Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know. This is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening,
Speaker 1: good night, Hello, and welcome. So it could happen here.
Speaker 1: It is three pm in the winter, so it's all
Speaker 1: of those at once. So for here that is true.
Speaker 1: That is true. It is seven here, it's regular evening time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no winter included, you know, just rain Unhot's the two
Speaker 1: moods of the web. Yeah, which winter is it right now?
Speaker 1: Is did rain to a hot winter? Neither? There? Winters never? Well,
Speaker 1: I hope that winter never comes to the island. If
Speaker 1: it does, I think will be in some deep ship.
Speaker 1: You know. If you guys get snowing, its time frestle
Speaker 1: to reevaluate our practices when that happen. Until the absolutely
Speaker 1: that means the parrots have migrated to Alaska. Oh, God,
Speaker 1: they knew a lot of movements around the evening time,
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to pack
Speaker 1: up and leave us all behind. Well this is it
Speaker 1: could happen here as as you might be aware, a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart, and today's episode is brought
Speaker 1: to us by Andrew Hello of the YouTube channel Andrewism.
Speaker 1: Just avoid confusion with other Andrews, you know, I did
Speaker 1: not realize. Yeah, that's right, son of the Queen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you can talk about Prince Andrew. You can
Speaker 1: talk about Andrew teeth. You know, it's like distinguished myself,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, you're the best, Andrew. I appreciate that anytime, buddy.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to spend some time today tonight what
Speaker 1: is time really and to talk about the concept of
Speaker 1: d growth, you know, where it comes from, what it means,
Speaker 1: what it needs, and all that other fun stuff. Are
Speaker 1: you guys familiar with the growth US as a concept? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, I mean, and it's yeah, I
Speaker 1: I please please. I mean it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that gets a lot of like uh flak on one
Speaker 1: hand for people saying that it's basically eco fascism, and
Speaker 1: then you have folks being like, no, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a perfectly reasonable response to the kind of endless growth
Speaker 1: attitude that got us into the environmental catastrophe we're currently experiencing.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I think that Having released a video on
Speaker 1: Decruth last week and having read through some of the
Speaker 1: comments have received, um, I've come to the conclusion that's
Speaker 1: there's no getting through to some people. Yeah. People, people
Speaker 1: love to listen to like a third of what you
Speaker 1: say and then get really angry at what they think
Speaker 1: you said. Every time we talk about like the value
Speaker 1: of of things like you know, the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective,
Speaker 1: you know, hacking different medicines or training people being medics.
Speaker 1: Somebody hops on the subred and said, I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of able. Is that they think that, you know,
Speaker 1: people can replace doctors with with street medics. Like, no one,
Speaker 1: no one's ever made that case. That that's not a
Speaker 1: thing that anyone has ever said. I'm going to make
Speaker 1: it my entire life mission to only specifically make this
Speaker 1: case some gauze and water in a bag. Yeah, doctors,
Speaker 1: but they they must all die when the revolution comes.
Speaker 1: They will only be replaced the street that X, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be great. I'm texting all of this to our
Speaker 1: friends cover right now, Dr Whoda. Yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just ridiculous. So people will literally project what they think
Speaker 1: you said onto what you actually said. It's very very
Speaker 1: obvious when it's taken place. I don't know how they
Speaker 1: will feel embarrassed. You know, a lot of times I
Speaker 1: barely comment on things. I barely respond to things, and
Speaker 1: when I do, I check and recheck and re check
Speaker 1: what the person has said. Then I check and recheck
Speaker 1: and recheck what I see before I get the statement,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how do I feel embarrassed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like everybody who has watched the video conceded you haven't
Speaker 1: watched it. They've just had like a term search and
Speaker 1: then appeared and yeah, and like, yeah, come to engage
Speaker 1: you pretty much pretty much. But I mean, if I
Speaker 1: were to be a sleeve for the algorithm, I would
Speaker 1: say all that engagement helps, right, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it doesn't helps. It helps one thing for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: help get us to a better place. Unfortunately, and speaking
Speaker 1: of things that do not help us get to a
Speaker 1: better place, I think it's the growth primarily is about
Speaker 1: confronting this destructive ideology of growthism. You know, something we
Speaker 1: see all around us, something we interact with on a
Speaker 1: failure regular basis. You see the images of the Amazon
Speaker 1: rainforest being cut down to be um, turning into soy
Speaker 1: firms until eventually it's made into a cattle grease in fields.
Speaker 1: You talk about the constant expansion of oil infrastructure, You
Speaker 1: talk about the constant expansion of mining operations, You talk
Speaker 1: about the continued rise of fast fashion. That people are
Speaker 1: extremely defensive whenever you try to criticize it. Um, all
Speaker 1: of these systems, all of these industries, all of these practices,
Speaker 1: is uh part of part and parcel, or rather products
Speaker 1: of this ideology of growth is um that capitalism is
Speaker 1: driven by. And I know it may be strange for
Speaker 1: some people to sort of deep program from this idea
Speaker 1: that growth is like an unadulterated could uncontroversially positive because
Speaker 1: you know, natures like all about growth, right. You know,
Speaker 1: when you think of growth, you think of a plant
Speaker 1: speaking out of the soil. You think of a baby
Speaker 1: kitten growing up to be a cat. You talk about
Speaker 1: like babies becoming toddlers, becoming young children, becoming older children, becoming,
Speaker 1: you know, tweens and teens and then finally adults and
Speaker 1: then from there Joe biden. Um. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: this whole idea of growth, and that growth is like
Speaker 1: a natural part of life. That is true. But growth
Speaker 1: in life does not go on and on and on
Speaker 1: and on. You know. Organisms grow up to a certain
Speaker 1: point and then they maintain a healthy equilibrium, or at
Speaker 1: least they try to. Um. Of course, health is not
Speaker 1: necessarily a natural state of affairs, because viruses are just
Speaker 1: as natural as the cells they attack. And then you
Speaker 1: can also get all uh femeral and talk about personal
Speaker 1: growth and how life is a constant journey of personal
Speaker 1: growth and whatever. But speaking materially, we can physically, growth
Speaker 1: has a limit. People grow up to a certain height,
Speaker 1: certain size, and so on, and when growth doesn't stop,
Speaker 1: that's when we start run into problems. As I understand,
Speaker 1: the reason that cancer is so difficult to cure is
Speaker 1: because your own body turning against you. It's your it's
Speaker 1: some of the many trillions of your own cells deciding okay,
Speaker 1: time to just grow and grow and grow without limit.
Speaker 1: And what happens in most of those cases, and many
Speaker 1: of those cases rather unfortunately people die as a result.
Speaker 1: So our bodies and our own bodies, we understand that
Speaker 1: growth is not always positive, and yet that's sick logic
Speaker 1: of growth for its own sake is exactly what the
Speaker 1: global economy relies on. So that's just think that's too
Speaker 1: much growth, too much money, too much stuff. And you
Speaker 1: have all these wealthy nations to continue to expand and
Speaker 1: grow and attempt to hold I heard one person use
Speaker 1: the analogy a camemberhood was um talking about how capitalism
Speaker 1: is now attempting to the new frontiers. For capitalism is
Speaker 1: to expand and colonize our own minds um. And so
Speaker 1: every economy, every sector, every industry is expected to keep growing,
Speaker 1: keep growing, keep growing, no matter what. One of the
Speaker 1: responses that I got on my video on the growth
Speaker 1: is that, oh, well you're seeing that growth is this
Speaker 1: im growthsma is this capitalist thing. But you know China
Speaker 1: and USSR, and they grew and they industrialized and they
Speaker 1: are just as susceptible to ecological destruction as any other
Speaker 1: capitalist country. And that is true, but that's also part
Speaker 1: of why I would consider those countries to be um
Speaker 1: state capitalist projects UM and not anything close to what
Speaker 1: I envisioned. But of course, the moment you introduce any
Speaker 1: idea that sounds even vaguely socially oriented, even vaguely ecologically oriented, um,
Speaker 1: people automatically assume you're trying to go for like new
Speaker 1: United Soviet Socialist Republic. But I think we need to
Speaker 1: explore different paths to improve in quality of life, to
Speaker 1: code and code developing. And that's a tricky subject I'll
Speaker 1: get into a bit later. But we need to think
Speaker 1: of way as that we can help people and help
Speaker 1: people live better lives without relying and desperating the bias fare.
Speaker 1: It's a tricky conversation to be had, um, because when
Speaker 1: people think of growth, they think, if it as a positive,
Speaker 1: I want you to criticize that positive. They think the inverse.
Speaker 1: They think you're trying to make everybody degrade and go
Speaker 1: down to like a wost quality of life, to rush
Speaker 1: back to to like a lower life expectancy, What transform
Speaker 1: a mode of production back to like hunting and gathering.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that deep growth as a movement,
Speaker 1: as to stem of thought, is more so about trying
Speaker 1: to find that balance between a good quality of life
Speaker 1: for all, not just this unequal quality of life that
Speaker 1: we see around the world and the capitalism while also
Speaker 1: balancing the fact that we live in material world. We
Speaker 1: live on a planet that has limited resources. We need
Speaker 1: to balance those resources. We need to consider and be
Speaker 1: good stewards of you know, uh planet that we share
Speaker 1: with other living creatures. Capitalism really is driven by this
Speaker 1: ideology of growthism because it is structurally incentivized. Structurally, it
Speaker 1: is a structural imperative in the capitalist system. It's not
Speaker 1: exclusively driven by greed, as some people assume. I think
Speaker 1: that's that that this idea that it's all up to
Speaker 1: like personalities, kind of hampers people's ability to analyze systems
Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter whether, um, we suddenly put each
Speaker 1: and every CEO in a position where they are all
Speaker 1: completely one hundreds and altruistic. It's not that they all
Speaker 1: being driven by greed. It's because under capitalism, you know,
Speaker 1: capitalists own capital, and capital that is stagnant is capital
Speaker 1: that is losing its value, and so they look for
Speaker 1: things to invest in so they can grow their capital.
Speaker 1: Capital being anything from real estate, factories, machinery, intellectual property,
Speaker 1: financial assets. What is the money that they used to
Speaker 1: make more money? If it's stagnant, it's losing value, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to increase its value. UM as they see gold.
Speaker 1: Companies that have growing profits year after year, so their
Speaker 1: capital will grow year after year. And if that crew
Speaker 1: slews down, they pull out and look elsewhere to invest.
Speaker 1: Companies that failed to grow will lose their investors and collapse.
Speaker 1: And so companies do everything their power to maintain growth
Speaker 1: so they can maintain the investors, regardless of how much
Speaker 1: havoc they reach upon the world. So if any barriers
Speaker 1: are preventing their growth, they had to bulldoz those barriers.
Speaker 1: You know, Environmental protections are barriers, labor lowers are barriers, protections,
Speaker 1: policies are barriers. The commons were a barrier, Indigenous populations
Speaker 1: were a barrier, and so on and so forth. All
Speaker 1: of these acts of violence open up these new frontiers
Speaker 1: for growth, for appropriation, for accumulation, and so incomes the growth.
