speaker 1: we know how to interact with our environment in creative ways,
Speaker 1: like we we we know how to do this. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just that, you know, we the past, the past
Speaker 1: few centuries, it's been less important. And I think Parker
Speaker 1: is really fun because you can kind of rediscover interacting
Speaker 1: with your environment in these, you know, kind of more
Speaker 1: wild ways. It's something that we all do as children,
Speaker 1: just like evolutionarily. For some reason, as children we do
Speaker 1: this as play. We climb trees and we try to
Speaker 1: go over fences. It's just that something in our society
Speaker 1: has made a shift so that when we become adults,
Speaker 1: it's suddenly not acceptable for us to do this anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can remember when I was a little
Speaker 1: kid growing up on the farm. We had a bullpen
Speaker 1: because we kept the bowl away from the cows, and
Speaker 1: my my cousin and I would hop over the fence
Speaker 1: and we would throw stuff at the bowl and then
Speaker 1: when it started to charge, we would hop back over
Speaker 1: the fence. I mean, obviously I'd never do that today
Speaker 1: because it's mean to throw things at a bowl. I
Speaker 1: was six, But also I couldn't physically hop over the
Speaker 1: fence that way today. But I'm guessing within Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, even just like a few hours of practice,
Speaker 1: you could figure out a lot of ways together. I
Speaker 1: could be back to fucking with bowls. Is what exactly?
Speaker 1: You don't need to kiss kiss the bull fucking goodbye?
Speaker 1: You can? We can. We can go back to this.
Speaker 1: We could go I could, I could return to tradition. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: what is the degree of this that can be done without? Again,
Speaker 1: like you know we have we have a wide variety
Speaker 1: of income levels that listen to this show, Um, what
Speaker 1: is the degree this can be done without like paying
Speaker 1: for training? You know that? Like, like, how is it
Speaker 1: even possible to like start on this kind of thing
Speaker 1: if you're in reasonable shape, you know, on your own
Speaker 1: without paying someone? Because that that seems like a recipe
Speaker 1: for breaking something to me. But again, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Ship It is very much about knowing
Speaker 1: yourself and knowing what you're ready for. Uh, this was
Speaker 1: something I mean I say that I never broke a
Speaker 1: bone in my training, but there were a couple of
Speaker 1: times I started pushing myself further than I should have,
Speaker 1: and it would have been really good to have someone
Speaker 1: there to say, hey, you probably not ready for this.
Speaker 1: Yet let's break this down into little pieces. But if
Speaker 1: you come at it methodically and you don't endanger yourself
Speaker 1: too much, what I started out with Parker is I
Speaker 1: would just put a piece of tape on the ground
Speaker 1: and another piece of tape and jump from one piece
Speaker 1: of tape to the other. And went out to parking
Speaker 1: lots and jumped from just an arbitrary pebble to the
Speaker 1: curb on the parking lot and found some just railings
Speaker 1: and learned how to go over those railings safely, and
Speaker 1: gradually just started building up to higher and higher things.
Speaker 1: You always want to start at ground level when you're
Speaker 1: training parkers. Don't go up to high places for your
Speaker 1: first thing. Yeah. I think there there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like instructional videos on YouTube too that that are not
Speaker 1: just like showing off. It's actually people trying to like
Speaker 1: break down movements. So you can like get find a
Speaker 1: specific video and be like, Okay, I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: bring this on my phone, go out into like a playground,
Speaker 1: a parking lot, like like a wooded area, and be like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is this one vault. I'mnn watch the
Speaker 1: video and I'm gonna try to replicate it myself. That's
Speaker 1: really the the kind of easiest, cheapest way to kind
Speaker 1: of break that down without having to you know, pay
Speaker 1: someone tons of money. Um. You know, if Parker classes
Speaker 1: aren't the most expensive thing. Um. So that's if you
Speaker 1: do have a little bit of disposable income. I I
Speaker 1: like park Wor classes. I did them for a long time,
Speaker 1: but there was a certain point actually that like I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford classes anymore. And luckily I've been doing park
Speaker 1: wore enough at that point that I was able to
Speaker 1: become an assistant instructor, which means I've got like a
Speaker 1: free I got like a free membership in exchange for
Speaker 1: you know, helping out in classes, like a few hours
Speaker 1: a week. So that's what that's what I did for
Speaker 1: years when I couldn't afford classes. Is it's just help
Speaker 1: is help teach, which I mean eventually I got leveled
Speaker 1: up to being like a full time instructor. Um. So
Speaker 1: that is kind of the other way is you know,
Speaker 1: once you get enough stuff, there are you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's ways canna like make friends who know more Parker
Speaker 1: than you. You can do you know, outdoor training with them,
Speaker 1: which can be free. Um. But if you if you
Speaker 1: do really want like a like a gym environment, there
Speaker 1: is the ways of making class. It's not the most
Speaker 1: expensive thing. There's online groups that schedule meetups every now
Speaker 1: and then, so if you can find an online group
Speaker 1: in your area, you can go to one of their
Speaker 1: meetups and ask for advice. Not everyone's going to give
Speaker 1: the best advice. There are some people in the park
Speaker 1: or community who are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be
Speaker 1: in a cast half of the time. Um, the more
Speaker 1: advanced people, yeah, they generally, so always take advice with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt. Not everyone knows everything, and no
Speaker 1: one knows your body as well as you do. So
Speaker 1: you've got to keep yourself safe above everything else. You
Speaker 1: can't get better at park or if you break both
Speaker 1: of your legs. Yeah, that's always so a couple of
Speaker 1: questions here. Number one would be, obviously, I don't expect
Speaker 1: you know, like somebody's in Michigan or whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: expect you to know the best parkour instructor there. But
Speaker 1: if somebody is looking at going the gym route, are
Speaker 1: there kind of some hard and fast rules for determining
Speaker 1: whether or not these folks know what they're doing wing, Like,
Speaker 1: is there any kind of advice you have in terms
Speaker 1: of picking a gym or is he just kind of
Speaker 1: like go into Google maps and see see where the
Speaker 1: parkouri be. That's a little bit tough because especially since COVID,
Speaker 1: there's not many options for park origins out there. Um,
Speaker 1: my best advice would be go and if they let
Speaker 1: you just watch a class and see what's going on. Um,
Speaker 1: see how many people have casts? Yeah, yeah, back when
Speaker 1: I was learning parkour originally we would have basically two
Speaker 1: people in a cast all the time, just for the class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that the guy that I was trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with the whole times span three stints
Speaker 1: in a cast. Yeah, just funny because I've never got
Speaker 1: a serious injury ever. I was. I was always more
Speaker 1: careful in my training. But like the most I've gotten
Speaker 1: is like is like you know, like bruises and stuff.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've and I got to a relatively high
Speaker 1: level of parker like if years ago only took classes
Speaker 1: from me, But focus was always on breaking things down
Speaker 1: and making them accessible and safe. True. True, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is there's definitely people who are more who
Speaker 1: are more carefree with their body and okay with hurting
Speaker 1: themselves to do something cool. Yeah, and some people will
Speaker 1: get away with that. So for folks who are there
Speaker 1: don't have the financial means to go to a gym
Speaker 1: where there's just nothing in their area, because as you've said,
Speaker 1: there's a plague. Um, if people are gonna you've given
Speaker 1: some advice on like how to start trying yourself. Are
Speaker 1: there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks
Speaker 1: who are you know, looking to get on unless on
Speaker 1: their own dip their toes in? Um, you know, YouTube
Speaker 1: channels or or people who you know do good like
Speaker 1: writing breakdowns, anything that you would, uh, you would push
Speaker 1: folks towards. I haven't been up to date on it recently. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of the videos out there are garbage. UM.
Speaker 1: What I recommend you look for is you look for,
Speaker 1: first of all, explanation. UM. Second of all, if you
Speaker 1: can find videos of someone who's training something and they
Speaker 1: fail to do the move that they're trying to do correctly,
Speaker 1: and they fail to do the move that they're trying
Speaker 1: to do correctly, they fail and fail and fail and
Speaker 1: fail and then succeed. Mhm. That's an honest video. That's
Speaker 1: one that I would listen to more because they understand
Speaker 1: the process. The other videos out there are sort of
Speaker 1: greatest hits compilations and you don't get to see the
Speaker 1: whole process that goes into that. So I don't have
Speaker 1: a sense. I don't have any specific person or channel
Speaker 1: to recommend. But when you're going out there and looking
Speaker 1: for resources, just make sure that the person is putting
Speaker 1: some understanding into the fact that this is the process
Speaker 1: of training and it's not just this is how it's done.
Speaker 1: Do it now, you can do it. There is there
Speaker 1: is a there's a Parkore wiki which was like you know,
Speaker 1: Parkore dot fandom dot com that you can you can
Speaker 1: find like just like lists of all of the moves
Speaker 1: and they give you very like simple explanations of them,
Speaker 1: and they and they link to some videos, um and
Speaker 1: generally like if if you just want to learn more
Speaker 1: about it, then that's then that can be a good resource,
Speaker 1: just so you're familiar with all the different types of movement.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like make sure you take every video with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt, and you know, watch other watch
Speaker 1: other people's explanations and be like, Okay, I kind of
Speaker 1: like the way this person describes it versus this person,
Speaker 1: because you know, everyone teaches differently. Everyone teaches for kind
Speaker 1: of you know, different differently body types for different like
Speaker 1: you know, body like performance models. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: because you can't just apply the same thing to everyone
Speaker 1: because everyone's everyone is different. But you know, the Parkore
Speaker 1: wiki is a decent resource. Um. And then you know
Speaker 1: there's YouTube is especially since since the two thousands there's
Speaker 1: been a plethora of content, most of most of it bad,
Speaker 1: but you know there's lots to at least look for.
Speaker 1: All right, Um, anything else you wanted to get into, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of branch off of like the
Speaker 1: parkour discussion into kind of like, uh, the more kind
Speaker 1: of stealth based discussion of of kind of being aware
Speaker 1: of your presence in relation to other people and recond
Speaker 1: I know you were talking about like the different levels
Speaker 1: of stealthy. So you've got the combat training which prevents
Speaker 1: you from getting killed or captured in uh, the worst
Speaker 1: of scenarios, and then we have Parkore that you can
Speaker 1: use to prevent the combat in the first place, and
Speaker 1: stealth is what you use to prevent the chase from
Speaker 1: happening in the first place. It's kind of a tree
Speaker 1: of I really don't want to have to fight someone,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to run away instead. I really don't
Speaker 1: want to have to run away from someone, so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to try and not to be noticed by
Speaker 1: them instead. And that's been a lot of what my
Speaker 1: training in Parker has been focused around is just stay
Speaker 1: deescalated as possible with everything. Yeah, because we me and
Speaker 1: Rick have focused most of our PARKOURD training on on
Speaker 1: stealth UM as opposed to being you know, super strong
Speaker 1: or super powerful UM. And stealth always a really hard
Speaker 1: concept to talk about because it's kind of like nebulous
Speaker 1: in nature, because stealth isn't being invisible, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not being totally unnoticed. It's want. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's wanting to craft the way you're seen in a
Speaker 1: specific way. Yeah. Um, it's always been very difficult for
Speaker 1: me to explain what stealth is. The most recent definition
Speaker 1: that I've given for it is that everything that you do,
Speaker 1: everything that you are, gives off a certain amount of
Speaker 1: noise and a certain type of noise. So the way
Speaker 1: that you dress, you can dress in a very loud
Speaker 1: way with the hive is day glow, colors um something
Speaker 1: that makes you really easy to notice. But if you're
Speaker 1: in the right environment, that might be the right type
Speaker 1: of noise to be making to blend into a crowd.
Speaker 1: Like a three piece suit is also a very loud
Speaker 1: outfit to wear, but if you're on the streets of
Speaker 1: New York, that's normal. If you come into a park
Speaker 1: origin wearing a three piece suit, it's very abnormal. So
Speaker 1: that's not the right type of noise if you're trying
Speaker 1: to blend in there. Yeah, a lot of it's about
Speaker 1: kind of constructing the way people see you based on
Speaker 1: what environment you're in and who you're trying to remain
Speaker 1: undetected from, right, Because I mean they were like not
Speaker 1: even necessarily undetected, but just detected in a specific way
Speaker 1: because people eyes. People's eyes can glaze over a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of stuff. If if just that the
Speaker 1: right puzzle pieces are put into their brain, that it's
Speaker 1: like nothing nothing to see here. Every everything is normal,
Speaker 1: nothing not nothing to be alerted, right, because what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do is prevent someone from being like alerted
Speaker 1: to your presence. That is kind of the main thing.