Speaker 1: Or the French term for it is the croissant um,
Speaker 1: and I know that I likely pronounced that incorrectly. It's
Speaker 1: the French. We can disrespect them precisely. I think um
Speaker 1: things to sit down, reflect on their new cluing, the
Speaker 1: empire um. But anyway, this idea of the growth really
Speaker 1: first was developed. I have to say that I appreciate
Speaker 1: what the intellectuals have come up with. They're good at
Speaker 1: sitting down and thinking about stuff. I'll give them that.
Speaker 1: I'll give them that. So there's one French intellectual guy
Speaker 1: named Andrea Course in vent two coined the tomb de
Speaker 1: consin French. For the growth go has basically posed a
Speaker 1: question that remains at the center of the growth is
Speaker 1: the Earth's balance, for which no growth or even the
Speaker 1: growth of material production is a necessary condition compatible with
Speaker 1: the survival of the capitalist system. I would Mangae to say, no,
Speaker 1: it is not in any way compactible with this mavel
Speaker 1: the capitalist system, because we have seen it in this
Speaker 1: short period of time that the capitalism has existed, it
Speaker 1: has rapidly triggered the capital scene, or as some people
Speaker 1: regrettably called the anthropocene. It has rapidly triggered the sixth
Speaker 1: great mass extinction event um. And so I do not
Speaker 1: believe that the Earth's balance it's compatible with its survival.
Speaker 1: And so the Croissant movement of activists mainly flourished in
Speaker 1: Lyon in the early two thousand's. In the week of
Speaker 1: protests for car free cities, communal meals in the streets,
Speaker 1: food cooperatives, and campaigns against advertising. It went from France
Speaker 1: to Italy, where agreed and anti globalization activists h mobilized
Speaker 1: against this whole concept of capitalisms, constant encroachments and expansion
Speaker 1: and growth expanded into Catalonia in Spain in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: It eventually built up to the size where I could
Speaker 1: sustain a movement a magazine rather Crossan which currently sells
Speaker 1: a few thousand copies a month. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, a research and activist named France
Speaker 1: Swash Schneider took a year long walking tour on a
Speaker 1: donkey to disseminate the growth throughout France and that received
Speaker 1: some media coverage. Eventually, Schneider founded an academic collective known
Speaker 1: as Research and the Growth along with Dennis Bayonne and
Speaker 1: February Free Poo, and they eventually began international conferences went
Speaker 1: in Paris into those and eight and the second in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: So the English term de growth was officially used for
Speaker 1: the first time at the Paris conference, which really marked
Speaker 1: the booth of the international research community around the growth.
Speaker 1: Following the success of the conferences in Paris and Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Other conferences were held in Montreal in twenty eleven, Venice
Speaker 1: and twelve, Leipzig fourteen uh and the growth as an
Speaker 1: idea spread to groups in Flanders, Switzerland, Finland, Poland, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Denmark,
Speaker 1: Czech Republic like guess it's a check here now, Mexico, Brazil,
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, Canada, Bulgaria, Romania and elsewhere. The growth as
Speaker 1: an idea, as in a movement has been getting ground,
Speaker 1: despite the criticisms that somehow that oh, well, you can't
Speaker 1: call it something negative like the growth, because people wouldn't
Speaker 1: be you know, happy with it or whatever. Um. And
Speaker 1: I'll get to that criticism in a bit. But it's
Speaker 1: been steadily gruin since it was first you know, developed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Um. At this point in time,
Speaker 1: if you go on the the Growth website, you will
Speaker 1: find thousands of articles and studies in their library. And
Speaker 1: of course it's not to say that because of concept
Speaker 1: has a lot of followers or thinkers or published works,
Speaker 1: it's automatically h a, okay, ultimately correct. But at this
Speaker 1: point in time, I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: looking at direction we are going in and recognizing that
Speaker 1: we cannot continue along this path of growth, and so
Speaker 1: they are actively looking for a way out, looking for
Speaker 1: a way to find that balance, recognizing that capitalism is
Speaker 1: not compatible with the Earth's balance. And so the Growth
Speaker 1: ultimately rejects the illusion of growth. It calls to re
Speaker 1: politicize the public debate that has been colonized by the
Speaker 1: idiom of economism um that has been driven towards as
Speaker 1: a social objective, economic growth. The Growth is a project
Speaker 1: advocating for the democratically lead shrinking of production and consumption
Speaker 1: with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability.
Speaker 1: I think when some people care degrowth, despite all the
Speaker 1: explanations out there, despite even consumers explanations, they might still
Speaker 1: have this idea and they had the degrowth is this
Speaker 1: thing where bunch of armed, government sponsored environmental activists roll
Speaker 1: up and take your car and your house and force
Speaker 1: you to live in a cave. Um. But de grow that.
Speaker 1: How we de grow our economy is going to rely
Speaker 1: on the popular um involvement of the people. You know,
Speaker 1: It's not like you could just snap your fingers or
Speaker 1: just decreate and make it so, Um, it's not meant
Speaker 1: to be like how it is under new liberalism, where
Speaker 1: you have all this austerity. The growth is supposed to
Speaker 1: be all of us coming together to this to figure
Speaker 1: out how we can live in alignment with our biosphere,
Speaker 1: with our bioregion, with the planet, scaling down our individual
Speaker 1: and our community um supply chains, and localizing our consumption
Speaker 1: in order to reduce the reliance on this highly extractive,
Speaker 1: highly growth dependent, cabulist global capitalists economy. The growth also
Speaker 1: signifies a direction, a desired direction, one in which society
Speaker 1: is use fewer natural resources and organize and live much
Speaker 1: differently than they live today. The ideas of you know, sharing,
Speaker 1: which is something we teach the preschoolers, simplicity, conviviality, care,
Speaker 1: and the commons primary concepts in terms of what a
Speaker 1: deecret society should look like. Uh. In one of my
Speaker 1: previous podcast episodes that would have discussed the Commons a bit,
Speaker 1: so if anyone is curious about what the Commons are,
Speaker 1: they could check that out. Um. And of course on
Speaker 1: my channel also speak about the Commons as an institution
Speaker 1: and about libraries of things, and so the growth has
Speaker 1: offered a sort of a framework that connects all these
Speaker 1: different ideas, concepts, proposals UM with the criticism of growth,
Speaker 1: with the criticism of GDP, with the criticism of commodification
Speaker 1: UM the process that converts social products and socio ecological
Speaker 1: services and relations into commodities of the monetary value. On
Speaker 1: the constructive side, because the growth is not just limited
Speaker 1: to criticism, do you imagines reproductive economies of care, the
Speaker 1: reclamation of all and the creation of new commons man
Speaker 1: need and natural caring for commons in communal forms of
Speaker 1: living and producing UM, liberating our time from work and
Speaker 1: making it available to caring for our communities and caring
Speaker 1: for our ecology. Because if you think about all of
Speaker 1: the activities that are currently so needed at this point
Speaker 1: in time in terms of ecological restoration, in terms of
Speaker 1: um DE growth, they're not profitable. You know, planting man
Speaker 1: grooves to shore up our shows, to defend our shows
Speaker 1: from your waning from storms is not profitable. Replanting forests
Speaker 1: and sparking nature's processes of eclosial restoration not profitable. And
Speaker 1: of course there is a whole sorts of ecosystem, economic, political,
Speaker 1: ecosystem dedicated to these kinds of projects with all the
Speaker 1: NGOs and government organizations involved in replanting the Sahel region
Speaker 1: in Africa, for example, creasingly create green wall. But those
Speaker 1: projects tend to be righte with issues and a lack
Speaker 1: of intendence because they do not involve local communities in
Speaker 1: the decision making surrounding um that process of restoration. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, of course, these projects are not
Speaker 1: embedded in broad ut project for the growth. So a
Speaker 1: government a government might be planting trees, planting forests in
Speaker 1: one part of the country and extracting and drilling in
Speaker 1: another part of the country, and so there needs to
Speaker 1: be an integration of all these different projects with a
Speaker 1: brother push and direction towards the growth. I want to
Speaker 1: go back around to this idea that UM the growth
Speaker 1: is a critique of GDP as a concept. UM the
Speaker 1: growth is not necessarily the same as negative GDP growth.
Speaker 1: But when you consider how GDP is measured, as it's counted,
Speaker 1: it's about financial transactions and not necessarily the non financial ones.
Speaker 1: And so if we were to crean our economy, if
Speaker 1: we were to DeCrow our society, UM we're not going
Speaker 1: to be seeing the really grows. Domestic activity increases of
Speaker 1: two or three percent. Yeah, there's there's an old like
Speaker 1: two eleven slogan that's, uh if when the bank takes
Speaker 1: your house, that increases GDP, Right, that is true. That
Speaker 1: is true. A lot of uh, positive and constructive and
Speaker 1: beneficial actions that people do on a regular basis do
Speaker 1: not contribute to g P, whereas entire destructive industries contributes
Speaker 1: significantly its every month. We started this by talking by
Speaker 1: comparing kind of the quest for endless growth to a cancer,
Speaker 1: but I almost think it's a better comparison. Is Like,
Speaker 1: you know, there was that article early this year about
Speaker 1: how specific kinds of people, particularly like rich weirdos in
Speaker 1: the tech industry, are paying thousands of dollars to have
Speaker 1: their legs broken and like lengthened so that they can
Speaker 1: like that's that's that's a that's a shipload of how
Speaker 1: act Like, Yeah, I mean it's weaker, they can never
Speaker 1: we can never run again. But you are technically taller,
Speaker 1: so we'll count on as growth. Yeah, go up. Much
Speaker 1: of a coward to wear platforms? Yeah yeah, so you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have the hotspot to be a short king. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I do think that like when anthropologists on civilization
Speaker 1: the wonder why were so fascinated about line go up?
Speaker 1: But then they realized that the whole point of the
Speaker 1: civilization was line go up. Like that that was oddity, truly, truly,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's I don't know. My eyes my eyes
Speaker 1: bleed sometimes thinking about how this whole system is structured
Speaker 1: and how it just continues to chug along. But um,
Speaker 1: that's why I spend so much time writing and reading
Speaker 1: and talking about these issues, right, trying to find a
Speaker 1: whee out. And so that is also what de with
Speaker 1: advocates are looking to do, the looking for a way out,
Speaker 1: you know, a way for a better life first of all,
Speaker 1: which brings me to the whole criticism of the growth
Speaker 1: that is essentially optics. Right. They say it's not appropriate
Speaker 1: to use a negative word to signify desired positive changes,
Speaker 1: but the growth advocates deliberately choose I mean, in my
Speaker 1: videw I said that I'm fine with either quality growth
Speaker 1: or qualitate post growth or whatever. But the growth advocates
Speaker 1: have chosen the term de growth for a reason. The
Speaker 1: use of negation for a positive project is aimed towards
Speaker 1: creating that sort of um questioning, you know, towards getting
Speaker 1: people to reconsider this idea of growth as a ultimate
Speaker 1: could to de colonize imagination that has been dominated by
Speaker 1: this whole capitalist conception of the future, consistent of you know,
Speaker 1: line go up. Is this automatic assumption and association of
Speaker 1: growth with better that the word the growth wants to dismantle,
Speaker 1: wants to be constructed sod. Growth is a deliberately subversive slogan.