Speaker 1: So you can be within someone's sitelines, but the way
Speaker 1: that you're dressed, the way that you're moving, the way
Speaker 1: that you hold yourself fails to get their attention. They're
Speaker 1: subconscious registers that you're there, but it doesn't register consciously
Speaker 1: to them that you're there. It's the gray Man stuff
Speaker 1: that we were talking about with Chelsea, which again there's
Speaker 1: very frustrating chutty dimension to it. But the the original idea,
Speaker 1: before it got taken over as an entire fashion aesthetic,
Speaker 1: was if you're prepared, if you're if you're going to
Speaker 1: make yourself prepared for badge situations, you don't want to
Speaker 1: wear a bunch of tactical gear. You don't want to
Speaker 1: be dressed in like five combat pants. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be carrying like military backpacks and like the cargo
Speaker 1: pants with the you know, clearly bulging with weaponry. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be open carrying a gun. You want
Speaker 1: to be dressed, however, is going to least to least
Speaker 1: set you apart from the crowd, And that is, as
Speaker 1: you said, kind of vary. No, it's not a matter
Speaker 1: of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. Um,
Speaker 1: you're in downtown Salt Lake City, you know, a black
Speaker 1: hoodie and jeans might stand out more than it does
Speaker 1: if you're in downtown San Francisco, in which case you're
Speaker 1: gonna look like a million other people. I mean, and generally,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to avoid being seen, I recommend against
Speaker 1: wearing black basically at at all times, especially if you're
Speaker 1: trying to remain like actually invisible at night. You don't
Speaker 1: want to wear black because black is usually too dark. Um,
Speaker 1: you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: generally black is should be avoided. Um. Of course, like
Speaker 1: black block is a whole separate thing because black block
Speaker 1: are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context. But
Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of cases, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be in black block at protests, or you want
Speaker 1: to be able to switch from black block to what
Speaker 1: we call like normy block very quickly. So like you know,
Speaker 1: quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um
Speaker 1: that you can like practice like you you can you
Speaker 1: can just practice doing quick changes, like in your apartment,
Speaker 1: be like, how fast can I get from this outfit
Speaker 1: to this outfit? Um? In like a small space, right,
Speaker 1: you can? You can you can practice these even like
Speaker 1: outside but specifically for like black block, changing both in
Speaker 1: and out of is a skill that needs to be practiced. Um.
Speaker 1: But overall, I think like there's a lot of other
Speaker 1: ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other kind of methods. Like black
Speaker 1: blocks are very specific tactic, but it's not a tactic
Speaker 1: that needs to get applied all the time. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's very you should be mindful that it has a
Speaker 1: lot of downsides. Um And based on what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do, there's a lot of other ways to dress
Speaker 1: that would maybe be better. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's this,
Speaker 1: um yeah. It's a little bit like angles of it
Speaker 1: are kind of what we talked about even in like
Speaker 1: the last week when we were talking about like storing,
Speaker 1: you know, food and canning food and like the value
Speaker 1: of paying attention to the cycle of like what is
Speaker 1: in stock and what is not stocked in stock during
Speaker 1: what seasons. It's kind of the same thing at the
Speaker 1: value of paying attention to how people dress and how
Speaker 1: people move and like what is a normal way to
Speaker 1: move about and wherever you live as opposed to like
Speaker 1: what stands out like it, there's a lot of value
Speaker 1: and a lot of self defense value, and just kind
Speaker 1: of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting
Speaker 1: an eye for what will stand out and what won't
Speaker 1: stand out. If you're if you, if you are someone
Speaker 1: for whom being able to blend in is something you
Speaker 1: see value in, you know? Yeah, Rick, do do Do
Speaker 1: you have any things kind of on that side of
Speaker 1: things or any like exercises people can do to improve
Speaker 1: their own personal stealth. Yeah, it's very very situational. You
Speaker 1: have to sort of study many different environments. The biggest
Speaker 1: advice that I give people for stealth all the time is, um,
Speaker 1: pay attention. You have to pay attention to the smallest
Speaker 1: details when I'm even just moving around my house, like
Speaker 1: the bathroom door lock. Um, when you twist the lock,
Speaker 1: the button pops out and makes a huge noise. I
Speaker 1: actually place my thomb over it and deaden the sound
Speaker 1: as I'm doing it. And I pay attention to the
Speaker 1: kind of noise that I make in every situation and
Speaker 1: try to minimize that as much as possible. I pay
Speaker 1: attention to which parts of my house make noise when
Speaker 1: you step on them, and avoid those places, um I UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: just pay attention to every noise that my body makes,
Speaker 1: that my environment makes as I'm moving through it. Also,
Speaker 1: you have to pay attention and study other people in
Speaker 1: different environments. You can go to a grocery store and
Speaker 1: watch the body language of the moms who are shopping
Speaker 1: with their kids, so that the people that normally you
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay attention to pay attention to them because they're
Speaker 1: doing a good job of blending in if you're not
Speaker 1: normally paying attention to them, and then try to start
Speaker 1: mimicking their body language. What I'll do when I go
Speaker 1: out is I don't directly look at anyone, but I
Speaker 1: paying attention to if I'm being paid attention to give
Speaker 1: myself that own that conscious feedback and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: wasn't all that stealthy this time, I kind of stuck out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: practicing your peripheral vision is definitely useful for that. I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of exercises. Yeah, just go into like
Speaker 1: parks or the places where there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: and like people watching and trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: does your eyes glaze over the most and what what
Speaker 1: are they doing to cause that. I think one one
Speaker 1: thing that me and Rick have talked about before is
Speaker 1: like every part of your body points somewhere, like whether
Speaker 1: that be your eyes, your nose, your chin, your arms,
Speaker 1: your hips, your chest, your hands, all of these things
Speaker 1: point in a direction. And if you can figure out
Speaker 1: which direction, you can point them to make people pay
Speaker 1: less attention to you. That's kind of one of the
Speaker 1: easier models understanding how to like walk and move in
Speaker 1: a stealthy manner that I think like out of all
Speaker 1: the different ways of thinking about and I think that's
Speaker 1: the way that's helped me the most. Um. It's being like,
Speaker 1: you know, if if my head is pointed up and
Speaker 1: my nose is pointed out and I'm moving my arms
Speaker 1: around a lot, that's people are gonna like like look
Speaker 1: at me more. You know, people if if if if
Speaker 1: eye contact is made, that is like a failure. So
Speaker 1: you know, if your head's pointed down, your arms are
Speaker 1: more slouched, they kind of move with your body, but
Speaker 1: that's not super exaggerated and it's not super stiff. These
Speaker 1: are different kind of ways of pointing your body to
Speaker 1: make you seem more like UM introspective UM and less external.
Speaker 1: Also walking around with UM ear plugs or like like
Speaker 1: like uh, earbuds, ear phones. Those are ways people will
Speaker 1: pay attention to class to you look at your smartphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the back when we back when I took
Speaker 1: classes with you and taught classes, we we would we
Speaker 1: would we would have like a weekly a weekly games
Speaker 1: class um where we'd have different you know games and
Speaker 1: related to Parkore and you know, stealth would always kind
Speaker 1: of be something I would try to do. And you
Speaker 1: could survive so long in stealth games by just like
Speaker 1: looking like pretending that you're looking at your phone, like
Speaker 1: not even actually doing it, just like walking in like
Speaker 1: a circle around like walking in a circle around the
Speaker 1: arena as people are trying to like tag and stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you can just like walk with your head
Speaker 1: down kind of slowly, you can strive a ridiculously long
Speaker 1: time because people are looking for people that are like
Speaker 1: running around and being like and being super energy energetic,
Speaker 1: and if you're not, people aren't detecting you as much.
Speaker 1: Another thing to practice would be quiet walking, which is
Speaker 1: we kind of mentioned before. It's like learning how to
Speaker 1: move your foot and interact with different surfaces that makes
Speaker 1: your walking basically silent, which is very fun because you
Speaker 1: can use this to scare your friends. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very exciting to to to to to like
Speaker 1: try to try to figure out what's what's ways I
Speaker 1: can hide in my friend's house to like jump scare them,
Speaker 1: or like kind of like how close can I get
Speaker 1: behind someone with with with without them noticing that. There'd
Speaker 1: be times I can just like walk up behind someone
Speaker 1: and wait, like I kid you, not like ten minutes
Speaker 1: before they noticed I was there. It's hilarious. Um. I
Speaker 1: feel even better when I can do that to their
Speaker 1: pets because generally the animals are paying more attention to everything.
Speaker 1: So if you can successfully sneak up on someone's cat,
Speaker 1: you're doing it right. Yeah. Oh man, I do really
Speaker 1: enjoy stealth, and I'll be happy to practice it more
Speaker 1: regularly once the plugue is over. Um, if it's over,
Speaker 1: Um any other kind of stealth notes that you would
Speaker 1: want to kind of bring up for if someone's trying
Speaker 1: to like get into stealth and start to start thinking
Speaker 1: about detection, you know, more often in their everyday life.
Speaker 1: It's very important that you engage in indirect observations. You
Speaker 1: you were talking about how everything points and One of
Speaker 1: the things that we subconsciously noticed the most is people's
Speaker 1: eyes were kind of programmed to notice eyes. So if
Speaker 1: you're looking directly at someone, they're probably gonna notice that
Speaker 1: you've noticed them. But if you're using your peripheral vision,
Speaker 1: or if instead of watching them, you're watching a reflection
Speaker 1: of them, or if you're watching their shadow um, or
Speaker 1: you're not even looking in their direction instead you're tracking
Speaker 1: them by sound, it makes it so that you have
Speaker 1: a big one up on everyone around you. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: indirect observation is one of the best tools that you
Speaker 1: can use, um if you get really clever at it. Now,
Speaker 1: this this, this, this is harder because it actually if
Speaker 1: if you if you if you do this wrong, people, people,
Speaker 1: people will pay more attention to you. But you can
Speaker 1: get good at it to start using like your phone
Speaker 1: camera or even just your phone screen, because like your
Speaker 1: black phone screen is pretty, is pretty, is pretty reflective
Speaker 1: in nature, so you can use this as like a mirror. Um.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, using like phone cameras and phone screens
Speaker 1: as a reflective surface or or just as like a
Speaker 1: camera can be used in indirect observation. But you do
Speaker 1: have to be careful because if if if it looks
Speaker 1: like you're filming somebody, they're gonna pay so much more
Speaker 1: attention to you. So yeah, you have, you have. You
Speaker 1: have to be very careful with this method, but it
Speaker 1: is possible. This is how I kind of this is
Speaker 1: how I um, this is how it's like documented different
Speaker 1: like um not sees that rallies. If I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like super obvious that that I'm taking a
Speaker 1: picture of them, there's ways of doing indirect observation with
Speaker 1: my phone that I can get pictures of them from
Speaker 1: certain angles to be like, okay, so now now I
Speaker 1: can put you, I can add you to my to
Speaker 1: my folder of Nazis that have showed up. UM that method.
Speaker 1: You have to be super careful if you're surrounded by
Speaker 1: potentially hostile people. Anyone who's behind you is going to
Speaker 1: see that your phone camera is on. So it's something
Speaker 1: that you only want to use if people are on
Speaker 1: one side of you or you know, you keep you
Speaker 1: you you use your body as a shield for certain
Speaker 1: for certain like angles be tricky the hoodie and uh
Speaker 1: increase your odds of success with that. But but but
Speaker 1: most often I would recommend against this method, especially if
Speaker 1: you're just starting out because it is it is a
Speaker 1: lot more risky. UM. But when it does work, I
Speaker 1: can come in very handy. But but more often than not,
Speaker 1: using using like reflections like windows, mirrors, you know, like
Speaker 1: a car, windows, puddles on the ground, shadows, sound, all
Speaker 1: of these different methods of observing someone without looking directly
Speaker 1: at them are generally much much safer UM and they
Speaker 1: can be very useful for for trying to track someone
Speaker 1: or to be aware of what they're looking at without
Speaker 1: looking directly at them UM. Kind of more similar to
Speaker 1: like what I talked about in like the fictional opening
Speaker 1: we did for stealth is very dependent on what you
Speaker 1: know is trying to watch you write, like like how
Speaker 1: you need to be aware of the ways people are
Speaker 1: trying to detect you. Of course this canine units. It's
Speaker 1: very very different than just being being yeah, than being
Speaker 1: like chased down on foot um or you know, like
Speaker 1: security cameras of course, like online tracking, which we're not
Speaker 1: we're not really getting into today, but you know, like
Speaker 1: being aware of where security cameras are mapped out UM
Speaker 1: can be can be very useful learning to learning to
Speaker 1: figure out where they are without looking directly at them
Speaker 1: can be useful. There's a lot of cities have websites
Speaker 1: that like map out where where all the cameras are. Um,
Speaker 1: I know there's one for Portland that you can like
Speaker 1: map out all of the cameras in downtown and then
Speaker 1: you can like plan like a route through downtown that
Speaker 1: has no cameras watching right there. There's only there's only
Speaker 1: very few routes that that actually have that, but but
Speaker 1: they do exist. Um. So learning to move in ways
Speaker 1: that make cameras less able to spot you, um those
Speaker 1: that's definitely another kind of method of learning about stealth
Speaker 1: and learning about like how surveillance works looking directly at
Speaker 1: the camera. But that's that's that's definitely useful, which intention
Speaker 1: to where they are, Yeah, which plays into which plays
Speaker 1: into indirect observation. Um. But I mean this gets more tricky.