Speaker 1: And of course the growth is not aimed at, you know,
Speaker 1: deconstructing the most necessary sectors, the devolved in the most
Speaker 1: necessary sectors. We're not talking about de grow and education,
Speaker 1: de grow in, medical care, de grow in you know, well,
Speaker 1: renewable energy is kind of a tricky subject, but DeCrow
Speaker 1: and renewable energy, UM, it's more so about primarily and
Speaker 1: first of all targets in the most duty and destructive industries,
Speaker 1: you know, the financial sector. UM. We would prefer to
Speaker 1: see institutions like health and education flourish rather than crew
Speaker 1: or develop. We want to change that is qualitative, not
Speaker 1: necessarily quantitative. You want to see a flourishing of the arts,
Speaker 1: of flourishing of philosophies, a flourishing of um vernacular architectures
Speaker 1: and flourishing of the creativity of people. And that's qualitative.
Speaker 1: It's not about oh well, line go up, so things
Speaker 1: more good. You know. It's not about we have ten
Speaker 1: industrial outputs last year, now we have twelve. That's so good.
Speaker 1: You know, we want something. We want quality to change that.
Speaker 1: And if most people really sit down and think about
Speaker 1: what they want in their life, I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna are gonna think of, oh well,
Speaker 1: I want next year's iPhone to have a twelve increase
Speaker 1: in the camera quality. You know, it's more so that
Speaker 1: you want better you know, rest um more um, connected communities,
Speaker 1: healthier commute or healthier UM I guess city layout. UM.
Speaker 1: It's more conducive to interaction. It's more conducive to small
Speaker 1: scale movement. It's not about, like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not about trying to get line to go up. Cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: as I think about it, it's like perhaps the best
Speaker 1: example or like n f T s right, like they
Speaker 1: created a bunch of value that literally created nothing. I
Speaker 1: had nothing other than exchange value exactly exactly. It's just nonsense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretend money. I talk for a moment about like development
Speaker 1: as a concept, right, because another common criticism of the
Speaker 1: growth is that, oh, well, what about the global South,
Speaker 1: what about the Third world? What about all the poor
Speaker 1: countries and poor people of the world. You just want
Speaker 1: to leave them behind? And from one I find it
Speaker 1: strange because the person in question, at least the video
Speaker 1: response that I got, simplicitly assumes that I am from
Speaker 1: like a global North nichetion and I'm just fine sitting
Speaker 1: down with my you know, um, same day Amazon delivery
Speaker 1: and Starbucks and um, sprawling suburbs and whatever it is
Speaker 1: that you know, they imagine my lifestyle is like. But
Speaker 1: I think first and foremost parts of the whole move
Speaker 1: a t growth is to consider, um, like I said, reason,
Speaker 1: improving people's quality of life worldwide, which capitalism is not
Speaker 1: interested in. Coupitism will maintain a perpetual underclass because they're
Speaker 1: easier to exploit. And so this is whole idea of development,
Speaker 1: right that has this baggage. Um, it's very colonial baggage.
Speaker 1: But it's development is really like growth. It's meant to
Speaker 1: have like a limit. It's an unfolding towards a predetermined end.
Speaker 1: You know, an embryo eventually develops into a fetus, so
Speaker 1: she eventually develops into a baby. She eventually develops into
Speaker 1: a child, she eventually develops into an adult who then
Speaker 1: ages and dies. But development for the sake of development,
Speaker 1: with no end, with no ams, with no goals, with
Speaker 1: no sense of um self critique or questioning, It's a
Speaker 1: disaster waiting to happen. I can look at my own
Speaker 1: country and from Trenon to Vigo for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: and think of things that need to get better, right,
Speaker 1: Things that would really improve people's quality of life. UM.
Speaker 1: To think about the fact that we really need to
Speaker 1: get rid of our reliance and cars and bring back
Speaker 1: our training system UM that was dismantled so long ago.
Speaker 1: I could think about the fact that we need to
Speaker 1: improve our food or autonomy because we are extremely reliant
Speaker 1: on food imports. UM. Things like that I can think
Speaker 1: about that would improve people's ability to live well and
Speaker 1: sustainably on this island. But those things, those aims, those
Speaker 1: are those are cools, right. I'm just thinking, oh, development, development, development.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Okay, there's point B. How do I get
Speaker 1: there from point A? How are we going to meet
Speaker 1: people's basic needs? And this whole and the whole deep
Speaker 1: with projects is really about that whole conversation between the
Speaker 1: globle North and the Global Salt. Right, the global North
Speaker 1: needs to reduce their demand for a lot of the
Speaker 1: resources and goods so that they're more accessible to the
Speaker 1: Global Salt. But in making those things more accessible, places
Speaker 1: in the Global Salt are not meant to follow the
Speaker 1: same path that the Goloble North took that put us
Speaker 1: in our mess. The whole ideas that we need to
Speaker 1: find a different path, We need to find a different trajectory.
Speaker 1: We need to think for ourselves instead of trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with the Joneses in order to determine what
Speaker 1: a good life would mean for us in our ecological niche,
Speaker 1: in our geographical situation. Yeah, what us. It's like we did,
Speaker 1: we did we we did. We did this in China, right,
Speaker 1: like we did the entire development thing. And the product
Speaker 1: is now like people literally sucking eighteen miles on foot
Speaker 1: after having broken out of a fox con factory that
Speaker 1: they've been locked in and forced to make iPhones because
Speaker 1: someone had like three people have gotten COVID, so they
Speaker 1: just like locked everyone in the factory. So like you
Speaker 1: know it, Yeah, and I think it's also sort of
Speaker 1: like briefly worth mentioning that like development as a concept
Speaker 1: and the sort of developmental economics field was like this
Speaker 1: was like specifically developed in sort of the bowels of
Speaker 1: the American State Department as as a response to like
Speaker 1: basically as like as a way as a kind of
Speaker 1: like simplified capitalist version of Marxist theory they could throw
Speaker 1: out to sort of like explain what was happening in
Speaker 1: like as as as as a sort of an alternative
Speaker 1: Demarxism for like all these sort of like newly post
Speaker 1: colonial nations. And you know, it's gone about as well
Speaker 1: as you would expect. I think the valles of the
Speaker 1: State Department to be alternative department. Like, well this has
Speaker 1: been fun. Um, I love I don't know thinking about capital.
Speaker 1: I mean this is it's this is important because like
Speaker 1: we always need to be thinking about what comes next.
Speaker 1: This is constantly like a problem that the left has
Speaker 1: and certainly a problem the liberals have, which is that, um,
Speaker 1: the vision of the future is very rarely anything more
Speaker 1: than fighting against kind of the demons of the moment,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like what does it actually look like
Speaker 1: to get ourselves to a better place, to a place
Speaker 1: that's more sustainable, both in an environmental level and in
Speaker 1: like in a manner of human ecology too, And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is like, this is kind of the
Speaker 1: hard work that people need to be thinking about. Wherever
Speaker 1: you wind up landing on on d growth as either
Speaker 1: a concept or as a term like, these are the
Speaker 1: paths we have to start beating out of the bush,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly. So there are many potential that already
Speaker 1: been thought up, and there are many that have yet
Speaker 1: to be imagined. In Ecuador, the project of Sumac, Say
Speaker 1: and really the rest of Latin America, the idea of
Speaker 1: green vivere in much of South Africa, the concept of
Speaker 1: Ubuntu in India, the Gandhian economy of permanence. All of
Speaker 1: these projects are more explore alternatives to quote and quote development,
Speaker 1: alternats of trajectories to a good life UM that is
Speaker 1: rooted in environmental justice, that is based in a retreat
Speaker 1: from the narrow confines of the global norths imagination UM
Speaker 1: and what that imagination has promoted worldwide and what's upon
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. The growth requires us to
Speaker 1: think for ourselves, to think creatively about how we plan
Speaker 1: on creating a good life in the context of capitalism's degradation,
Speaker 1: the Earth's degradation due to climate change, and what that
Speaker 1: will mean for our future is we really need to
Speaker 1: sit and think about what our future as a species,
Speaker 1: what of our future as regions, our future as communities,
Speaker 1: of future as individuals is going to look like, what trajectory,
Speaker 1: what path we want to take, and how we begin
Speaker 1: that journey. And so in the second part of this
Speaker 1: two part series, I intend to discuss what concepts are
Speaker 1: essential for the growth, the steps we can take to
Speaker 1: move towards the growth, and how we can integrate the
Speaker 1: growth in anarchist politics. All right, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be the end of part one. Come back tomorrow for
Speaker 1: part two and uh, probably more discussion of that weird
Speaker 1: surgery rich people get to have their legs broken repeatedly
Speaker 1: until they're taller. Hello, and welcome back to it could
Speaker 1: happen here, um a show where things happen people talk
Speaker 1: about it, Yes, in this present location. That's correct. Last
Speaker 1: episode we spoke about the concept of the growth and
Speaker 1: what it means to de grow, how the growth as
Speaker 1: a movement came about, what inspired the critique that the
Speaker 1: growth pushes, and what the growth means for those of
Speaker 1: us who live in the Global South, how we can
Speaker 1: go about imagining um new and different paths to a
Speaker 1: better life within ecological limits. This episode will continue in
Speaker 1: that conversation talking about what is essential for the growth.
Speaker 1: As I discussed in the previous episode, the growth is
Speaker 1: about striving for self determined life and dignity for all.
Speaker 1: It means an economy in a society that can sustain
Speaker 1: the natural basis of life. It means reduction of production
Speaker 1: consumption the globe on the north and the liberation the
Speaker 1: one sided Western paradigm of development so that the Global
Speaker 1: South can explore their own, our own, self determined paths
Speaker 1: of social organization. The growth means an extension of democratic
Speaker 1: decision making to allow for real political participation. The growth
Speaker 1: means that social changes organized and oriented towards sufficiency and
Speaker 1: self sufficiency and ecological sustainability, rather than the pursuits of
Speaker 1: a line grew up a pursuit of economic growth, regardless
Speaker 1: of its impact on people, planet, and the growth of
Speaker 1: course advocates for the creation of open, connected and localized economies,
Speaker 1: there are several steps that need to be taken in
Speaker 1: order to achieve a d growth society, achieve a degrowth
Speaker 1: will to deeprou For one, I think that, as Jason
Speaker 1: Hickel advocates in his book Less is More, we absolutely
Speaker 1: need to put an end to the practice of planned
Speaker 1: obso lessons, whether it be in household appliances and tools
Speaker 1: and furniture and computers. We need to shift away from
Speaker 1: this idea of products being produced to break down in
Speaker 1: a certain timeline and require replacement. UM. I personally have
Speaker 1: witnessed a lot of older technologies that continue to last
Speaker 1: to this day before because they were invented before this
Speaker 1: whole practice the plant obs lessons really came about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but my family, we have a microwave that is like
Speaker 1: a decade older than I am, and it still works fine. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean in my own lifetime, I've had to
Speaker 1: purchase multiple microwaves, so it's it's ridiculous. Yeah, That's always
Speaker 1: one of the things that I always thought like there
Speaker 1: was a real sort of like this is how you
Speaker 1: this is how you appeal to conservative people with this
Speaker 1: is just like hey, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna
Speaker 1: bring back like nineteen sixties microwaves where everything is a
Speaker 1: dial and it doesn't break every Yeah, because I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what's what's missing in the conversation about t
Speaker 1: growth is a lot of people like me, they assume,
Speaker 1: because they react to negative that everybody else will, you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of project their own reaction to others. But
Speaker 1: I think political spectrum aside um or political chart or
Speaker 1: how are you gonna um map out the unmappable UM.