Speaker 1: We know when police are using like thermal drones. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is it's whole whole whole other side of things
Speaker 1: that it's very hard to info. Sex side of thing
Speaker 1: is hard to combat and it's yeah, there will be
Speaker 1: a point in time in which it becomes effectively impossible
Speaker 1: to the monitor for cameras. Yeah, there's like there's there's
Speaker 1: like a hierarchy of worry because yeah, if because if,
Speaker 1: like the n s they wants to find you, they will,
Speaker 1: but most often they're not. Like most often people are
Speaker 1: dealing with their local law enforcement unit. Most often people
Speaker 1: are not dealing with the FBI. Most people people usually
Speaker 1: aren't dealing with the FBI, CIA or n s A.
Speaker 1: If if they want to find you, they will. But
Speaker 1: if you can learn to only interact with your surroundings
Speaker 1: in a way that would only concern your local police department,
Speaker 1: that's much easier too. That's much easier to kind of
Speaker 1: combat against, um, because it's it's way easier to hide
Speaker 1: from you know, your local department than it is from
Speaker 1: the n s A. All right, um, anything else? I
Speaker 1: think that pretty much covers everything. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a good that's a SDE. Great, it's a cast that
Speaker 1: we have potted. Um all right, Um, we got any
Speaker 1: any plugables here to plug at the end before we
Speaker 1: before we roll out me. Yeah, no, you don't find
Speaker 1: me alone. Don't don't find him. This is the most
Speaker 1: visible you've ever been. Yeah, So is there any um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, fundraiser chair for someone else that you
Speaker 1: want to highlight not currently now you are you do
Speaker 1: try to be uh you do try to be a
Speaker 1: virtual ninja? All right, well, all plug something. One of
Speaker 1: our fans is putting together a graphic novel about the
Speaker 1: famed anarchist militant of the Spanish Civil War when even
Speaker 1: showed a Durruty. So if you just go to type
Speaker 1: Druty into Kickstarter, you'll find the graphic novel Kickstarter. UM
Speaker 1: check it out. It's cool. Yeah, and I guess other
Speaker 1: things I'll close with his learned to walk quietly, learn
Speaker 1: to observe, learn to observe your surroundings. Um, keep these practice, practice,
Speaker 1: practice with other people. Don't don't don't do this alone.
Speaker 1: It's really useful to have stealth be a collaborative process
Speaker 1: because stealth isn't stealth isn't just by itself, isn't just
Speaker 1: about you. It's about you and your whole environment. Um,
Speaker 1: collaborate with the CVS clerk when you robbed the CVS stealthily?
Speaker 1: That is That is a different podcast I'm working on.
Speaker 1: Is that how to Shop the Shoplifting Cast? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is something I will pitch very soon. Anyway, I've
Speaker 1: had trouble getting sponsors for the shoplifting podcast. I will
Speaker 1: tell you that. And it's difficult if you could actually
Speaker 1: get CVS to sponsor that big shoplifting. I mean, we
Speaker 1: are giving them a lot of free advertising. If if
Speaker 1: if it does, if it does happen. Anyway, most people
Speaker 1: who shoplift also spend. That's true. That is one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to shoplift is to buy other things.
Speaker 1: In this story, I'm seeing I'm already giving out advice. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is how I always shoplifted. Back when I shoplifted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back when I did that twenty years ago. That's what.
Speaker 1: That's how I did it as well. I feel like
Speaker 1: if Sophie were here, she'd be trying to back pedal
Speaker 1: right now and stop you guys. So if you support shoplifting,
Speaker 1: this is a very pro shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Roxande Gay, host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda,
Speaker 1: the bad feminist podcast of your Dreams. Now, what is
Speaker 1: the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask what. It's a
Speaker 1: podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's
Speaker 1: on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week
Speaker 1: I will be in conversation with an interesting person who
Speaker 1: has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race,
Speaker 1: writing in books, and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics.
Speaker 1: I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to share with you a movie or a book, or
Speaker 1: maybe some music or a comedy set, something that I
Speaker 1: really want you to be aware of and maybe engage
Speaker 1: with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The
Speaker 1: Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams,
Speaker 1: every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world it
Speaker 1: is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are
Speaker 1: still hanging on people's walls. You know they don't even
Speaker 1: know or suspect that their faces. I'm Ale Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery in
Speaker 1: the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Um
Speaker 1: Listen to Art Frauds starting February one on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Give us the over attention. We need. Everything you've got
Speaker 1: fast waiting on reparations would beat the podcast soon. In
Speaker 1: every Thursday Politics and Wordplay, we fight for the people
Speaker 1: because they got us in the worst way, from the
Speaker 1: Hill Cooper, the bomb Bay to Kanya, from the left
Speaker 1: on Clave to what the neo kanza every Thursday cop
Speaker 1: the head compass to break us off with some break
Speaker 1: because listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart
Speaker 1: radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: You were out of town when the last cop left Seattle.
Speaker 1: It had been unseasonably cool that week, the seventy degrees
Speaker 1: of Old and not the n you had come to
Speaker 1: dread every summer. But you'd already promised you'd visit your
Speaker 1: family in Montana, and so when the riots started in
Speaker 1: the National Guard open fire into the crowd, you watched
Speaker 1: it on Twitter from your couch like everyone else. The
Speaker 1: Second Battle of Seattle, they were calling it. You wondered
Speaker 1: briefly what the first one was. They've been fighting in
Speaker 1: Portland too, some kind of massacre in Oakland, and no
Speaker 1: one was quite sure what was happening in that Apple Valley.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be anything good, you thought, But it was Seattle.
Speaker 1: Everyone was talking about. The mayor fled the city and
Speaker 1: the helicopter when it became clear the police were losing
Speaker 1: after that the cops had simply broken retreated across the Cascades.
Speaker 1: No one knew who was running the city now, and
Speaker 1: you share as hell didn't want to be the one
Speaker 1: to find out. But after two weeks, you've burned through
Speaker 1: every vacation day in every favor you'd ever accumulated at
Speaker 1: the hospital, And besides, the rent was due. No one
Speaker 1: was sure if the postal service was even still functioning,
Speaker 1: and with the eviction moratorium lifted, you weren't going to
Speaker 1: risk getting evicted because you weren't there to hand your
Speaker 1: landlord a check. So with rarey resignation, you pile into
Speaker 1: your battered car and head towards snow Quality Pass. What
Speaker 1: surprised you most when you hit Seattle was the art
Speaker 1: you've been expecting. Burnt out buildings and streets filled with
Speaker 1: burning cars, and there were some A few streets were
Speaker 1: still blocked by what looked like improvised barricades, but every
Speaker 1: surface of every building, it seemed, had some kind of
Speaker 1: mirror on it. Someone, and no one seemed to be
Speaker 1: quite sure who had first come up with the idea,
Speaker 1: had blocked off an entire street up near Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: and people were painstakingly painting portraits of every protester killed
Speaker 1: in the fighting and seattle on it. As you walked past,
Speaker 1: they were discussing doing the same for the dead in Oakland.
Speaker 1: The second surprise came when you tried to pay your rent.
Speaker 1: A woman you've never seen before was sitting at the
Speaker 1: office's reception desk. When you tried to handle your check,
Speaker 1: she laughed and handed it back to you, explaining that
Speaker 1: after the cops fled, the local tenants union had taking
Speaker 1: over most of the apartments in the city and placed
Speaker 1: them in something it called a community land Trust. You
Speaker 1: didn't quite get the details, but no one was going
Speaker 1: to evict you, so you decided to just take the win. Besides,
Speaker 1: your friend had convinced you to do some child care
Speaker 1: for the tenants union in college, and they always seemed
Speaker 1: like a decent sword, so it didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: any immediate cause for concern. The hospital was another matter.
Speaker 1: Entirely from what you could gather, there had been some
Speaker 1: kind of labor disputween the chaos. Management seemed to have
Speaker 1: fired a group of nurses for giving injured protesters shelter
Speaker 1: from the police. Your war had already been understaffed due
Speaker 1: to COVID and budget cuts. Now the situation was int tolerable.
Speaker 1: Where still many of the senior administrators had fled the
Speaker 1: city with the police, no one seemed to know who
Speaker 1: was in charge, Supplies were starting to run low, and
Speaker 1: with so many administrators missing in the insurance situation completely
Speaker 1: up in the air. On account of nobody being entirely
Speaker 1: sure if Seattle was even still part of the United States,
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear if anyone was going to get paid.
Speaker 1: So when a co worker pulled you aside and asked
Speaker 1: if you'd be interested in doing something about the management problem,
Speaker 1: you figured, what the hell, Maybe it was time for
Speaker 1: a change. It wasn't like it could possibly make anything worse.
Speaker 1: The fired nurses, it turned out, had started to set
Speaker 1: up a community health center with the help of the
Speaker 1: local neighborhood council. But some of the nurses still working
Speaker 1: at the hospital had another idea. Why not just turn
Speaker 1: the hospital into the community health center. After all, the
Speaker 1: hospital already had more equipment than any new center could
Speaker 1: possibly symbol. All they needed was some help from the community,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing could be run by a council
Speaker 1: of the hospital workers. Insurance companies be damned. Besides, if
Speaker 1: all the hospitals started pulling their resources together, they might
Speaker 1: be able to solve some of the shortages. At the
Speaker 1: mention of solving the supply shortages, even the more skeptical
Speaker 1: workers started to come around. By the next morning, the
Speaker 1: Seattle Hospital Workers Council was marching on the hospital. The
Speaker 1: remaining management found out somehow and tried one final lockout
Speaker 1: to hold onto their property. But as you saw yet
Speaker 1: another column of protesters joining the crowd surrounding the hospital,
Speaker 1: you knew this wasn't their city any longer. On April eighteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand, one, military police in the Cabiliar region of
Speaker 1: Algeria shot an eighteen year old high school students. Almost immediately,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people took to the street, chanting,
Speaker 1: you can't kill us, we are already dead at the
Speaker 1: lines of policemen assembled to attack them. The police would
Speaker 1: kill over a hundred people and severely wound five thousand
Speaker 1: more in the months long battle for control of the
Speaker 1: streets that followed, but protesters burned police stations, government offices, courts,
Speaker 1: and the offices of Islamic fundamentalist parties until the government
Speaker 1: agreed to give ethnic minority groups language and cultural rights.
Speaker 1: The hated military police were driven from the region entirely,
Speaker 1: and so few regular police stations survived the uprising. At
Speaker 1: the regular police likewise ceased to function across broad swaths
Speaker 1: of Kabilia. They were replaced on a local village level
Speaker 1: by self organized security committees, which would assemble on the
Speaker 1: rare occasion trouble emerged. Contrary to the expectations of the state,
Speaker 1: crime plummeted, but the Algerian government otherwise continued to function
Speaker 1: as usual for over a decade until the local government
Speaker 1: in a small region, cover Bacha, attempted the regular local elections.
Speaker 1: After banning the most popular political party in the region,
Speaker 1: they installed an unpopular coalition governments. The people of Barbaca
Speaker 1: responded by storming the city hall, seizing control of it
Speaker 1: and setting up a democratic General Assembly inside the newly
Speaker 1: dubbed House of the People to replace the existing government.