Speaker 1: I think that people generally, as I was discussing the
Speaker 1: previous episode, want a good life, and that requires qualitative
Speaker 1: changes far more than it requires quantitative changes. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are places where quantitative changes are needed to make
Speaker 1: some things accessible to that population. UM. But we already
Speaker 1: over produce a lot of different things UM, And a
Speaker 1: lot of overproduction is completely necessary because it is based
Speaker 1: and planned obs lessons in order to increase profits, and
Speaker 1: so that needs to Once that is discarded, I think
Speaker 1: people have will will best be able to access that
Speaker 1: quality of life because we look at a lot of
Speaker 1: the sudden expenses that people have to deal with. You know,
Speaker 1: you've fridge suddenly breaking down, your stove suddenly breaking down
Speaker 1: in my careave for your toolster certainly breaking now and
Speaker 1: or you're washing machine. Um. I think in this year,
Speaker 1: the and had to fix the washing machine three or
Speaker 1: four times because it's just constantly breaks down. And when
Speaker 1: instead we can save that those resources see at that time,
Speaker 1: see that energy, see that money. Um, just produce certain
Speaker 1: quality food the foods time, you know, put an end
Speaker 1: to those deliberate manufacturing decisions and developing long lasting modular
Speaker 1: products that can reduce our you know, material and energy
Speaker 1: use worldwide. I think in a lot of cases, we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need more innovation, you know. I don't think
Speaker 1: we really need like a smart fridge. I think we
Speaker 1: just need a fridge that works for decades without breaking
Speaker 1: down constantly. Yeah, And like like so much of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's sort of like nominally is informatus, like it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be. Innovation is just how how how can
Speaker 1: we make this product in such a way that we
Speaker 1: can sell consumer data about you from it? Like we
Speaker 1: don't need to do that. We can simply not. We
Speaker 1: can simply not. We can simply not exactly exactly. And
Speaker 1: speaking of things that we can simply not, we can
Speaker 1: simply not assault our senses constantly with advertisis. And because
Speaker 1: advertising just continues to see this purpose of generating social divisions,
Speaker 1: highlighting class divisions, and manipulating people into consuming stuff they
Speaker 1: don't need. As a card carrying member of Generations Z,
Speaker 1: I have not I do not typically watch much TV UM.
Speaker 1: I used to watch TV because I'm the older gen
Speaker 1: Z conting gent, but with the rise of streaming services
Speaker 1: is UM, which I do not use. Yoho hoo. Is
Speaker 1: I have to say about that? UM. I have not
Speaker 1: watched much TV UM. But there's certain reality shoes that
Speaker 1: I enjoy, like the Amazing Race UM, and so those
Speaker 1: sense we be showing on TV. I like Jeopardy. I
Speaker 1: like to watch Jeopardy and the constant deeply unfunny, irritating, annoying, loud,
Speaker 1: flashy barrage of commercials quite aggravating. UM. Honestly, the goal
Speaker 1: in age of crucial is being funny. Was a long
Speaker 1: time ago and now it's just suits. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I mentioned that in UM in the episode
Speaker 1: that we had done on the Commons. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I one of the positions are held even
Speaker 1: before I was an anarchist, was my opposition to the
Speaker 1: advertising industry to advertise it. I can't stand advertising everywhere
Speaker 1: you walk, everybody, screw everything you watch and listen to,
Speaker 1: it's also going to sell you something. Um. I would
Speaker 1: love to be able to go outside and not see
Speaker 1: ads all the time. I would love to use a
Speaker 1: screwth of the incident without seeing ads all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And so getting really advertising industry getting rid of while
Speaker 1: these ads are just pushing us to consume more and more,
Speaker 1: um and oftentimes just promoting a lot of really harmful
Speaker 1: societal ideas you know, um, body images, use and alcoholism
Speaker 1: and a lot of our worst practices and a lot
Speaker 1: of really terrible things of being promoted through ads. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, tear it down and watch consumerism perish. When
Speaker 1: you think about really history the advertising industry and how
Speaker 1: it came about as a mass communication student, um, that's
Speaker 1: something that I would spend some time looking into. Advertising
Speaker 1: really came about in response to you know, this need
Speaker 1: that people had, really that that that that companies had
Speaker 1: to get people to consume. Because in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: you know, people would buy something and a newer model
Speaker 1: would come out and it would really pay attention to
Speaker 1: it because I already have the thing. I don't need
Speaker 1: to get another thing. Um. But you know, you can't
Speaker 1: run a profitable business that free. So they basically used
Speaker 1: advertising to push people to consume more, and so we
Speaker 1: need to get rid of the advertising industry. Another step
Speaker 1: we can take towards the growth is to shift from
Speaker 1: ownership to use. The fruct um usufruct is something that
Speaker 1: Marie book Chin, social ecologist, talks a lot about um
Speaker 1: in his book The Ecology of Freed Them and it's
Speaker 1: essentially the freedom of individuals or groups in a community
Speaker 1: to access and use, but not destroy, common resources to
Speaker 1: supply their needs. The term use of fruct comes from
Speaker 1: Roman property law, I believe, which should include use us
Speaker 1: the right to use. Sorry, unfortunately I did not take
Speaker 1: ladin yeah practice. It's just the right to enjoy the
Speaker 1: fruit of one's property and abuse us which is the
Speaker 1: right to destroy one's property. So use us fruct us
Speaker 1: and abuse us um. And so use of fractice really
Speaker 1: the combination of the first two principles. Right to access
Speaker 1: and use and enjoy the fruit of um commonly held
Speaker 1: property without you the right to destroy it um, so
Speaker 1: that everyone can supply their needs. So instead of and
Speaker 1: I mean two libraries already a concept that it exists
Speaker 1: around the world, rather than a hundred people in a
Speaker 1: community each individually order an electric drill, UM, one person
Speaker 1: or rather one library can host or three or four
Speaker 1: electric drills and effectively serve everyone's need for a drill
Speaker 1: when they need it, because unless you're a carpenter or
Speaker 1: really into arts and crafts, you probably don't need an
Speaker 1: electric drill all the time. Another thing that we're really
Speaker 1: helping or push towards the growth will be getting rid
Speaker 1: of car dependency, because the consumption of vehicles, the mainstenence
Speaker 1: of vehicles, the maintenance of the infrastructure of vehicles, use
Speaker 1: all of those things requires a lot of resources, you know,
Speaker 1: concrete and oil and gas and metals and great Earth minerals.
Speaker 1: And rather than forcing everyone to produce these things we
Speaker 1: could consume those things, we can instead shift towards walkable
Speaker 1: model for urban months UM so that people who do
Speaker 1: need to use vehicles in rural settings, for example, can
Speaker 1: use them, and you can use them without causing unnecessarily
Speaker 1: unnecessary harm contributing to unnecessary harm superfluous harm on the planet. UM.
Speaker 1: Getting rid of cor dependency would also mean that fewer
Speaker 1: people would need vehicles, and vehicles that the few vehicles
Speaker 1: that we do produce UM can be shared in common
Speaker 1: to save needs that cannot be filled by like bikes
Speaker 1: or you know, public transportation systems. Another element of deep
Speaker 1: growth would really be the reduction of our energy material
Speaker 1: use through the transformation of our agriculture systems. It is
Speaker 1: true that we currently produce enough food for I believe
Speaker 1: ten billion people. A lot of that food is wasted. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of food doesn't reach people. UM. It's really
Speaker 1: an issue of alcation and not necessary production. But at
Speaker 1: the same time that production is extremely harmful. UM. It
Speaker 1: relies on a lot of damaging chemicals, relies on the
Speaker 1: stripping of our top soils, relies on the overuse of antibiotics,
Speaker 1: relies on the abuse of animals. UM. The way that
Speaker 1: we currently feed the world is deeply unequal, extremely inefficient,
Speaker 1: environmentally degrading, and energy wasting. We cannot continue to treat
Speaker 1: our farms like factories. We need to find we used
Speaker 1: to feed ourselves densely and compatibly within the amounts the
Speaker 1: living world. Scaling down to localized proma culture can help
Speaker 1: change of based agricultural systems. Community supported agriculture, urban god aquaponics,
Speaker 1: cultured meats, aquacultures, and exploring other more traditional forms of
Speaker 1: food raising will need to be the route that we take. Already,
Speaker 1: we are killing our soils, we are running out to
Speaker 1: the fossil fuels that UM, the agricultural industry relies on.
Speaker 1: And if we continue along the trajectory, we have a
Speaker 1: big storm coming. Yeah, probably the greatest famine the plant
Speaker 1: has ever seen on its way. If we do not
Speaker 1: aim to build food autonomy, aim to rewild our ecologies,
Speaker 1: aimed to reconfigure our consumption patterns or food production and
Speaker 1: consumption patterns two see quester more carbon to allocate two
Speaker 1: more people to use healthier foods UM and to really
Speaker 1: to recover the earth. Another important stuff we can take
Speaker 1: in the growth would be to get rid of what
Speaker 1: scale down to, especially destructive industries. There is, of course agriculture.
Speaker 1: There is UM, the fossil fuels industry, the arms industry,
Speaker 1: private jet industry, the automobile industry, the airline industries. All
Speaker 1: of these industries must either be slimmed down or gotten
Speaker 1: rid of UM because, as the pandemic has showing, very
Speaker 1: few of the jobs that are currently undertaken around the
Speaker 1: world are truly essential to maintain in the bare bones
Speaker 1: of life. And of course we do need to reconfigure
Speaker 1: the way that we live or ways of life. You
Speaker 1: don't have to reflect ecological limits. But even with that reconfiguration,
Speaker 1: I think we know why industries needed and what on. Um.
Speaker 1: I always find it strange, This is, I guess a tangent.
Speaker 1: I always find it strange that politicians are celebrated for
Speaker 1: bracken about creating new jobs when in reality, I believe
Speaker 1: and really the vision was in the twentieth century that
Speaker 1: we would reach a point where fewer and fewer people
Speaker 1: needed to work, and that we need to work for
Speaker 1: less time. Um. And so that really is part of
Speaker 1: the aim of the growth, reviving that pursuit, reviving that
Speaker 1: goal because we have reached the point where we can
Speaker 1: um scale on the amount of time each Polson has
Speaker 1: to work, skill on amounts of jobs that aren't necessary. Um.
Speaker 1: If you've read Bullshit Jobs by David Greeable, you'll see
Speaker 1: that a lot of particularly service economy jobs ah practically worthless. Um.
Speaker 1: And I actually saw kind of funny video talking about
Speaker 1: how at this point office culture is more of a religion.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's so good. Yeah, so that going and going around.