Speaker 1: This was dual power in its original sense, a council
Speaker 1: of the people facing off against an increasingly illegitimate parliamentary
Speaker 1: representative in a struggle for control over the fate of
Speaker 1: a new society. If you google dual power, you are
Speaker 1: likely to encounter. A pamphlet written by Vladimir Lenin entitled
Speaker 1: The Dual Power, describing the conundrum of the situation following
Speaker 1: the First Russian Revolution in February of nineteen seventeen. After
Speaker 1: the overthrow of the Czar, political power was split between
Speaker 1: two competing bodies. On the one side, a new provisional
Speaker 1: government of liberal and social democratic politicians holdovers from the
Speaker 1: old Duma from the previous regime. On the other side,
Speaker 1: revolutionary social forces rallying around assemblies popular power called soviets,
Speaker 1: which were councils of delegates sent by directly democratic factories,
Speaker 1: soldiers and sailors committees. Lenin solve this as a situation
Speaker 1: to be overcome by the seizure of state power by
Speaker 1: Socialist Party. For Lenin and his Bolsheviks, dual power was
Speaker 1: a problem because, after the Czarist state ceased to exist
Speaker 1: in the middle of the World War, the new provisional
Speaker 1: government failed to fill the vacuum left in its wake
Speaker 1: by its collapse. To Lenin, the solution was obvious fill
Speaker 1: that vacuum with Lenin. For the peasants, soldiers, and workers
Speaker 1: who made up the majority of Russia's population, However, dual
Speaker 1: power was their first fleeting taste of freedom and autonomous
Speaker 1: control over their lives. Lenon used the Soviets to seize power,
Speaker 1: but almost immediately began to turn on these democratic assemblies
Speaker 1: of popular autonomy. Over the course of the Russian Civil War,
Speaker 1: Lennon and the Bolsheviks strip power away from the workers, peasants,
Speaker 1: and soldiers, sometimes by bureaucratic fiat, often at the point
Speaker 1: of a bayonet. Until this Oviet have been stripped of
Speaker 1: all meeting in the very state named after their democratic
Speaker 1: form and became synonymous with dictatorship. Dual power today draws
Speaker 1: from the potential of that post revolutionary crisis from the
Speaker 1: bottom up, direct democracy that was so threatening to the
Speaker 1: social order that Bolshevik revolutionaries and Czari's police by his alike,
Speaker 1: conspired to wipe them from the historical record. Just as
Speaker 1: Russia was haunted by the memory of the French communes,
Speaker 1: so is America today haunted by a memory of dual
Speaker 1: power that, against all lodge refuses to die. We are,
Speaker 1: after all, still ruled by a greedy, bloodthirsty, and out
Speaker 1: of touch elite who have chosen to march us to
Speaker 1: our deaths by the hundreds of thousands by forcing us
Speaker 1: back to work during a plague. But the Russian Revolution
Speaker 1: is as far away from us today as Napoleon and
Speaker 1: his brass cannons were from the Russian revolutionaries and their
Speaker 1: machine guns. Times have changed. There is no Bolshevik party
Speaker 1: waiting in the wings to seize power as the state crumbles.
Speaker 1: The vacuum of the state leaves in its wake as
Speaker 1: its power deteriorates, be filled by any number of organizations,
Speaker 1: most even more hostile to the working class and the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks had been. It could be war lords with the
Speaker 1: personal allegiance of the remains of the military. It could
Speaker 1: be organized crime. It could be religious fundamentalist militias. Most likely,
Speaker 1: it will be an uneasy combination of all of the above.
Speaker 1: Or it could be you. It could be your family,
Speaker 1: your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, the person you
Speaker 1: waved to every morning at the bus stop when you're
Speaker 1: on your way to work. The past to that world,
Speaker 1: the world run not by capitalists in their cops or
Speaker 1: by war lords in their armies, but by autonomous communities
Speaker 1: free to decide for themselves what to produce and how
Speaker 1: to best use their resources. To care for each other
Speaker 1: is dual power in the twenty one century. At its core,
Speaker 1: dual power is about creating a counterpower against the state.
Speaker 1: During the Russian Revolution, this counterpower was formed essentially by
Speaker 1: historical accidents, as two governing bodies emerged from the course
Speaker 1: of the Febrrian Revolution. But modern dual power does not
Speaker 1: arise from the whims of the course of revolution or
Speaker 1: from an innate instinct of the working class. It is
Speaker 1: something we build together by creating organizations that resist the
Speaker 1: power of the structures of violence. Capitalism, racism, homophobia, and
Speaker 1: the state name a few that control this world. Dual
Speaker 1: power organizations can take many forms, from tennis unions, the
Speaker 1: debtors councils, childcare cooperatives, to land occupations, workers councils, to
Speaker 1: rank and file labor unions, mutual aid networks to community
Speaker 1: self defense organizations. These organizations seek to build autonomy from
Speaker 1: and against capitalism. In the state alone, there are no
Speaker 1: match for the state's we all power to inflict violence
Speaker 1: and corporate control over our resources. But by joining together
Speaker 1: to form federations and pooling their resources and expertise to
Speaker 1: coordinate their efforts, they can become a powerful enough force
Speaker 1: to challenge the state, both directly and indirectly. These dual
Speaker 1: power organizations are designed to be the day its successor.
Speaker 1: As the industrial workers of the world famously put it,
Speaker 1: they form the structure of the new society and the
Speaker 1: shell of the old. In order to fulfill that task,
Speaker 1: they take the shape of new society they need to create.
Speaker 1: Academics called this prefigurative politics, organizing that employs the values
Speaker 1: and organizational structures that they seek to create in the world.
Speaker 1: As we will discuss in the next episode, there are
Speaker 1: right wing forms of both dual power and profigative politics,
Speaker 1: but for most of the people who employ it, prefigurative
Speaker 1: politics means creating direct democratic institutions without bosses, managers, bureaucrats,
Speaker 1: or party apparatus. The means of creating the new world
Speaker 1: are thus the same as the ends. Dual power organizations
Speaker 1: serve multiple purposes. Their long term goal is to replace
Speaker 1: the state and the corporation with free and autonomous forms
Speaker 1: of organization. One's organized and powerful enough to protect themselves
Speaker 1: and manage the logistical challenges of a new world when
Speaker 1: previous forms of organization and power no longer exist. But
Speaker 1: even reaching a point where this is remotely plausible, requires
Speaker 1: not just the painstaking construction of counterpower and organization out
Speaker 1: of a fragmented American population, It requires a profound cultural
Speaker 1: transformation and how we make decisions. As the anthropologist David
Speaker 1: Graeber put it, it is assumed in many parts of
Speaker 1: the world that democracy is a group of people facing
Speaker 1: a certain problem who come together to solve it in
Speaker 1: a way where everyone has an equals say. It's true
Speaker 1: that most Americans think of themselves as living in a
Speaker 1: democratic country. When was the last time that any Americans
Speaker 1: actually sat down and came to a collective decision? Maybe
Speaker 1: if they were ordering pizza, but basically never Dual power
Speaker 1: organizations thus also service schools for democracy where people can learn,
Speaker 1: experiment with, create, and spread their own forms of democracy
Speaker 1: and collective decision making. When these spaces of democratic experimentation
Speaker 1: are functioning properly, the very organizational structure serves as a
Speaker 1: kind of recruitment tool. This was the original theory behind
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street, that democracy and the experience of autonomy
Speaker 1: were contagious and would spread rapidly as more and more
Speaker 1: curious people experienced it for themselves. That experience, in turn
Speaker 1: would create a new generation of people trained in democratic
Speaker 1: practices who could go forth and transform the world. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this didn't quite happen. Occupies model of democracy was limited
Speaker 1: in many ways, not the least of which was that
Speaker 1: it required a public, physical meeting space that could be
Speaker 1: closed down by police violence. But the initial premise worked.
Speaker 1: Occupy itself, of course, had been inspired by the mass
Speaker 1: democratic assemblies in Spain, in Greece in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and the direct democratic coops and factory occupations that engulfed
Speaker 1: Argentina for the better part of the two thousand's. At
Speaker 1: the most basic, short term level, however, dual power organizations
Speaker 1: are designed to meet people's needs. The cornerstone of this
Speaker 1: effortis mutual aid. Probably the most famous example of such
Speaker 1: a project was the Black Panther Party survival programs. Former
Speaker 1: Black Panther Janina Irvin describes them in detail. The Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party survival programs were, in fact an example of
Speaker 1: an effort, a successful effort, while it lasted to create
Speaker 1: dual power in the United States. The Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: had a school, had free food programs. One of its
Speaker 1: most respected survival programs was a breakfast for children, which
Speaker 1: was overall a response to hunger and poverty in the country,
Speaker 1: particularly among poor, low income Black people. We had free
Speaker 1: medical clinics in Winston Salem, North Carolina. We had free ambulances,
Speaker 1: free past control, free shoes, We had free bussing to
Speaker 1: prison programs, legal aid programs to help people get attorneys
Speaker 1: who needed them. And we had a program that was
Speaker 1: called the Safe Program Seniors Against a Fearful Environment, in
Speaker 1: which we provided free transportation and escort service the senior
Speaker 1: citizens who needed to get out and take care of
Speaker 1: their errands, their business. They were often being attacked, so
Speaker 1: this was a hore protection for them. The Panthers were
Speaker 1: able to grow their in fluence by keeping their communities safe, healthy,
Speaker 1: cared for, and increasingly autonomous from the state. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: they were able to keep people alive. As Black Panthers
Speaker 1: co founder Hue P. Newton famously said, these survival programs
Speaker 1: satisfy the deep needs of the community, but they are
Speaker 1: not solutions to our problem. That is why we call
Speaker 1: them survival programs, meeting survival pending revolution. The existence of
Speaker 1: the survival programs themselves reflect the necessity of keeping people alive,
Speaker 1: especially people who the state would rather kill or leave
Speaker 1: to die for building any kind of power. But these
Speaker 1: programs are also necessarily insufficient. No mutual aid program, no
Speaker 1: autonomous project, no liberated territory can provide for the entire community,
Speaker 1: while the corporations, capitalists, and states maintain their strangle hold
Speaker 1: over the resources and production capacity at the working class
Speaker 1: collectively created over centuries of grueling labor and struggle. Dual power,
Speaker 1: more than just survival, is about building the counter power
Speaker 1: to take it back. Building powers withdraws the line between
Speaker 1: what is and isn't dual power. Growing food for you
Speaker 1: and your friends, make cut down on bills, and make
Speaker 1: some killer pesto, but it's not necessarily challenging the capitalist system.
Speaker 1: Autonomy for its own sake is not necessarily dual power
Speaker 1: if it doesn't actively aid in struggle or better organize
Speaker 1: the community. That from the perspective of building counter power,
Speaker 1: that autonomy is meaningless. Making food for striking workers to
Speaker 1: allow them to stay on strike longer is building dual power.
Speaker 1: We're simply producing it for general consumption is not. While
Speaker 1: dual power organizations necessarily serve the needs of the community,
Speaker 1: they must also be able to pivot and attack the
Speaker 1: state in capital and provide solidarity and mutual aid to
Speaker 1: those in the community who are already in struggle, or
Speaker 1: they simply aren't dual power organizations at all. The simplest
Speaker 1: solution to this problem, of course, is to organize around
Speaker 1: a specific side of resistance. Organizations that build up the
Speaker 1: capacity to fight can emerge from almost anywhere. The Symbiosis
Speaker 1: Research Collective described how dual power organizations emerge from Palestinian
Speaker 1: prison organizing bring the First into Fata and uprising against
Speaker 1: the Israeli governments in late nineteen eighties. Most discussion of
Speaker 1: the First into Fata focuses on the role of mass
Speaker 1: protests in making Palestinian society ungovernable for the Israeli occupying forces.
Speaker 1: Less discussed is the role of community organizations of mutual
Speaker 1: aid and confederated participatory democracy and making such mass protests possible.
Speaker 1: Organizing from within the political system was a political incubator
Speaker 1: of the Palestinian resistance movement and offers a microcosmic example
Speaker 1: of the developments of dual power in the much larger
Speaker 1: prison of the occupation. With hunger strikes, political prisoners eventually
Speaker 1: won concessions for their own self administration within the prisons,
Speaker 1: they assembled structures of political organization and representation, forced prison
Speaker 1: authorities to recognize their representatives, and developed a division of
Speaker 1: labor around hygiene, education and other daily tasks. Palestinian prisoners
Speaker 1: described this arrangement as internal organization, similar to the concept
Speaker 1: of dual power. Even the least free of circumstances, these
Speaker 1: prisoners carved out space for self governments and created the
Speaker 1: preconditions to revolutionary struggle. Prisoners taught and studied everything from
Speaker 1: Palestinian history to marks the political economy, often from eight
Speaker 1: to fourteen hours per day. As freshly educated and trained
Speaker 1: political activists were released back into society, the resistance movement
Speaker 1: was galvanized. Illiterate teenage boys arrested for throwing stones re
Speaker 1: entered the fray months later as committed competent organizers who
Speaker 1: had studied movement building, strategic resistance, and dialectical materialism. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the organizing context outside of the prison transformed dramatically. Saleh
Speaker 1: Abou laban of Palestinian political prisoners from nineteen seventy until nine, stated,
Speaker 1: when I entered the prison, there wasn't a national movement.