Speaker 1: We can surrounds and Twitter. That was really funny. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we just move around. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: move around and round numbers. If you've seen, um, the
Speaker 1: show Succession, that Succession sufferance. Have you seen the shows Sufferance? UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much like an our slash anti work
Speaker 1: type show. UM. And so I think one more people
Speaker 1: are coming to the realization that hey, this kind of
Speaker 1: sucks the fact that we have to work this much.
Speaker 1: So we need to reduce the amount of time we work, um,
Speaker 1: the type of work we need to change, type of
Speaker 1: work we do. So it's a quantitative and qualitative shift
Speaker 1: um and something I spoke about in my view on
Speaker 1: anti work or post work, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: These changes, these steps to scale and total energy use,
Speaker 1: can be taken by a broad range of organizations, groups,
Speaker 1: mass movements, popular assemblies, unions, co operatives, not waiting for
Speaker 1: the state, but going beyond it. I think we've seen
Speaker 1: by now. I think if you have not seen right now,
Speaker 1: it needs open your eyes. The state is not doing
Speaker 1: enough or in some cases not doing anything at all,
Speaker 1: to respond to these crises, and we need to take
Speaker 1: it into our own hands to do so. UM. I
Speaker 1: have a video in store UM for December that as
Speaker 1: one of my patrons jokes might have the alphabet agencies
Speaker 1: after me. But there are a lot of different actions
Speaker 1: that we can take UM to integrate the growth, to
Speaker 1: move towards a decro society, to de grow our economies,
Speaker 1: a combination of acts of confrontation and non cooperation and
Speaker 1: prefiguration in some de growth challenges the dominant growth imperative.
Speaker 1: It's in the name. It is intentionally subversive in its
Speaker 1: title because it requires us to think about how we
Speaker 1: can collectively organize the restructure of all economy and the
Speaker 1: downscale of energy and resource use worldwide. The transition back
Speaker 1: into balance with the living will in a safe, just,
Speaker 1: an equitable way. The growth means striving for a self titude,
Speaker 1: life and dignity and abundance for all. The growth of
Speaker 1: mean liberating ourselves not just from the ways that the
Speaker 1: growth imperative has shaped out technologies education. The growth who
Speaker 1: require that we not just liberal it ourselves from the
Speaker 1: ways that the growth imperative has shaved our technologies and institutions,
Speaker 1: but it demands if we also reconsider education, our cultural norms,
Speaker 1: and values or identities or mindsets or relationships. It will
Speaker 1: be a massive shift with anarchists called social revolution um,
Speaker 1: but it's one that is worthwhile. As some de growth
Speaker 1: advocates would see, it's de growth by choice or de
Speaker 1: growth by force. What's the use of de growth here?
Speaker 1: Has being used slightly differently, the growth by choice being
Speaker 1: like I described, collectively organized, democratically managed restructure of the
Speaker 1: economy to bring into bounce that living will in a safe,
Speaker 1: just nequitable way um, whereas d growth by force is
Speaker 1: more soon combination of austaritsy and apocalypse. So up to you. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: politics all politicive people. So there's there's a Japanese Marxist
Speaker 1: named koh Saito who's been writing like a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff recently, who basically like he's been probably the biggest
Speaker 1: voice of the growth in Japan. And his book Capital
Speaker 1: on the Antipathyne is finally getting translated into English pretty soon,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, check that out when it comes out.
Speaker 1: His stuff is really good, and he like basically has
Speaker 1: revived both Marxism and d growth in Japan. After Marxism
Speaker 1: is kind of like implosion after a bunch of weird fairy.
Speaker 1: Wait we we don't need to get into the story
Speaker 1: of the claps of the Japanese Left. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: that that's coming. I'll check that out. Yeah yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: looking forwards to that book when it comes out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. If you want to check out my videos
Speaker 1: on this topic and others, just go to YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash ANDREIDSM. You can also follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: um while Twitter still exists on discloss and Drew and
Speaker 1: you could potentially even support on patreonatre dot com slash
Speaker 1: sat true as it piece by could happen here. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I did that voice. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: host of a podcast that has many other hosts who
Speaker 1: all are on the podcast right now. We have, in
Speaker 1: order of them being on my zoom screen, Chris Garres
Speaker 1: and Sharene and James. Hey, everybody, how's it going? Good? Great?
Speaker 1: And we brought the full crew in to talk about
Speaker 1: the worst ship. So yeah, a whole bunch of kind
Speaker 1: of kind of not great things have happened the past week.
Speaker 1: So we took we took last week mostly off from
Speaker 1: work due to a series of court cases, um and uh,
Speaker 1: thanks to an injunction we're allowed to podcast again, so
Speaker 1: I figured it would be we had a couple of
Speaker 1: I mean, horrifying stories break in a row, UM that
Speaker 1: we as the people we are, kind of had specific
Speaker 1: bits of insight on that I think might help uh
Speaker 1: catch our listeners up to some maybe underappreciated aspects of
Speaker 1: some of the big stories of the last week. So
Speaker 1: we wanted to start with the mass shooting in Colorado
Speaker 1: Springs UM specifically talking about the family of the still
Speaker 1: alleged but you know, definitely did it shooter, James, you
Speaker 1: want to kick us off there. Yeah, I wanted to
Speaker 1: start out with this UM so that the alleged shooter,
Speaker 1: it is called Anderson Lee old Rich, right, but comes
Speaker 1: from an LDS Last Today saint family in San Diego,
Speaker 1: And like I think everyone has probably seen this very
Speaker 1: viral thirty second clip of his father that went around
Speaker 1: Twitter and butt be to day after the shooting, and
Speaker 1: his dad, just so we're super clear on this, says
Speaker 1: some disgusting things and there's a piece of ship for
Speaker 1: saying them. I don't want to excuse any of the ship,
Speaker 1: he said. I also don't want to excuse the way
Speaker 1: that that was cut because I think it was pretty
Speaker 1: pretty shitty, Like there are people we should be really
Speaker 1: fucking angry at, and his father is one of them.
Speaker 1: But his father didn't excuse the shooting. And if you
Speaker 1: look at that eight minute interview, he says that, like
Speaker 1: what happened was wrong, etcetera, etcetera. And there are people
Speaker 1: who have excused the shooting, right, Like I think Chris
Speaker 1: is going to speak to something Temple Tucker Carlson, people
Speaker 1: who created a climate where this happened and have asked
Speaker 1: for it to happen again and are asking continually for
Speaker 1: it to happen again. His dad didn't do that again,
Speaker 1: his dad, His dad doesn't seem to have been a
Speaker 1: great dad, right. His dad was was like using when
Speaker 1: he was a kid. His dad was abusive. What is
Speaker 1: his violence? I think we all know lots of people
Speaker 1: who were raised in those climates who didn't go on
Speaker 1: to shoot up a nightclub. And it just kind of
Speaker 1: I saw something. I don't know. I was upset by
Speaker 1: the response to that in a sense because like I
Speaker 1: know so many people who come from from families and
Speaker 1: homes like that, and I like being like, oh, he
Speaker 1: was doomed to be this way because of how his
Speaker 1: dad was just like isn't I don't know. It just
Speaker 1: upset me. It's not the response we need, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I think we should hold like hold what his
Speaker 1: dad said, like hold his dad to account of what
Speaker 1: he said, but also not like allow that to explain. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have a couple I like, I have confused feelings
Speaker 1: on it because his dad does go into a long
Speaker 1: thing where he says, you know, you shouldn't there's nothing
Speaker 1: that justifies violence. You know, these people's lives were precious,
Speaker 1: All lives are precious. But he also was like I
Speaker 1: taught him that violence was a great way to solve problems,
Speaker 1: um and you know, expresses that he was glad to
Speaker 1: learn that his son wasn't gay, And I don't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't Yeah, I don't know how
Speaker 1: much I want to like interpret that as he really
Speaker 1: meant what he said about nothing justifying this in those
Speaker 1: people's lives being precious, because that is kind of this
Speaker 1: thing that like you get on the and this guy
Speaker 1: is obviously not a thought leader on the Christian right,
Speaker 1: not like he's not like a luminary. I don't think
Speaker 1: he contributed outside of you know, the things he may
Speaker 1: have raised his son to believe to the broader national
Speaker 1: climate of of hate right now, there's just a study
Speaker 1: that was released today that UM from the Armed Conflict
Speaker 1: Location and Event Data Project Data confirms that anti LGBT
Speaker 1: mobilization is now the leading driver or a fire right
Speaker 1: protest activity in the US. Obviously, this guy didn't make
Speaker 1: that happen, UM, but I noticed a similarity between like
Speaker 1: the I there's nothing worse than my kid being gay,
Speaker 1: but also when a bad thing gets done by a
Speaker 1: Christian to gay people, well, their lives are still precious.
Speaker 1: We just like hate what they how they live them. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how where to where
Speaker 1: to go further with that, but you're right that like
Speaker 1: that the thirty second clip is very dishonestly edited in
Speaker 1: order to like, UM cut out a lot of what
Speaker 1: this guy was saying, which I have a problem with
Speaker 1: regardless of who you're doing it too. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it's bad journalism, And like I would rather we point
Speaker 1: out rage at the people who are going to make
Speaker 1: this happen again unless we stop them. Yeah, like this guy,
Speaker 1: I'm this guy had the degree to which this guy
Speaker 1: contributed to this massacre by being this dude's dad. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone else he's going to push
Speaker 1: into killing if if he indeed did that, whereas people
Speaker 1: like to pool are going to continue to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I do want to say, like, like the
Speaker 1: Mormon Church does not get a pass for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that No, absolutely believably homophobic, Like absolutely, he's a
Speaker 1: ship super racist, like yeah, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people really haven't been talking about this, and they
Speaker 1: should because they fucking suck And yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is a you know, like, yeah, it turns out when
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of people like giving sermons about
Speaker 1: fucking musket balls, like this is what happens. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know they don't they don't get off the hook for
Speaker 1: this either. No, And they're like domination of politics in
Speaker 1: some areas, it really needs to be seriously looked at,
Speaker 1: talking of like domination of politics. I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about his grandfather a little bit, yep, because his
Speaker 1: grandfather is bonkers. So his grandfather is called Randy vocal
Speaker 1: Uh might be pronounced verpal um, but he's he was
Speaker 1: mayor of Santi. So Santi is a town east of
Speaker 1: San Diego. It's not not very far. He's I think
Speaker 1: Sharenia probably familiar with Santia, right, Yeah, Santi is a
Speaker 1: place that's that's about ye about it. People sometimes called
Speaker 1: it clanned. He definitely like Metzka was there for a while, right.
Speaker 1: And when Vopal was mayor in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: there was a school shooting in Santi about which he spoke.
Speaker 1: He hasn't spoken about this one yet at all. He's
Speaker 1: he's yeah, strange, that strange. He's pretty much gone, which
Speaker 1: is not like it when this guy speaks, he uh,
Speaker 1: he rarely helps himself when when he speaks to media
Speaker 1: who don't agree with every position he's on. So I
Speaker 1: want like, I want to ground like he became mayor
Speaker 1: of Santi in two thousand. In nine, a black marine
Speaker 1: by the name of Carlos Colbert, who was a large
Speaker 1: corporate in the Marine Corps, was beaten and paralyzed by
Speaker 1: five white men at Memorial Day party in Santy. Like
Speaker 1: and that doesn't represent the whole town, but was how
Speaker 1: people thought of that town. And in the early two thousands, right,
Speaker 1: the place it was always a place to avoid it, like,
Speaker 1: you don't really want to go there. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have friends who still don't want to go to
Speaker 1: Santi like um. I have friends who are like delivery
Speaker 1: drivers who are like black people who have been told
Speaker 1: like they used to not saying black folks deliver into
Speaker 1: Santi like. It definitely has whether or not that's the
Speaker 1: case now it's becoming more more diverse, I think, like ethnically,
Speaker 1: but it certainly has a reputation of being a place
Speaker 1: where it's not safe. And this is a place that
Speaker 1: elects him as mayor in two thousand right too, thousand one,
Speaker 1: they have a high school shooting, and he just kind
Speaker 1: of continues to spout some absolutely crazy stuff. It's probably
Speaker 1: worth noting that he's not as like, far from the
Speaker 1: like the norm of the GOP, which is still a
Speaker 1: long way from like good when it comes to like
Speaker 1: l g BTQ stuff, as he is for other things
Speaker 1: like his His probably his most famous crazy position is
Speaker 1: that climate change is good because most of our enemies
Speaker 1: live in I'm quoting now, most of our enemies live
Speaker 1: in hot climates, desert climates. It will probably have a
Speaker 1: negative effect on their environment. Most of the Muslim nations
Speaker 1: are in hot areas of the world. Honestly, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible. Did we did we find the world's first
Speaker 1: pro eco fascist? Yea fascist. I have met a few
Speaker 1: anti there's people who are pro climate change because it will.
Speaker 1: But this is this is like a whole other level. Well,
Speaker 1: there's dry us out weird. Do you want to know
Speaker 1: why he thinks this climate change happens? Good God. I
Speaker 1: believe about one percent of climate change is impacted by
Speaker 1: human beings. The rest of that should not rest in rest, buddy.
Speaker 1: It's solar cycles, quote, the natural wobbling of the earth
Speaker 1: and volcanic activities. Ah, this is this is the classic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple of good ones. I I personally
Speaker 1: partial to. We didn't have enough CEO two and climate
Speaker 1: change is the only thing that's going to save us
Speaker 1: from the CEO to shortage that. Yeah. Notable Other vocal
Speaker 1: bangers include I'm getting attacked out here by the Vietcong
Speaker 1: stealing my copper, and I don't like it that. It
Speaker 1: would be super funny if it turned out that the
Speaker 1: Vietcong had sent like a deep cover special spec opsy
Speaker 1: in it to California just to funk with this guy's copper,
Speaker 1: to pull copper just uh good, Um, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just a yeah, just a powerful example of happened? Did
Speaker 1: you lick lead paint? Like? Just an incredible boomer. So
Speaker 1: he was voted out in by a considerable match I
Speaker 1: think got about thank god, sorry this this so he's
Speaker 1: serving out. He just got voted out. Yeah, twenty years.
Speaker 1: How many he moved in? I think sixteen he moved
Speaker 1: into the California Assembly, so representing like this this yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: statewide office. This is there on the left coast California.
Speaker 1: It is It means one thing to people who have
Speaker 1: never been to the West coast, but have you been
Speaker 1: to the west coast? The conservative parts of California like
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. They're massive, and the Republican Party has
Speaker 1: absolutely locked in control. It is very difficult to remove
Speaker 1: to move them in places like there's there's more Republican
Speaker 1: voters in California the most states most Yes. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you wanted a slice of of like eastern California, just
Speaker 1: check out a Riverside County shore with jad Bianco's Instagram,
Speaker 1: where he mostly just rides around on a horse and
Speaker 1: criticizes COVID restrictions. But yeah, this is. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: something incredible poster. But this is I think an insight
Speaker 1: into like this side of California that people. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that everyone who lives in this county, of course
Speaker 1: is bigoted or racist, and there are lots of very
Speaker 1: nice kind people in his county. I know there are
Speaker 1: some anarchist communites out there, but um yeah, this vocal
Speaker 1: claims he hasn't spoken to his grandson for years. But
Speaker 1: this guy has been spouting this ship for twenty years,
Speaker 1: right like he became mayor of Santi in two thousand.
Speaker 1: That was when this shooter, old Rich was born. So
Speaker 1: like for his entire life, Vocal has been saying stuff
Speaker 1: like the conga stealing my copper. I mean it is
Speaker 1: it is true that this this person did grow up
Speaker 1: surroun ounded by a constant bubble of of homophobic rhetoric,
Speaker 1: dehumanizing rhetoric, and that that does shape the person that
Speaker 1: you are. Obviously that doesn't it doesn't mean you're going
Speaker 1: to go do the best shooting. There's lots of people
Speaker 1: who grow up in those environments who turn out to
Speaker 1: be very wonderful people. Um but but but yeah, that
Speaker 1: is definitely like the environment that you are raised in
Speaker 1: and around obviously doesn't obviously affects who you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: And yeah this the shooters posting like burning a Pride
Speaker 1: flag on on his very limited social media presence, right,
Speaker 1: and every time his granted had the chance, he's voted
Speaker 1: against rights. Yeah, he was raised in an environment where
Speaker 1: hatred of LGBTQ people was not just like present, but
Speaker 1: was used as the justification regularly for like legislative action.
Speaker 1: And he was also raised in an environment where all
Speaker 1: of them in around him would have praised violence in
Speaker 1: different ways, And the fact that he wound up doing
Speaker 1: violence against the queer community is not like surprising. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wasn't his dad also like an m M A fighter, Yes,
Speaker 1: UFC UFC whatever some yes, some sort of combat sport.
Speaker 1: He's also in a bunch of playing movies, a lot
Speaker 1: of poor movies, because I think a lot of things
Speaker 1: were normalized that we're just like, maybe not for other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a man who has no barrier between the
Speaker 1: two sides of his nose due to a lifetime of
Speaker 1: snorting every single uh chemical he can possibly get his
Speaker 1: hands on. Um, not that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his dad doesn't seem to be like entirely lucid into you.
Speaker 1: Um well, And the other aspect of this is that
Speaker 1: the shooter in Colorado was like a known figure as well.
Speaker 1: He wasn't He wasn't a nobody like people had. He
Speaker 1: did like a bomb threat last year, there was off
Speaker 1: with the police where he was in armor threatening to
Speaker 1: go out shooting. Yeah, that's I was really I'm really
Speaker 1: hoping the conversation shifts more towards him as a person,
Speaker 1: because I can only blame the family so much, you know.
Speaker 1: I He's done some terrible things, and I think that's
Speaker 1: getting glossed over by the fact that he has people
Speaker 1: in his family that are questionable. And I think the
Speaker 1: number one thing we should be pointing out, because I
Speaker 1: also don't believe we should be focusing entirely on his
Speaker 1: specific actions. We should be focusing on the fact that
Speaker 1: it would have been incredibly easy to stop this guy.
Speaker 1: He was the most obvious candidate for a mass shooting imaginable,
Speaker 1: um and nothing was done to stop this. Like that's that.
Speaker 1: The answer is that like whiteness is very helpful when
Speaker 1: it comes to hate. But yeah, and with crime and
Speaker 1: all of the time I've been following mass shooters, I
Speaker 1: can't think of one that more directly talked about wanting
Speaker 1: to do a mass shooting in a way that was
Speaker 1: immediately obvious to all of the law enforcement in his
Speaker 1: area and had already forced to response from them. There
Speaker 1: was absolutely And again for talking about his gun control
Speaker 1: always comes up in this. Colorado has red flag laws,
Speaker 1: like Colorado has the restrictions people say should be but
Speaker 1: the problem is that none of them were actually used
Speaker 1: against him, um anyway, And I think comes back to
Speaker 1: like again, the problem, like one of the largest problems
Speaker 1: again with gun regulation is that you you're relying on
Speaker 1: the police to enforce and the cops believe of the
Speaker 1: same ship that this guy does. So you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: they again letting these people come to pride like this,
Speaker 1: this is gonna great, go great for you. They just
Speaker 1: assumed he was an excitable boy and it was gonna
Speaker 1: be you know, he just needed to get it out
Speaker 1: of the system. That time he had a standoff with
Speaker 1: the police over a bomb threat where he talked to
Speaker 1: his mom about wanting to go out as a mass shooter.
Speaker 1: Like most yeah, yeah, should we should we take a break? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do you know what else? Nope, any, nope,
Speaker 1: it's just to break. Yeah, do some insulin. We're back.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone took insulin um everybody. It'll I don't
Speaker 1: know what it'll do. Look very hungry to sleepy and
Speaker 1: hungry pilled look James. As a podcaster, it's my job
Speaker 1: to tell people to take medicine, not to have any
Speaker 1: responsibility for what happens when they do. Well, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go fly up to Canada and get some free
Speaker 1: insulin and then come back smuggle it down that actually yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe consider just have them fill up your car. What
Speaker 1: are we talking about next? So I want to I
Speaker 1: want to talk a bit about the reaction to this
Speaker 1: on the right, because this is something okay, so like
Speaker 1: the far right's reaction to mass shootings has never been good,
Speaker 1: Like it's usually been like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: still unfortunate that it had mental illness. This is like
Speaker 1: the pills something like they are just pretty Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When I originally did this, right, I had a Timpool
Speaker 1: tweet that I had pulled, and then he made like
Speaker 1: every successive time we're about to record this episode, he
Speaker 1: had he makes another even worst so here here is
Speaker 1: here is the most recently. First, I do want to
Speaker 1: we have to. One of the things I want to
Speaker 1: try to keep in mind is we are more online
Speaker 1: than a decent chunk of our audience. Tim Pool is
Speaker 1: a guy who attained prominence uh live streaming during the
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street rallies. He kind of framed himself as
Speaker 1: a broadly progressive kind of liberal uh journalists. But he's
Speaker 1: like a skateboarder and he's doing ship. You know, he's
Speaker 1: live streaming a lot. He's doing, you know, experimenting with
Speaker 1: all these like novel ways of covering the news at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, we're talking like two thousand twelve. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people since then have pointed out that, like he was
Speaker 1: kind of a giant dick. It occupied and I know
Speaker 1: people who were there who fucking hated him, Like, um,
Speaker 1: he he had a big platform. As a result of that,
Speaker 1: he got hired by Vice for a little while. Um.
Speaker 1: Most serious journalists who have worked with him will point
Speaker 1: out that, like he's a giant asshole and like kind
Speaker 1: of not good at anything, and it's not very smart,
Speaker 1: doesn't really know what's going on, or deliberately obtuse I've
Speaker 1: heard people like anyway, Uh, he gained prominence as he
Speaker 1: kind of increasingly through the Trump years would lean in
Speaker 1: on hard right stuff while still claiming to be liberal
Speaker 1: and progressive, and just that he was increasingly lost by
Speaker 1: the progressives who have gotten anyway, he's just gone. So
Speaker 1: that he's he has a huge audience. He does a
Speaker 1: lot of like live streaming. So the primary way that
Speaker 1: like when I say that he used to do live
Speaker 1: streaming where he would show up at a thing. He's rich.