Speaker 1: There were only underground cells that performed clandestine lee. When
Speaker 1: I got out, I found a world full of organizers, committees,
Speaker 1: and community institutions. Central to this new world of community
Speaker 1: organizing was the Palestinian labor movement. Unions re formed out
Speaker 1: of workers places of residents rather than workplaces because vigrant
Speaker 1: labor was prevalent in Palestinian Unionism within Israel had been criminalized.
Speaker 1: Unions then formed strong alliances with local organizations in the
Speaker 1: national movement with rapid growth in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Labor unions found it necessary to centralize and democratize their
Speaker 1: structures to become more resilient as Israeli repression intensified against
Speaker 1: union leaders and organizers. These local unions were networked together
Speaker 1: through the Palestinian Communist Party and the Workers Unity Block,
Speaker 1: creating a web of labor organizers and community groups that
Speaker 1: linked their class struggle to the larger projects of national liberation.
Speaker 1: This wave of resistance, carried out largely outside the purview
Speaker 1: of the major Palestinian political parties, showed that even communities
Speaker 1: and the most dire circumstances can assemble astounding levels of
Speaker 1: organization and resistance. As was also true in the United States,
Speaker 1: although today the memory of these prison radicals is largely forgotten.
Speaker 1: Palestinian organizing emerged from the sites of deepest depression in
Speaker 1: their society. But this kind and level of organization is
Speaker 1: not just the property of the left, and in Part
Speaker 1: two we'll see what happens when the right gets hold
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Speaker 1: It's been three months since you and your co workers
Speaker 1: took control of the hospital. Things aren't back to normal yet.
Speaker 1: You're not even really sure what normal is anymore, but
Speaker 1: the days have fallen into a kind of routine. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: which means it's your turn to go report back to
Speaker 1: what a friend jokingly referred to as the Endless Meeting
Speaker 1: Assembly was now forever known as the e m A.
Speaker 1: The e m A is technically the closest thing left
Speaker 1: to a central government in Seattle. It was formed as
Speaker 1: a sort of coordinating council between the various organizations and
Speaker 1: workers councils that had emerged or simply emerged from the woodworks.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the collapse of the police. Two
Speaker 1: things have become clear very quickly. One there was need
Speaker 1: for some kind of coordinating committee between the different bodies
Speaker 1: to The only people who had any idea what was
Speaker 1: going on in their portion of the city or in
Speaker 1: their workplace were the members of the local council, which
Speaker 1: meant there was no way in hell any kind of
Speaker 1: central apparatus could dictate to them what actually needed to
Speaker 1: be done. There just wasn't a way to move the
Speaker 1: information around. The solution had been decentralization. Let the councils
Speaker 1: do their work, let them work out who they needed
Speaker 1: to talk to, but make sure there was some kind
Speaker 1: of daily council that people could show up to. Were
Speaker 1: the various groups who do report backs and what they
Speaker 1: were doing and what they needed. The structure was messy,
Speaker 1: but it mostly worked, and at least someone had had
Speaker 1: the idea to make sure if the delegate to the
Speaker 1: e m A rotated so one person wasn't stuck spending
Speaker 1: after life showing up every day. The problem really was
Speaker 1: the same problem you've been dealing with for months now.
Speaker 1: Even with the pooling of resources and people donating their
Speaker 1: last precious American dollars to paying people to import more supplies.
Speaker 1: The blockade was taking its toll. Nobody wanted to try
Speaker 1: to force their way through the blockades and the cascades.
Speaker 1: There's been some attempts to get in touch with groups
Speaker 1: in Portland's but the control map was so ugly there
Speaker 1: was no real ants of getting any assistance. Besides, the
Speaker 1: real problem was the port. When the cops had fled,
Speaker 1: the ships should simply stopped coming. They'd be routed further south,
Speaker 1: many of them to Oakland, or so you'd heard. The
Speaker 1: logistics lines were collapsing faster than anyone could piece them
Speaker 1: back together. What the long term consequences would be no
Speaker 1: one knew, but something was going to have to change.
Speaker 1: The calls to start engaging in piracy were only half
Speaker 1: oaks now. A week later, an answer of sorts arrived.
Speaker 1: It wasn't precisely what anyone had been expecting. You'd heard
Speaker 1: about negotiations between workers councils, shipping companies, and a couple
Speaker 1: of governments to try to prevent a bloodbath. The docks
Speaker 1: with the porter to Seattle already at a commission. No
Speaker 1: one could afford another stoppage. You hadn't really been sure
Speaker 1: what to make of it, but the representatives were here now.
Speaker 1: What they proposed in front of the largest assembly you'd
Speaker 1: ever seen was a kind of under the table deal.
Speaker 1: In essence, the port workers would go back to work
Speaker 1: in both Oakland at Seattle in exchange for seeding part
Speaker 1: of Oakland itself to a newly formed federation. No one
Speaker 1: was sure how any of this was actually supposed to work,
Speaker 1: but it was the first chance you'd seen in months
Speaker 1: to start solving the supply problem. That didn't mean everyone
Speaker 1: else would agree to it. Democracy is still democracy, after all,
Speaker 1: But maybe, just maybe, with a toe hold in Oakland's,
Speaker 1: the Council's would start to spread, and that so called
Speaker 1: government in California was looking shakier every day. Who knew,
Speaker 1: maybe next time you wouldn't be negotiating at all. In
Speaker 1: March of two thousand four, American occupation forces in a
Speaker 1: Rock attempted to shut down the newspaper of a Shiite
Speaker 1: cleric named mata El Solder. The Americans had expected Solder
Speaker 1: to simply fold under the weight of the coalition's pressure. Instead,
Speaker 1: they triggered mass protest that quickly turned into an armed uprising.
Speaker 1: This was a new force in Iraq. The American occupation force,
Speaker 1: whopenakes affecting to be fighting al Qaeda, and maybe the
Speaker 1: rump of the remaining Baptists were stunned to suddenly be
Speaker 1: facing a working class uprising among a Rock she At population.
Speaker 1: This new body Army, as it began to call itself,
Speaker 1: was extremely well organized and were initially able to route
Speaker 1: coalition forces. So what was this body army that had
Speaker 1: so thoroughly rewritten the rules of Rock? Shortly after the
Speaker 1: U S deposted on Musse in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Bootato Sauder, the son of another famous Rocky sh At
Speaker 1: religious figure. Both Sauders had been famous for this support
Speaker 1: and care for the poor. So when Sauder returned to
Speaker 1: a Rock, he began to build a political base among
Speaker 1: the Rocks working class, particularly in Solder City, a working
Speaker 1: class suburb of Baghdad. He used his organization to redistribute wealth,
Speaker 1: providing form of welfare states in an almost completely shattered country,
Speaker 1: but are In his allies also began to set up
Speaker 1: a network of freak clinics for pregnant and nursing mothers.
Speaker 1: They used these clinics, which were enormously popular to build
Speaker 1: a base of support. It is, after all, extremely difficult,
Speaker 1: no matter what your ideological or political disagreements with the group,
Speaker 1: to attack them when they're running free clinics for pregnant mothers.
Speaker 1: They protected these clinics with militias, which allowed them to
Speaker 1: transform the community organizations and good will that they had
Speaker 1: gained from the clinic into the military power necessary for
Speaker 1: self governance and eventually for resistance against the American occupation.
Speaker 1: Strategy proved enormously successful. Matadoro Sauder is still today one
Speaker 1: of the most important political figures in Iraq, despite sustained
Speaker 1: Coalition and Occupation Force attempts to stamp them out. But
Speaker 1: for all their working class support, the Solderists for by
Speaker 1: no means leftists. In late twenty nineteen, massive anti austerity,
Speaker 1: anti imperialists, and anti sectarian protests erupted in Iraq as
Speaker 1: a reaction to the murderous incompetence of the Iraqi government, who,
Speaker 1: among other crimes, managed to poison a hundred and eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand people in Oza through the mismanagement and subsequent contamination
Speaker 1: of the water supply. Also are initially backed the protest
Speaker 1: but turned on them in early at which point Souterist
Speaker 1: the militias begin to carry out a brutal campaign of
Speaker 1: repression against the protest camps that culminated in outrent massacres
Speaker 1: of protesters. These massacres became semi regular features of Soterist
Speaker 1: mass mobilizations, and alongside state and paramilitary disappearances of activists,
Speaker 1: the attacks essentially crushed the uprising. The violent homophobia and
Speaker 1: sexism of the Soderists may see met odds with their
Speaker 1: anti imperialism and concern for the poor, but right wing
Speaker 1: organizations have often adapted specific policies, positions, and organizational structures
Speaker 1: from the left, and in this case the Soderus moobilizations
Speaker 1: have been extremely effective. Indeed, writing organizations are often more
Speaker 1: effective at utilizing dual power tactics and organizations and leftist movements.
Speaker 1: This is partly because of a fundamental asymmetry between the
Speaker 1: right and the left. Right wing organizations can almost always
Speaker 1: depend on financial support from wealthy political backers, who, when
Speaker 1: push comes to shove, can simply create a movement with
Speaker 1: pure money, as the Cokes did to create the Tea Party.
Speaker 1: Leftists the ravings of right wing conspiracy theorists, notwithstanding, have
Speaker 1: no such backers. This funding and support can go a
Speaker 1: long way towards explaining the success of groups like Hezbollah.
Speaker 1: It is certainly true that without Iranian support, Hezbollah would
Speaker 1: not be the movement that it is today, but a
Speaker 1: great deal of their success is simply attributable to the
Speaker 1: tactics themselves. This does not escaped the notice of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Joint Special Operations Universities. Major James Love wrote a
Speaker 1: monograph entitled Hesbllah Social Services a Source of Power. In it,
Speaker 1: he writes, the most important branch of the Hezbillah organization
Speaker 1: is a social service section, which can be demonstrated by
Speaker 1: the allocation of an estimated fifty percent of Hesblah's two
Speaker 1: thousands seven budget will service efforts. It is through the
Speaker 1: work of the social service section that all party activities
Speaker 1: are possible. Hesbalah Social Service Section was designed to influence
Speaker 1: all aspects of Lebanzia society. The original intent of providing
Speaker 1: needed services to an oppressed people appears to have been
Speaker 1: manipulated by Hesbillah as a vehicle to bolster its ranks
Speaker 1: provide a humanitarian shield to the organization. Increased influence within
Speaker 1: the Lebanese government and combat at Shia arrival on Ball.
Speaker 1: The Social Service Section serves as an equal arm within
Speaker 1: the organization and is used as much as the military
Speaker 1: and political wing in terms of leverage. Hesbillah's Deputy Secretary
Speaker 1: General describes the purpose and intent of the Social Service
Speaker 1: Section and the following passage. Hesbalah paid particular attention to
Speaker 1: social work. Not one aspect of aiding the poor was neglected.
Speaker 1: As the party work towards achieving joint social responsibility, answering
Speaker 1: their urgent needs and introducing beneficial programs. Such work was
Speaker 1: simply considered party due d and concentrated effort towards raising
Speaker 1: funds and making available social service resources served. Towards achieving
Speaker 1: these goals. The party worked the best of its capacities,
Speaker 1: cooperating with official institutions to respond societal needs. Has Blah's
Speaker 1: provided medical aid, reconstruction assistance, education programs, and particularly programs
Speaker 1: that take care of patrons and widows, which have served
Speaker 1: to solidify their base. These organizations were critical to has
Speaker 1: Belah's meteoric rise from a political nonentity to arguably the
Speaker 1: most powerful factated side of Lebanese politics. Has Bela's state
Speaker 1: within a state, as it's become known, it's capable of
Speaker 1: even resisting the Israeli Army. Major Love's frustration with the
Speaker 1: inability of the American army to either deny has Belah's
Speaker 1: own aid efforts to replicate them in a way that
Speaker 1: could strengthen American power are testaments the effectiveness of such
Speaker 1: a technique and the dangers they posed to the American
Speaker 1: imperial and state project. One of those Love's major concerns
Speaker 1: is that American aid programs are simply caught up in takes.
Speaker 1: They're unable to respond as fast as community led efforts,
Speaker 1: which means that those efforts will get off the ground faster,
Speaker 1: get to the scene faster, and thus route the political benefits.
Speaker 1: When the state is unwilling or unable to provide services,
Speaker 1: especially in the wake of disasters, it leaves a power
Speaker 1: vacuum for organizations to exploit. May not have heard of
Speaker 1: the RSS before. It's a paramilitary group affiliated with India's
Speaker 1: ruling party, the b j P Council. Among its members
Speaker 1: India's Prime Minister Modi. It's also probably the world's largest
Speaker 1: fascist organization. The RSS was founded in a group nominally
Speaker 1: dedicated to protecting and promoting Hindu interests. What this means
Speaker 1: in practice is that the RSS is dedicated to creating
Speaker 1: a Hindu state and maintains and promotes a violent hatred
Speaker 1: of Muslims. The results in RSS members being at the
Speaker 1: forefront of anti Muslim programs. The r s s IS
Speaker 1: pre World War Two leaders were open admirers of Hitler
Speaker 1: and Mussolini, and while they eventually rely abandoned those positions
Speaker 1: at the start of World War Two, the rss is
Speaker 1: politics have remained thoroughly fascist in the intense communal rioting
Speaker 1: that both preceded and followed the partition of India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: After independence, which saw mass population transfers of Hindus and
Speaker 1: Muslims and the death of somewhere between two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: and two million people, the RSS established itself as a
Speaker 1: protector of Hindi refugees against Muslim violence, provided protection and
Speaker 1: aid to those trying to survive the chaos the Good
Speaker 1: World has generated, however, collapse after a former RSS member
Speaker 1: did the single most famous thing anyone associated with the
Speaker 1: RSS has ever done, assassinated Gandhi. The RSS was almost
Speaker 1: immediately banned, but in light of the terrible pr you
Speaker 1: get when you're associated with killing Gandhi, the RSS became
Speaker 1: increasingly involved with disaster relief over half a century of
Speaker 1: painstaking organizing, It created schools and youth programs to spread
Speaker 1: its influence and use them to fuel further anti Muslim violence.
Speaker 1: In two thousand one, the organization gained national acclaim for
Speaker 1: its response to a massive earthquake and Gunjarat. The RSS
Speaker 1: heavily emphasized the non discriminatory nature of their aid work
Speaker 1: in their propaganda, but in reality, many of the villages
Speaker 1: the RS s had rebuilt after the devastation had been
Speaker 1: transformed into miniature versions at the fabled Hindu state that
Speaker 1: the RSS seeks to impose on all of India. Strategically,
Speaker 1: this should look familiar to us now. It's essentially a
Speaker 1: fascist form of prefigurative politics. The RSS used an earthquake
Speaker 1: to build the structure of the new Hindu society in
Speaker 1: the shell of the old. The BJPS dominance over Indian
Speaker 1: politics while led by a member of the RSS, and
Speaker 1: the brutal crackdowns body carried out in Kashmir, our bloody
Speaker 1: testament to the success of their strategy. Christian fundamentalist organizations
Speaker 1: have also been extremely effective and utilizing their own form
Speaker 1: of routing profigurative politics the in a somewhat different way.
Speaker 1: In the RSS, their new world is defined above all
Speaker 1: by theocratic patriarchal authoritarianism. Like the radicals that occupy, the
Speaker 1: religious right was operating off of a form of contagion theory,
Speaker 1: theory that exposure to their social organizations and forms would
Speaker 1: essentially be contagious and spread, but the Christian rights preferred
Speaker 1: form as the patriarchal family, which serves as a microcosm
Speaker 1: of the kind of hierarchy and patriarchal violence that dominate
Speaker 1: their long dreamed of theocratic society. The Christian Right would
Speaker 1: instill these values into their children and send them off
Speaker 1: into the world to propagate their ideology. Ettinger, an expert
Speaker 1: on the Christian Right, wrote this about the second phase
Speaker 1: of the strategy. In several church leaders came up with
Speaker 1: a new approach, identifying seven spheres of culture to focus
Speaker 1: on one after another to try to bring about the
Speaker 1: lasting change and have a significant impact on the superstructure
Speaker 1: of American culture. Lauren kind Ingham, founder of Youth with
Speaker 1: the Mission, a Christian Missionary Group coordinating International and National
Speaker 1: mission Church for Young Christians describes these seven areas as such,
Speaker 1: these are the areas you can go on as missionaries.
Speaker 1: Here they are. First, it's the institution set up by God.
Speaker 1: First the family. After the family was the church or
Speaker 1: the people of God. The third was the area of
Speaker 1: school or education. The fourth was media public communication in
Speaker 1: all forms printed in electronic. The fifth was what I
Speaker 1: call celebration, the arts, entertainment, sports, where you celebrate within
Speaker 1: a culture. The six would be the whole area of
Speaker 1: the economy, which starts with innovation and science and technology, productivity,
Speaker 1: sales and service. The whole area we often call it business,
Speaker 1: but we leave out something. We leave up the scientific
Speaker 1: part which actually raises the wealth of the world. Anything
Speaker 1: new like making sand and chips for a microchip that
Speaker 1: increases wealth in the world. And then of course prediction,
Speaker 1: sales and service helps to spread the wealth. And so
Speaker 1: the last area was the area of government. This is
Speaker 1: a need encapsulation of the rights. Refigurative politics start first
Speaker 1: with the family, and then with the church, then reshaped
Speaker 1: school and education and mass media in their image, and
Speaker 1: from there you can begin to take the entire economy.
Speaker 1: Churches have also long used aid programs to proselytize and
Speaker 1: also expand their control over the population which becomes dependent
Speaker 1: on their aid. And the places where the left has
Speaker 1: failed to provide for their community, the far right has
Speaker 1: stepped in and has been able to rapidly and effectively
Speaker 1: reshape the political landscape. This does not mean, however, that
Speaker 1: they can't be beaten. Cooperation Jackson has offered one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful visions of dual power in the modern US.
Speaker 1: A product of the New African People's Organization and the
Speaker 1: malk of ex grassroots movements, Jackson Cush Plan. Cooperation Jackson
Speaker 1: has put forward a radical and democratic bottle of dual
Speaker 1: power with the aim of turning over control of the
Speaker 1: land and the means of production into Jackson's black working
Speaker 1: class and allowing it to achieve its own self determination.
Speaker 1: Cooperation Jackson has form mutual Aid Networks, started an incubated
Speaker 1: program to help workers cooperatives get off the ground, and
Speaker 1: formed a community land trust that purchases abandoned buildings in
Speaker 1: Jackson it turns them over to the community. They've also
Speaker 1: somewhat unusually wound up engaged in the electoral process. After
Speaker 1: the untimely death of Ally and Jackson Mayor Choqua la Boomba,
Speaker 1: which led to the election of his son, Choqua at
Speaker 1: La Bomba. This placed the movement in a somewhat awkward
Speaker 1: position of having allies, even if constrained by the realities
Speaker 1: of state power in the state itself. But politics in
Speaker 1: the real world is never as clean as the models
Speaker 1: we create to describe it. It is only in our
Speaker 1: ability to adapt the changing conditions of struggle while maintaining
Speaker 1: a political principles that we can build the new world
Speaker 1: in the shell of the old, and we can build it.
Speaker 1: The question simply, will we When P. T. Barnum's Great
Speaker 1: American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: what rose from its ashes would change the world? Welcome
Speaker 1: to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange,
Speaker 1: the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season will
Speaker 1: be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex
Speaker 1: and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Side Show.
Speaker 1: So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of
Speaker 1: the stage and learn about the people who were at
Speaker 1: the center of it. All in a place where spectacle
Speaker 1: was king. We will soon discover there's always more to
Speaker 1: the story than meets the eye. So step right up
Speaker 1: and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mile Presents
Speaker 1: now on the I Heart ratei you app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild dot com Slash Presents. I'm Ev Rodsky,
Speaker 1: author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
Speaker 1: Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
Speaker 1: attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr Aditya Rucar, a
Speaker 1: Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise and the
Speaker 1: science of stress, resilience, mental health and burnout. We're so
Speaker 1: excited to share our podcast Time Out, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Podcasts and Hell of Sunshine. We're uncovering why
Speaker 1: society makes it so hard for women to treat their
Speaker 1: time with the value it deserves. So take this time
Speaker 1: out with us. Listen to Time Out, a fair Play
Speaker 1: podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Well, that wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, host of the podcast You're listening to
Speaker 1: and ashamed of, probably because that was Jesus Christ. Garrison,
Speaker 1: come in here, fix this, Fix this Garrison. Um, this
Speaker 1: is it could happen here a podcast about the fact
Speaker 1: that the world was folding apart, as embodied by me
Speaker 1: falling apart when I try to introduce the show, see
Speaker 1: I tied it in. Yeah, A good job, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Well it is it is. It has to rhyme.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like the Star Wars movies. That's our
Speaker 1: guest today is Melissa A. Sidera founder and director of
Speaker 1: Polo's Pantry, a mutual aid food distribution project in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: A Melissa, thank you for coming on and talking to us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. I apologize for the introduction, but I honestly
Speaker 1: it's better. It was better than I usually do, so
Speaker 1: if you can back that up. Okay. So I'm an
Speaker 1: l A native, and um I've been doing community organizing
Speaker 1: for probably like close to a decade, doing a lot
Speaker 1: of community work for a lot of time, and a
Speaker 1: few years before the pandemic, actually, I started to organize
Speaker 1: with a lot of grassroots organizations in l A working
Speaker 1: with a lot of house less folks UM all over
Speaker 1: l A, and kind of clock pretty early that a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of groups were
Speaker 1: burning through their budgets spending it on food. And so
Speaker 1: since I worked in kind of the food industry, I
Speaker 1: started to kind of poke around and figure out that
Speaker 1: we could get a lot of these things donated to
Speaker 1: us UM and pretty much started building a roster like building,
Speaker 1: kind of like a rolodex of UM other organizations and
Speaker 1: snow profits, UM food banks that we could rely on.
Speaker 1: So almost kind of created sort of like an altera
Speaker 1: system UM for these groups who are working with houseless
Speaker 1: folks to get food every week. UM. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to make a steady and
Speaker 1: the reliable system so that our own house neighbors would
Speaker 1: get food and that organizers across l A wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. And so that's pretty much how
Speaker 1: POLO started officially started in two thousand eighteen. I was
Speaker 1: organizing with a group called Katon for All and UH,
Speaker 1: they do a lot of political advocacy and mostly rooted
Speaker 1: in like UM kind of you know, human rights for
Speaker 1: our houses neighbors. If you don't know Katon for all,
Speaker 1: look them up. They're awesome, follow them fantastic. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, I actually was because I was already doing
Speaker 1: a lot of mutual aid where in skid Row around
Speaker 1: that time and really kind of felt at some point,
Speaker 1: um that you know, like, yes, it was great that
Speaker 1: I was going out there with teams getting hot meals
Speaker 1: out and hot beverages whatever people needed to people, but
Speaker 1: I just was so down on what in the conditions,
Speaker 1: seeing all the conditions that they were living in, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to meet other activists and other folks
Speaker 1: um who could really figure out how you connect people
Speaker 1: to services and and just really you know, anyone working
Speaker 1: in policy. That's so that's really changing things for people
Speaker 1: out there. And so I wanted to take sort of
Speaker 1: my advocacy and like my work a step further and
Speaker 1: connected with activists all the rail day. And so that's
Speaker 1: sort of like my organ is really rooted in a
Speaker 1: lot of activism and organizing. So I see I see
Speaker 1: a lot of I'm not sort of your standard kind
Speaker 1: of order nonprofit. I really see things in the lens
Speaker 1: when as a community organizer. And so that's why our
Speaker 1: um our work is pretty much exploded during COVID. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of interested for for starters because you're you're, you know,
Speaker 1: this is um a mutual aid project as opposed to
Speaker 1: kind of a charity project, and what do you what
Speaker 1: do you see as being the dividing line there? Well,
Speaker 1: for you know, for a lot of for us, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very easy for for folks to kind of see
Speaker 1: the work that we do as part of the kind
Speaker 1: of charitable food system because obviously we're you know, UM
Speaker 1: mutual aid. It's the difference really is that obviously, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, there there's a there is a reciprocity between
Speaker 1: the two of you, UM, between between neighborhoods, between individuals,
Speaker 1: between organizations of sharing resources with each other UM and
Speaker 1: charitable obviously is that there's only one way, right, there's
Speaker 1: only like one person giving. But for us, UM, the
Speaker 1: way we picked our part nerves. I mean, you're you're
Speaker 1: ready part of this nucleus of kind of a coalition
Speaker 1: of ors doing this work. So it was just ready
Speaker 1: very easy for us to kind of share resources with
Speaker 1: each other. So I was doing food and some folks
Speaker 1: were doing hygiene kits. Other folks were doing tents, other
Speaker 1: folks were doing types or whatever, and so there was
Speaker 1: so much you know, kind of mutualid and activity going on.