Speaker 1: Now he doesn't leave his his house in Maryland. He
Speaker 1: sits there and he like plays clips from the news
Speaker 1: and other people and then talks about them really usually
Speaker 1: wrong for commentary on it and has millions and millions
Speaker 1: of followers, and it's constantly and continues to platform people
Speaker 1: who are self described fascists, uh, far right people. Um,
Speaker 1: he's kind of he's like a he's like a vector
Speaker 1: point in that whole. He's very large, he's fairly influential
Speaker 1: within the social media algorithm of particularly Twitter. Um, he's
Speaker 1: able like his his he's able to get ship trending
Speaker 1: a lot on Twitter. So he's not someone you can
Speaker 1: entirely ignore. He hasn't he has an impact on like
Speaker 1: national discourse, and he's a lot of people on the
Speaker 1: right see him as a valuable person. He's had Alex
Speaker 1: Jones on he's hanging out with Kanye and Nick Fuintes now,
Speaker 1: which is what we're about to talk about. But the
Speaker 1: thing since, uh, since the Colorado Spring shooting, he's gone
Speaker 1: kind of completely mask off about the groomery thing, and
Speaker 1: most of his comments have been along the lines of like, well,
Speaker 1: these people were hosting a groomer event and so violence
Speaker 1: was inevitable. Yeah, and I mean like like what like
Speaker 1: that's something I mean, I'm just gonna read one those
Speaker 1: tweets to give like that that's that's not an exaggeration
Speaker 1: or any kind of reading of subtext. Literally what he
Speaker 1: said was quote it seems around ten pm, Club Que
Speaker 1: posted that they were having an all ages drag show
Speaker 1: the next day. About two hours later, the shooter came in.
Speaker 1: People keep calling for wood chippers, and this is what happens,
Speaker 1: like open like and this has been this a been
Speaker 1: a thing across the entire right, Like they're just there's
Speaker 1: openly either like very very openly celebrating this or you
Speaker 1: get you know, like this is one of like one
Speaker 1: of the things that because the gays are so degenerated,
Speaker 1: like Jimmy fucking Door has gone like just completely like
Speaker 1: like I literally started with like it started this thing
Speaker 1: on this with a giant rant about how like how
Speaker 1: like disgusting it is that like drag queens around kids.
Speaker 1: It's like they they are just openly into full scale
Speaker 1: just openly into the like we need to get these
Speaker 1: people killed. In some ways the most horrifying instant like
Speaker 1: this because this is the first time that the reaction
Speaker 1: widely on the right has been either this was a
Speaker 1: good thing, or this was this this obviously was going
Speaker 1: to happen because gay people are evil and are grooming children,
Speaker 1: so violence has to happen against them, and like that
Speaker 1: is that was That's such a popular sentiment on the
Speaker 1: right in the aftermath of the shooting, whether it's whether
Speaker 1: it's implied and whispered or whether it's just said completely outright,
Speaker 1: like it was a very clear consensus that this is
Speaker 1: what the Republican reaction was going to be, and anyone
Speaker 1: farther right of the Republicans like it. It wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't even just like a Nazi talking point it was
Speaker 1: just like regular Republicans in office, we're talking about this
Speaker 1: this style of rhetoric in response to the shooting. And
Speaker 1: for that reason, it's kind of the most horrifying instant
Speaker 1: we've had, um because you know, like in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of like the Pulse shooting, we did not have rhetoric
Speaker 1: like this mainstreamed in way that it is happening for
Speaker 1: the club Que shooting. It was a very very different
Speaker 1: response to the to the Pulse shooting. Also probably because
Speaker 1: the shooter there wasn't white, um, so they had yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, no, the problem here was immigration, right,
Speaker 1: and no for this, like he's like, he is obviously
Speaker 1: a white dude. Um, his lawyers are pulling bullshit to
Speaker 1: get his hate crime charges pulled, but like it's obviously
Speaker 1: it's it's obviously this white guy. And the rights responses, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was probably justified in doing what he did. And
Speaker 1: I feel like they're setting him up to be the
Speaker 1: next Kyle Rittenhouse where like he's just gonna become like
Speaker 1: this kid celebrity that I don't know if we're there yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: partly because he got the ship kicked out of him. Um,
Speaker 1: but I finished, no, not by police by a translator,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think you've made a good point. Like
Speaker 1: what they did get away with some ship with Written
Speaker 1: House that like I think they would not have pulled
Speaker 1: even five years before that, Like I think you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have found in people being like, yeah, he shot people
Speaker 1: in the street and this is good fuck them And
Speaker 1: it is like the slippery slipt fallacy isn't always a fallacy,
Speaker 1: but like you know, once you start there, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a massive leap to being like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: kid shot queer people in the nightclub and that's what
Speaker 1: they had coming, even if they don't make him a hero,
Speaker 1: Like I do think that that like the Overton window
Speaker 1: moved with Written House and it's moving again with this
Speaker 1: little fucker. Yeah, I think he's slightly too toxic to
Speaker 1: to go through that same celebrity status that Written Houses. Um.
Speaker 1: He also I can't speak. I think he's been like
Speaker 1: in his court appearances, he's like not capable. I think
Speaker 1: he's saying got eaten very badly to ship, which is
Speaker 1: the thing that you get the thing that scares me
Speaker 1: as like a potential Written House event, but kind of
Speaker 1: in the in the antique weird mesh shooter vibe is
Speaker 1: like you have some father or something who's separated from
Speaker 1: the kid and their other parent takes them to a
Speaker 1: drag queen event and dad shows up and start shooting,
Speaker 1: and like that's a thing that's a lot of easier
Speaker 1: to get the right to pile on. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the instance where that person now becomes a cultural figure
Speaker 1: in this way. That's more similar to what has happened
Speaker 1: with Rittenhouse. Um, and that just is like the hell scenario.
Speaker 1: And I think the other important thing is like they're
Speaker 1: deliberately trying to incite this, Like this is this is
Speaker 1: deliberate and like and there's an interesting thing like Nick
Speaker 1: Flints had this interviewing. I mean this is partially just
Speaker 1: this is just who fucking Nick flintys is. We had
Speaker 1: this thing after the election where he was like, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm like we we can we we we we like
Speaker 1: we we can't we can't take power by like like
Speaker 1: we we we can't actually get our agenda by voting.
Speaker 1: We have to do it by like theocratic fascism, right,
Speaker 1: and and I you know, okay, so obviously this is
Speaker 1: Nick Flints, but I think this is part of what's
Speaker 1: happening right now, which is that the reason that they're
Speaker 1: doing this, right, the reason that right now, the thing
Speaker 1: that they're trying to do was inside a jettocide is
Speaker 1: because they're fucking losing everything. They know it, right. Every
Speaker 1: single day, church attendance drops. It's been dropping for twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's never coming back, like nine eleven didn't do it,
Speaker 1: like Trump didn't do it. Nothing, Nothing is ever going
Speaker 1: to bring people back to these churches, like unless maybe
Speaker 1: they solve their sexual assault problem, but that's not like
Speaker 1: they structurally can't do that, right, So, you know, every
Speaker 1: single day religiosity drops in this country, every single like
Speaker 1: every single day, very slowly, and we have been doing
Speaker 1: this roughly for about fifteen years. Now we are winning,
Speaker 1: and this is what they're fucking terrified of, right, They
Speaker 1: have to move right now, like exactly in this moment
Speaker 1: is the is the moment they could exterminate us. If
Speaker 1: they wait any longer, they're fucked because they're you know,
Speaker 1: the base for this kind of sort of like like
Speaker 1: this specific kind of of Christian fascism isn't going to
Speaker 1: be there, like there will be other fascisms, but you know,
Speaker 1: every every every single day that they fucking wait, like
Speaker 1: another person leaves the church, and so you know, like
Speaker 1: right now, and you know, and they can't do it
Speaker 1: all totally right. We just saw that they got fucking
Speaker 1: destroyed trying to lean into the ship. Because and then
Speaker 1: this is the ever thing, right, like the everything that's
Speaker 1: been happening since the two thousands. And this is the
Speaker 1: thing that's very different about this moment than any other
Speaker 1: moment that has happened in US history is that the vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of people are are are pre pro crew wides,
Speaker 1: are prology bt Q or pro game marriage game marriage
Speaker 1: polls consistently in about right. And even with the ship
Speaker 1: that that hasn't moved in needle on it, right, they
Speaker 1: know that they have to right now, right, they have
Speaker 1: to fu kill us. All they have left is this
Speaker 1: solely have left. They they have they have no work
Speaker 1: action basically like it's like and they see no other
Speaker 1: viable way to mainstream this. And that's why we have
Speaker 1: hours after the shooting, lives of TikTok posting about queer
Speaker 1: events in Colorado, because they're they're trying to get this
Speaker 1: thing to happen. They're trying to do more trying to
Speaker 1: press the attack. Yeah. But but but but I think,
Speaker 1: I think, I think this is this is like the
Speaker 1: only thing, like this is a sign of their weakness, right,
Speaker 1: And and they're like, again, the the number, the physical
Speaker 1: number of people who are pushing this ship is not
Speaker 1: that large, right and and you know again like this
Speaker 1: is this is you know, I've I've I've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about how the silent majority in this country doesn't
Speaker 1: agree with this ship and like they're literally are not
Speaker 1: that fucking many of them. We can stop them, like
Speaker 1: this is an actual thing, Like you know, like there
Speaker 1: there there there's a limit to which we can even
Speaker 1: sort of talk about this. But like, okay, we've been
Speaker 1: doing community self defense like as as sort of like
Speaker 1: the big principle of the left sense of Trump era.
Speaker 1: We have reached a point where like, you know, we
Speaker 1: can defend ourselves, but if well, if we're limited to
Speaker 1: just defending ourselves, they're going to kill a bunch of
Speaker 1: us first. And that means that we like we actually
Speaker 1: have to start taking the fight to these media platforms
Speaker 1: where we have to start taking the fight specifically trying
Speaker 1: to get these people sucking off air and then you know,
Speaker 1: failing that, like fucking showing up and like blowing a
Speaker 1: fucking air horn in try a right checks like ear
Speaker 1: every single time she leaves her house. Right, because all
Speaker 1: of all of these people sucking, their entire lives depend
Speaker 1: on our labor. Right, Every single fucking uber they take,
Speaker 1: every single meal they eat, is all prepared by us.
Speaker 1: And you know we can fucking find them, and we
Speaker 1: can we can make their lives fucking hell if this
Speaker 1: is what they're going to do to us. Garrison, do
Speaker 1: you want to do? You want to talk about Focus
Speaker 1: on the Family? It talks and Colorado. Oh yeah, there
Speaker 1: was speaking of the kind of direct action Chris was
Speaker 1: talking about showing up where these people are and making
Speaker 1: it very clear that they don't get to pretend anymore
Speaker 1: to not be complicit in in murder. Um that that's
Speaker 1: a story. Yeah. Some some people did did show up
Speaker 1: at the Colorado Springs Focus on the Family headquarters. Um
Speaker 1: did a did a graffiti left some left some messages
Speaker 1: out front and posted a community ca of sorts. I
Speaker 1: think they called them debotic, which is pretty funny remembering
Speaker 1: the message written. The thing right, that is a weird place.