Speaker 1: And so that that's why we're we're really kind of
Speaker 1: rooted in that COUM in that thinking as far as
Speaker 1: as opposed to charitable orgs that basically just set up
Speaker 1: somewhere and give, you know, give give stuff out to people.
Speaker 1: And so we have look in part and part of
Speaker 1: my advisory circle are a lot of houseless neighbors UM
Speaker 1: houses leaders in our community. UM. I also take a
Speaker 1: lot of advice from UM Indigenous organizers UM black community
Speaker 1: leaders in different neighborhoods that work in. So our work
Speaker 1: is really informed by the community. And so we basically
Speaker 1: asked we to, hey, you know, like what can we
Speaker 1: do UM and plug into to work that UM that
Speaker 1: already exists in those in those areas. I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope that means sense. But that's kind of how I
Speaker 1: feel about what we do and and as an as
Speaker 1: an organizer, because I think we get a lot of
Speaker 1: questions from people who are interested in starting mutual aid
Speaker 1: projects in their own areas. And one of the questions
Speaker 1: we often have it's like, well, how do I how
Speaker 1: do I do that? Right? UM? And yeah, I'm interested
Speaker 1: in like like if you could kind of walk us
Speaker 1: through the steps when when Polo's pantry got started, Like
Speaker 1: what is what was the kind of order of operations
Speaker 1: that you had to go through to get this this
Speaker 1: up and running. I think the first thing to do
Speaker 1: is really too for me, it was already kind of
Speaker 1: being part of grassroots UM or so I was part
Speaker 1: of a few of them, UM and so it's really
Speaker 1: important to UM to kind of identify the needs of
Speaker 1: a community first before setting up your ORC. So I
Speaker 1: feel like I already had an idea of you know,
Speaker 1: of of what certain orcs needed, UM which areas how
Speaker 1: many and so kind of identifying the needs first kind
Speaker 1: of UM number one and and and to do that
Speaker 1: you really have to connect with the grassroots organizations, local
Speaker 1: ones in your area. So you know, I recommend really
Speaker 1: just kind of doing researchers. Always folks doing that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff all over. If you're into political advocacy, there's
Speaker 1: folks that do that. There are folks who are more
Speaker 1: food justice oriented, Like I would recommend going to a
Speaker 1: local food bank or soup kitchens to have also like
Speaker 1: I've been doing that for years, and I've met a
Speaker 1: lot of people with kind of similar values mine UM.
Speaker 1: So just kind of pretty much identify one what you'd
Speaker 1: like to do, what you're good at UM, and then
Speaker 1: essentially research UM, you know, kind of opportunities to tap
Speaker 1: into a local organ doing that work, and then essentially
Speaker 1: start organizing with them. Right. I don't I don't recommend
Speaker 1: to build, like to build an organ prior to not
Speaker 1: having this kind of knowledge, because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: really crucial to sort of kind of map out first
Speaker 1: what the community needs instead of you building mutual aid
Speaker 1: organization based on you know whatever, Because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's it's important to work through things from the ground
Speaker 1: up UM. That way, you feel like the work is impactful.
Speaker 1: That way, the community is leading and informing your work.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of like how I I
Speaker 1: approached the line. So look for a local organ so
Speaker 1: kind of sit in organizing for a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then from there once he once you guys identify what
Speaker 1: it is UM and start to kind of have an
Speaker 1: idea of the demand or the need in that area,
Speaker 1: then start to reach out to say for me for
Speaker 1: for food. A lot of local. Um, local chains will well,
Speaker 1: well pretty much if you if you tell them what
Speaker 1: you're doing, um, a lot of them will support you.
Speaker 1: So I actually have I started with just going literally
Speaker 1: to my local Ralphs and telling the manager. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm doing. I'm starting this or you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't Ralph's being a local grocery store in Likes Angeles,
Speaker 1: Harry or a lot of I didn't know what Ralph's
Speaker 1: was before I moved to l A. So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be like, she's not just like rolling over
Speaker 1: to where buddy Ralph's house, like, guess you've got some food? Yeah? Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that Ralph's out here in l A. So most
Speaker 1: places yeah yeah yeah and will more folks said not
Speaker 1: everyone is down for that kind of stuff, but somehow
Speaker 1: you'll you'll really end up on one that's really you know,
Speaker 1: that is really unkind. I think most folks have to
Speaker 1: realize that this this this kind of work is not
Speaker 1: it didn't happen overnight like building like building uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like a reliable network of people to donate to you is.
Speaker 1: It takes time. So but I think if if you
Speaker 1: hit kind of larger chains, you will get UM. You know,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll you'll get you'll start to get a steady
Speaker 1: supply from them. Do you have any kind of advice
Speaker 1: for UM, when you're actually approaching you know, manager at
Speaker 1: Ralphs or something somebody actually who works for Like, what
Speaker 1: do you have like I don't know, like a script,
Speaker 1: but kind of a rough guy to like here's how
Speaker 1: I try to start these conversations here. Some ways I
Speaker 1: try to phrase for things because that could be useful
Speaker 1: for folks. You know, I actually have like a form
Speaker 1: letters that I could share later. Maybe you can show, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be great, UM that you know that they
Speaker 1: can use to UM you know, if they're if they're
Speaker 1: going to UM solicit folks with that stuff. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of mutual aid organizations to have that
Speaker 1: kind of UM kind of literature, that kind of form
Speaker 1: so UM, I think just basically kind of letting them
Speaker 1: know who you are, who you're serving, UM, how often
Speaker 1: which demographic is going to that's usually really important. UM.
Speaker 1: What what helped me though, was I was as I
Speaker 1: started to get more serious about about doing the food work,
Speaker 1: I connected to you know, some some community partners and
Speaker 1: I actually UM turned Polos into a fiscally sponsored organ
Speaker 1: so we moved from being just fully grassroots to being
Speaker 1: physically sponsored. That basically means we're operating under the five
Speaker 1: O one C three number of another organization, of a
Speaker 1: larger organization. So that that was that open, so so
Speaker 1: many opportunities for us. It really allowed us to be
Speaker 1: able to access larger amounts of food and really help
Speaker 1: out a lot of a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: smaller organs. I needed to get their food programs off
Speaker 1: the ground and so UM that is something I recommend
Speaker 1: if you're if people are serious about it, to define
Speaker 1: a community of community partner who who isn't established five
Speaker 1: one C three that they trust UM to see if
Speaker 1: they if they you know, if they can sign on
Speaker 1: to to be a physical sponsor UM. That I think
Speaker 1: is one of the quickest ways to be able to
Speaker 1: UM to really kind of establish yourself as as far
Speaker 1: as getting larger amounts of food. But then and by that,
Speaker 1: I mean getting pallets of food, not just cases, but
Speaker 1: literally pallets of food delivered to wherever you are. As
Speaker 1: soon as we did that, that completely changed the game UM.
Speaker 1: And and I think I did that because I knew
Speaker 1: I had so many friends who were doing mutual aid
Speaker 1: that needed so you know, just so much stuff from
Speaker 1: from groceries to um, you know, fresh produce, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't and it wasn't you know, it didn't stop in food.
Speaker 1: We were getting you know, hand sanitizer, we were getting tense,
Speaker 1: we were getting all sorts of stuff, know and so um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what I recommend for folks were serious
Speaker 1: about food is to really again start to build a
Speaker 1: relationship with local businesses, um that they that they like
Speaker 1: food businesses, and really telling people this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: If you're if you know, if you're if you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you are what support us, you know, like this
Speaker 1: is um, you know, these are these are the days
Speaker 1: that we need food or whatever, or these are the
Speaker 1: times that we'll need food and just let them know
Speaker 1: that you know, you're you're happy to pick it up
Speaker 1: or that you're happy to because there's there's I think
Speaker 1: at least for California, we're starting to change law like
Speaker 1: policy and law behind food waste, and so I think, um,
Speaker 1: something's going to change in the January of two where
Speaker 1: a lot of food waste basically going to decrease because
Speaker 1: it's gonna be much more difficult. The city is gonna
Speaker 1: make it much more difficult for for businesses to just
Speaker 1: carry this stuff. Um they're they're really pushing them to
Speaker 1: uh um to separate them. But anyway, regardless, you're helping
Speaker 1: the business really um move, you know, move food waste,
Speaker 1: and and most of them, and a lot of employees
Speaker 1: too that I've talked to UM just you know, just
Speaker 1: our heartbreak and every time they have to clear out
Speaker 1: you know, a full full tray or just trays and
Speaker 1: trays of of of of you know, of a perfectly
Speaker 1: fine food. So yeah, there's there's a video going viral
Speaker 1: on Twitter right now of of like someone working at
Speaker 1: Dunking Donuts and just like dumping just like hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of donuts into the garbage and then and that happens.
Speaker 1: That happens every single day. You know. I have I
Speaker 1: have friends who used to work on Whole Foods and
Speaker 1: they would tell me just just how heartbreaking it was,
Speaker 1: just the amount, just the massive amount of who that's
Speaker 1: being wasted out. Yeah, it's evil, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's a thing in the more
Speaker 1: difficult days ahead, as you know, things like well like
Speaker 1: we under in a lot of areas, like the crop
Speaker 1: was half of what it normally is this year. That's
Speaker 1: going to continue. One day we will look at videos
Speaker 1: of Duncan Donuts dropping an entire day's worth of donuts
Speaker 1: into the trash and use it as a pretext to
Speaker 1: bring executives to trial. And it's going to be like
Speaker 1: like like a war crime. Yeah is I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean honestly though, as someone in food um um, you know,
Speaker 1: like the food system is changing massively in so many ways.
Speaker 1: I feel like the one kind of good thing that
Speaker 1: happened in the pandemic is that lawmakers were able to
Speaker 1: identify that the white snap or orm cal Fresh pretty
Speaker 1: much food stamps were not enough really to um, you know,
Speaker 1: to feed families a few people. It's not nearly enough though,
Speaker 1: but at least it kind of pushes the needles where
Speaker 1: we need where we needed to go. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think I think, having having been so focused and so
Speaker 1: like in the center of mutual aid work in l A,
Speaker 1: I'm able to kind of broadly tell you know, tell
Speaker 1: um really tell lawmakers too that hey, you know, there's
Speaker 1: so much um, there's so much meat out there, but
Speaker 1: the community themselves have built alternate food systems to be
Speaker 1: able to care for themselves. I feel like my hope
Speaker 1: really is to be able to to kind of hyperlocalize
Speaker 1: our food systems that way. Neighborhoods and really like communities
Speaker 1: are are essentially dictating their own you know, their own needs.
Speaker 1: They're they're basically bringing in the resources that they want.
Speaker 1: They're bringing in the kind of food that they want,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, and really just working towards the
Speaker 1: real kind of food food sovereignty where people are able
Speaker 1: to to get the resources themselves. And and for me,
Speaker 1: I feel like mutual aid scares a lot of people
Speaker 1: because again it really is the sort of like, um,
Speaker 1: the reason why we were able to a lot of
Speaker 1: communities were able to to survive COVID. You know, we're
Speaker 1: still doing it and it still ours so deep in
Speaker 1: it and and even like I try to tell students
Speaker 1: to and like, you know, um, mutual aid isn't just
Speaker 1: food or whatever. It's also like say your dad is
Speaker 1: a pickup truck and your neighbor needs to move, I
Speaker 1: don't know their dining room table across town like that
Speaker 1: is a form of mutual aid UM or Like there's
Speaker 1: there's so many things that especially a lot of immigrant
Speaker 1: communities that I that I work with. This this form
Speaker 1: of care, community care, you know, has existed forever, and
Speaker 1: it's just somehow elevated itself during the pandemic because, as
Speaker 1: we know, the safety net just wasn't enough. It didn't
Speaker 1: it didn't it really didn't help me, you know, it
Speaker 1: didn't really help a lot of communities, and so this
Speaker 1: system essentially kept people afloat. And now we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to really create better ways to sustain
Speaker 1: it and to really create better ways to get the
Speaker 1: resources directly to communities that need them. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I'm adam. I'm working with other folks trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to how to keep the sustainable
Speaker 1: and really have more agency over what kind of food
Speaker 1: and what kind of aid you want. How have people
Speaker 1: that have been needing to access the mutual aiding the food,
Speaker 1: how have they been learning about your organization? UM I
Speaker 1: think honestly, all this stuff really happened by word of mouth.
Speaker 1: I think because I was I was already part of
Speaker 1: this huge coalition UM that's part of the Sophie knows that.
Speaker 1: For all, there's a group called street Watch, there's a
Speaker 1: group called Old Crowd Game, there's a group called like
Speaker 1: There's there's all these different folks that basically are in
Speaker 1: our wide coalition. I haven't had to really advertise much
Speaker 1: like people just sort of like just kept telling others like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, like Melissa Polos and her team were doing
Speaker 1: this and um Also as a COVID response, I created
Speaker 1: another um um uh like COVID initiative called Homemade Meals
Speaker 1: and and that is the partnership with another organization called YIS.
Speaker 1: And so as of today, I think we're close to
Speaker 1: seventy meals UM that's all community lad. Yes, so we
Speaker 1: so we the smart of UM. We essentially created a
Speaker 1: system where we uh we work with people who are
Speaker 1: who are cooking homade meals in their homes and connecting
Speaker 1: them to drivers. And so we have about six different
Speaker 1: um OR partners, so one of them is always it's
Speaker 1: the same people, Kaytown, street Watch, Covenant House. They work
Speaker 1: a lot with Homeless Youth um L a can or
Speaker 1: in skid Row UM and a bunch of other mutual
Speaker 1: aid groups in different areas of l A, so I
Speaker 1: recognize UM. At the beginning of COVID, a lot of
Speaker 1: my houseless neighbors were telling us that they were scared,
Speaker 1: like because a lot of a lot of businesses were closing,
Speaker 1: a lot of corner stores, restaurants, UM that the food
Speaker 1: access completely shut off for them during at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I started to freak out. I was like, how
Speaker 1: we're going to get food to people? And so UM
Speaker 1: some friends who run UM basically they were kind of
Speaker 1: like a youth kind of youth focus or UM wanted
Speaker 1: to activate their you know, activate their community. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: how can you help? What can we do? So we
Speaker 1: created this program basically that you know, figure out like, okay,
Speaker 1: well a lot of people want to have volunteer, but
Speaker 1: they can't leave home, So why don't they cooked meals
Speaker 1: at home? And then we'll just pair him with drivers
Speaker 1: we could pick it up safely, and so we just
Speaker 1: start doing that. We created this system too, and and
Speaker 1: I think we honestly, I thought we were just gonna
Speaker 1: do it for two months, but now we're what like,
Speaker 1: in nineteen months later, seventy five thousand meals, over a
Speaker 1: thousand volunteers, like it's been wild. Actually, Jamie friend dog
Speaker 1: experts she would be angry if we didn't state that.
Speaker 1: So Jamie, UM, Jamie actually is UM. It's one of
Speaker 1: our o G like like cooks, Like she started with
Speaker 1: home and made meals from the very beginning. UM, she's
Speaker 1: kind of one of our That's kind of how we
Speaker 1: know her. UM. It's because she found she found that
Speaker 1: program UM. And it's been a while, it's been it's
Speaker 1: been so amazing to to really activate so many people
Speaker 1: across l A to cook for our houses neighbors. And
Speaker 1: so I haven't even fully digested our our team hasn't
Speaker 1: even full digested that the real impact of that. But
Speaker 1: it's been seven five thousand meals UM made by the
Speaker 1: community for our for our houses neighbors. So so so
Speaker 1: that's yeah, so that I don't know, like I feel
Speaker 1: like and I truly believe they're just so much just
Speaker 1: so much power and the people and really trying to
Speaker 1: figure out ways to continue to you know, to create
Speaker 1: UM better systems where where we can redirect those resources
Speaker 1: you know, UM to us to us and UM you
Speaker 1: know like really kind kind of break down these systems
Speaker 1: where you know, because because even people were telling me,
Speaker 1: like folks who are like, you know, these sort of
Speaker 1: big institutions for institutions have been around for decades or
Speaker 1: even folks UM from like yeah, from like running food
Speaker 1: dogs since the eighties were like, you know, how are
Speaker 1: you able to move so fast? I'm like, that's mutual aid.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's mutual aid. Then our ability to not
Speaker 1: have to run through so much bureaucratic crap and red
Speaker 1: tape is a reason why we were able to, you know,
Speaker 1: to to to create such huge impact because people believed
Speaker 1: in what we did and you know, and helped support us,
Speaker 1: funded us UM and we essentially just you know, just
Speaker 1: hit the ground running. We're able to figure out what
Speaker 1: people needed on the ground and just just got it
Speaker 1: to them. That's what that's it, you know, and we'll
Speaker 1: figure out. If we don't have it, we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: you know, we'll ask around for folks who have it,
Speaker 1: Like like UM, there's a group called SILA there. It's
Speaker 1: silver like UM and my friend Cat who's one of
Speaker 1: the co founders. She they also worked with with UM
Speaker 1: with Houseless Folks and they do uh incredible work, like
Speaker 1: you know, providing showers, providing hot meals, providing reference services
Speaker 1: for folks. Um she she was great, I getting hygiene kids,
Speaker 1: and so that's that was started me to wild between
Speaker 1: each other. Like she needed hot meals, so I gave
Speaker 1: that to her on Saturdays, and then I needed like
Speaker 1: hygiene kids, and so that's kind of like the basis, yeah, correctly,
Speaker 1: like I literally will give her two hundred meals, She'll
Speaker 1: give me two hundred hygen kids. And that was like
Speaker 1: that throughout the pandemic, Like we just would share resources
Speaker 1: and people thought we were this huge org, but essentially
Speaker 1: it was just you know, literally like our friends and
Speaker 1: I talking to each other like hey, what do you
Speaker 1: have today? What do they have coming in today? And
Speaker 1: we just essentially kind of built this sort of cloud
Speaker 1: like sort of inventory. Right, so it's like Polos has
Speaker 1: a thousand meals and like Seela's got five hundred hygien kits,
Speaker 1: and like you know, street Watch as like fifteen tents
Speaker 1: and like a hundred tarps. So it's like we all
Speaker 1: were like, hey, you know, there's there's a houseless van
Speaker 1: on the corner of like Sunset or whatever that needs
Speaker 1: like blah blah blah. And so essentially just you know,
Speaker 1: just grab and go like Poles has meals and like
Speaker 1: Streetwatch has tents, and like k Towns got like the tarps.
Speaker 1: So y'all just again beautifully just sort of started to
Speaker 1: like build this sort of sort of cloud like inventory
Speaker 1: of stuff and it just worked and it's still working
Speaker 1: so um and it's to assistant, Like is what what
Speaker 1: we're bringing up or at the beginning is talking about
Speaker 1: how consistently you're able to you're able to have done
Speaker 1: this work, which is if you're an l A resident,
Speaker 1: you know that you know the city's support is never consistent.
Speaker 1: So having that consistency is so vital. Yes, yes, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not thank you know, it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: hard work. There's so much that people don't see. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's so many, so many things that people don't see.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of organizing behind it. Just literally a
Speaker 1: lot of community building, a lot of meetings. I think
Speaker 1: that again, like the bulk of mutual aid is relationships
Speaker 1: and trust, you know, like that that's that's really it.
Speaker 1: That's how you breathe life into your system. And it's
Speaker 1: like you know, you have to have you have to
Speaker 1: continue to like nourish your relationships, you know, between yourself
Speaker 1: and other organizers, between yourself if you're running an order
Speaker 1: between yourself and another organ UM. And and really that's
Speaker 1: how we've been able to, you know, to to reach
Speaker 1: so many people is because we focused on making sure
Speaker 1: that you know, UM, it's so easy to to burn
Speaker 1: out in this work. But again, we also have to
Speaker 1: make sure that we take care of each other. UM.
Speaker 1: And we we focused on making sure that we're checking
Speaker 1: out other two and so I, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to fully explain what how do you even teach
Speaker 1: that you know, how to how to how to properly
Speaker 1: build relationships? But I feel like that's that's such a
Speaker 1: key part of creating a really robust mutual aid network. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's at least experience that you had. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: are the work that you've done, and what you've been
Speaker 1: able to accomplish is very impressive and is is something
Speaker 1: that people lot of people can aspire to. UM. Is
Speaker 1: there any like resources online that you can point to
Speaker 1: if someone's wanting to get into this type of work, UM,
Speaker 1: or any any like any kind of like advice to
Speaker 1: get started in your own city or to like look
Speaker 1: for stuff that's doing this similar that that's like, that's
Speaker 1: doing a similar thing. Um uh wow, let's see who
Speaker 1: has um gosh, that's a really really really good question. Um. Well, well,
Speaker 1: first I hope that people have read Mutual Aid by
Speaker 1: Dean Spade. Um. That's a really good book. Um. And
Speaker 1: and from there I would read I would read The
Speaker 1: Black Panthers Social Programs. I get a lot of I
Speaker 1: get a lot of my um my inspiration from there. Um.
Speaker 1: And really that's that's really those those two things to
Speaker 1: kind of start as just sort of like your um,
Speaker 1: your primers um. And then if you want to kind
Speaker 1: of get deeper into food justice. Um uh, there's a
Speaker 1: really good book I get ready years ago. It's a
Speaker 1: I think it's literally called food Justice one on one. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me see it's really called Yeah, it's call food
Speaker 1: Justice one on one. Yeah, there's there's quite a few,
Speaker 1: but but one that's one. And then there's another. There's
Speaker 1: a one book um I read called More Than Just
Speaker 1: Food um. And then and it's it's pretty by Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll give you guys my top five and that really
Speaker 1: can help sort of, um like shape my thinking or
Speaker 1: in food justice. So that's It's written by a guy
Speaker 1: named Garrett Broad and he essentially like kind of lays
Speaker 1: out sort of how the industrial food system kind of
Speaker 1: created this huge crisis that we're in and you know,
Speaker 1: like how there's there's really kind of an abundance of
Speaker 1: food everywhere, but obviously yes, exactly and so and and
Speaker 1: and it also kind of lays out how food justice
Speaker 1: activists UM who are in mostly low income communities of
Speaker 1: color help really build community based kind of solutions to
Speaker 1: these problems. And so that's really kind of where my
Speaker 1: thinking and my my lens comes from is because I
Speaker 1: am a child of l A, I'm able to understand
Speaker 1: what different neighborhoods need UM based on because I either
Speaker 1: grew up there, work there, have family there, you know,
Speaker 1: what's school there, or just have friends or other organizers
Speaker 1: who live there. And so say, if you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in Ball Heights, but I have friends
Speaker 1: who did. And so like, if I'm trying to build
Speaker 1: out a food program or mutual aid program and Ball Heights,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to just walk in there and be like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna do it at you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna take over their their their saying exactly.
Speaker 1: But I think that's one thing I think I really
Speaker 1: want to for people to really especially for for for
Speaker 1: young people who want to get to food justice, Like
Speaker 1: you really have to really honestly do your research first
Speaker 1: and let the media leaders lead, um lead lead your
Speaker 1: program with you. Right. And then there's a difference between
Speaker 1: like making community connections and then trying to take over. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a very very two very different things exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be extractive, right, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be extractive. You don't want to be coming in
Speaker 1: and you know, and and and really like you know,
Speaker 1: try to like show up with like, you know, solutions
Speaker 1: where there they weren't informed at all by the community.
Speaker 1: And I keep trying to stress that, Yeah, is there
Speaker 1: anywhere that people can support you or at least follow
Speaker 1: you online to keep up with the work. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm very active on Twitter. Um it's uh, we're at
Speaker 1: Polos pantry, so it's p O l O, s um
Speaker 1: p A and t R Y. And then I'm also
Speaker 1: tweeting as myself as an organizer. It's under m E
Speaker 1: smelling music as m E l l E music um.
Speaker 1: And that actually that handled for me everywhere like my
Speaker 1: personal so I I tweet from there a lot. I
Speaker 1: tweet a lot about food, just this work I feel,
Speaker 1: and all our all our work in l A I tweet,
Speaker 1: I retweet a lot of our movem network and coalition work.
Speaker 1: Just thank you for coming on to the show to
Speaker 1: talk about through justice and the work you've been doing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's great to hear more examples of people from around
Speaker 1: the country and then hopefully you know, around the world
Speaker 1: getting involved in in this type of work. UM. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that it wraps up us today. You can
Speaker 1: follow this show on Twitter and Instagram at happen Here
Speaker 1: pod and cool Zone Media. UM, subscribe to the feed,
Speaker 1: leave a five star review or whatever. Anyway, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the show. Bye bye, everybody, say say bye everybone
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