Speaker 1: It talked about how Satan this can the sky is
Speaker 1: himself as an angel light. That's that's talking about the
Speaker 1: types of like self righteousness that these Christian fascist groups
Speaker 1: put on and in but in effect they're all kind
Speaker 1: of murderous snakes. Um. That was people trying trying to
Speaker 1: use the Bible against these guys, which is funny in
Speaker 1: an ironic way. And I don't think they actually care
Speaker 1: because they don't atually care. I don't think they actually
Speaker 1: care what the Bible sets. They don't don't give a
Speaker 1: about what the Bible says, they give a shit about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's showing. But showing up and and and doing
Speaker 1: doing a little thing outside outside their headquarters is definitely
Speaker 1: a good first step. When when me and James went there, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like in terms of this is just an
Speaker 1: interesting an interesting comment, like police did not help at
Speaker 1: the club queue shooting at all, and they came back
Speaker 1: towards and they held and they you know, as as
Speaker 1: they usually do, they'll they'll they arrest the person who
Speaker 1: who who helped who help stop the match shooting. Um.
Speaker 1: When me and James went to the Focus on the
Speaker 1: Family headquarters last summer, Um, there was a Colorado police
Speaker 1: officer inside the building the entire time, um constantly. They're
Speaker 1: mostly watching me because I was the obvious, obvious outcast
Speaker 1: inside there. But that police are stationed at Focus in
Speaker 1: the family all the time to make sure nothing bad
Speaker 1: happens there. But they're not going to do ship to
Speaker 1: help queer people getting murdered. But they're gonna stay. They're
Speaker 1: gonna have a police car outside of the Focus in
Speaker 1: the family building and have have an officer inside all
Speaker 1: the time because that's what the police actually do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's like it is increasingly obvious if
Speaker 1: you have been paying any attention in the last decade.
Speaker 1: The only consequences that exists in this world as us,
Speaker 1: and you know it is in our hands to decide
Speaker 1: what the consequences for these people fucking attempting to inside
Speaker 1: a genocide are all that's gonna do it for us here.
Speaker 1: It could happen here until next time. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know until next time. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: It could happen here a podcast about things falling apart
Speaker 1: and occasionally about how to put them back together again.
Speaker 1: And today we have a special episode we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about a place where things did in fact fall
Speaker 1: apart and people are you could say, still in the
Speaker 1: process of putting them back together again and trying to
Speaker 1: do it in a way that is much more equitable
Speaker 1: and better than things have been before the collapse. That
Speaker 1: is Rojaba in Northeast Syria. UM. I'm going to introduce
Speaker 1: kind of that concept in I'll do it right now
Speaker 1: basically if you if you don't anything about this, you
Speaker 1: might check out our podcast The Women's War UM. But
Speaker 1: it is a it is an autonomous region, not a
Speaker 1: state in northeast Syria that is not under the control
Speaker 1: of the Assad regime UM or of any other state
Speaker 1: in the area. It's an independent UM community that is
Speaker 1: based on some pretty radical it's you know, it's organization
Speaker 1: is based on some pretty radical political philosophies UM, in
Speaker 1: large part ones that were sort of initially explored by
Speaker 1: a man named Murray Buchin, who is an American social
Speaker 1: theorist and anarchists anarchist political philosopher UM and some of
Speaker 1: his ideas were adopted by the leader of a militant
Speaker 1: group in the region called the p k k UM.
Speaker 1: And the leader of that group was a guy in
Speaker 1: a Turkish prison named of Doula, a Gelan who was
Speaker 1: you might say, a Kurdish freedom fighter. Um Augelon encountered
Speaker 1: bookstions ideas and started writing his own books of political
Speaker 1: theory that we're kind of based off of them. And
Speaker 1: then when uh two thousand thirteen, you get the Syrian
Speaker 1: Civil War reaches its kind of high, Isis becomes the thing.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the government's not in this area that has a
Speaker 1: large Kurtish population, Northeast Syria, and you know, people who
Speaker 1: are followers of Augelon takeover and start as they're fighting.
Speaker 1: Isis instituting this kind of radical feminist, egalitarian vision of
Speaker 1: society which is currently under attacked by the Turkish government,
Speaker 1: which is what we're gonna be talking about. So I
Speaker 1: want to introduce our guests for today. First off, we
Speaker 1: have James Stout and we have Chris on the call
Speaker 1: from our normal Cool Zone team. And then our guests
Speaker 1: today are Debbie book Chin. Debbie is a journalist and
Speaker 1: author and co editor of The Next Revolution, Popular Assemblies
Speaker 1: and the Promise of the Direct Democracy UM. And then
Speaker 1: we also have Megan Bodette from the Kurdish Peace Institute,
Speaker 1: where she is the director of Research. UM, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show, Megan and Debbie. Thank you, it's great to
Speaker 1: be here. Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you both for your time. I think maybe to
Speaker 1: start us out, Megan, UM, would you be willing to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about why the Turkish government is
Speaker 1: so aggressive towards this independent region in Northeast Aria and
Speaker 1: kind of what the situation on the ground is now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. For some background, essentially, since the division of
Speaker 1: the Middle East into the modern nation states that exist
Speaker 1: there today after World War One, with the agreements by
Speaker 1: European powers, the Kurdish people have been divided between four
Speaker 1: different states Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and all of
Speaker 1: those states have had governments that have been ethno nationalists,
Speaker 1: that have been repressive, that have not provided Kurds and
Speaker 1: other ethnic and religious minorities equal citizenship rights UM, to
Speaker 1: participate in politics and to practice their culture, to speak
Speaker 1: their language um, in addition to denying many of these
Speaker 1: rights to many of their other citizens of different ethnicity
Speaker 1: and religions as well. And so as a result of
Speaker 1: this repression and the repression in Turkey was some of
Speaker 1: the strongest and most systemic UM. The Kurdish people in
Speaker 1: these regions have continued to struggle for and demand self
Speaker 1: determination and freedom in different political forms. What happened in
Speaker 1: Turkey in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties, there
Speaker 1: were Kurdish revolts against the new um Turkish Republic, which
Speaker 1: was a very autocratic nation state that denied the existence
Speaker 1: of all non Turkish ethnicities. And these revolts were all
Speaker 1: violently put down with attacks that not only targeted those
Speaker 1: who tried to resist these policies of assimilation, but that
Speaker 1: also resulted in um Turkish you know, mass violence against
Speaker 1: Kurdish civilians in these regions. You had forced deportations, you
Speaker 1: had ethnic cleansing, you had all kinds of brutal violence
Speaker 1: against civilians in order to specifically create this homogeneous Turkish
Speaker 1: ethnic identity in Kurdish regions. And so after this period
Speaker 1: of time there were um there was a period wherein
Speaker 1: there was less resistance, and I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: Turkish government believed that the Kurdish problem had been solved
Speaker 1: by force, they had successfully been able to kill or
Speaker 1: assimilate all of the Kurdish people. But in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and the nineteen eighties, sort of concurrent with many
Speaker 1: national liberation movements around the world, you had the beginning
Speaker 1: of the PKK or the Kurdistan Workers Parties national liberation struggle.
Speaker 1: Now they began as a socialist movement seeking an independent
Speaker 1: and socialist Kurdish state, and they saw Kurdistan as a
Speaker 1: colony that was occupied by Turkey, and with the colonialism
Speaker 1: of Turkey in Kurdistan was supported by imperialist powers in
Speaker 1: the rest of the world as well, and they sought
Speaker 1: to write that as other national liberation movements in Africa, Asia,
Speaker 1: Latin America many places at the time did with an
Speaker 1: armed struggle for independence. And in responding to the PKK's
Speaker 1: formation and armed struggle, the Turkish state once again, rather
Speaker 1: than acceding to any Kurdish demands, they responded with brutal,
Speaker 1: violent oppression of not only Kurds who were active in
Speaker 1: the armed struggle, not only politically active Kurds, but on
Speaker 1: all forms of Kurdish identity. After the military coup in
Speaker 1: Turkey and nineteen eighty the Kurdish language was banned. Um
Speaker 1: Kurds were imprisoned on false charges or no charges at all. UM,
Speaker 1: torture was prevalent, show trials were prevalent. UM any kind
Speaker 1: of publication or other public interaction in Kurdish was completely illegal.
Speaker 1: So there was this full scale effort to repress the
Speaker 1: Kurds and any other progressive segments of society in Turkey
Speaker 1: that would have supported them, and as the conflict went on,
Speaker 1: Turkey did very little to change. By the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: the success of the Kurdish movement had forced the state
Speaker 1: to recalibrate, as had developments in Iraqi, Kurdistan with Kords,
Speaker 1: they're achieving autonomy and so you started to have the
Speaker 1: ability of Kurdish political actors to work within the system.
Speaker 1: We saw the development of pro Kurdish legal political parties
Speaker 1: at that time, but there was still very severe repression
Speaker 1: of any and all things Kurdish as they made their demands,
Speaker 1: even of those who increasingly attempted to make demands peacefully.
Speaker 1: So the conflict went on throughout the nineteen nineties and
Speaker 1: the two thousands and to this day UM despite a
Speaker 1: peace process between the Government of Turkey and the PKK
Speaker 1: and the Kurdish Movement between twelve and twenty fifteen UM,
Speaker 1: that process failed when Ridwan's government saw that it was
Speaker 1: allowing for Kurds to take advantage of expanded democratic space
Speaker 1: in Turkey organized and achieve electoral political success. The government
Speaker 1: abandoned its commitments and sadly returned to war, and the
Speaker 1: conflict has been going on ever since and has included,
Speaker 1: you know, again, not only this military component, but this
Speaker 1: component of crushing all forms of organized Kurdish political and
Speaker 1: cultural expression. So what we've been seeing in Turkey over
Speaker 1: the past um, nearly a decade, now more than a
Speaker 1: half decade, is the repression of the pro Kurdish political
Speaker 1: opposition in parliament, the People's Democratic Party or the HDP. UM,
Speaker 1: we've seen repression of Kurdish media, attacks on Kurdish journalists, UM,
Speaker 1: we've seen any kind of Kurdish activism, not only um
Speaker 1: that that's explicitly political, but any kind of acknowledgment of
Speaker 1: the Kurdish language, of Kurdish colors, of Kurtish clothing very
Speaker 1: readily criminalized. And this campaign of attacking and repressing all
Speaker 1: things Kurdish has of course expanded beyond Turkey's borders. So
Speaker 1: Turkey opposes North aneas Syria because the Syrian Kurds have
Speaker 1: created a form of autonomous governance that protects and promotes
Speaker 1: Kurdish rights because they have done so in the framework
Speaker 1: of the Kurdish Freedom movement that has its roots in
Speaker 1: Turkey UM and in Ochelan's ideas, as you explained, and
Speaker 1: because they've been able to create a successful alternative to
Speaker 1: the very sort of nationalist project that the modern Turkish
Speaker 1: state is based on. You know, I would say that
Speaker 1: the Turkish Kurdish conflict, and I don't like to call
Speaker 1: it that, but that is what most people call it
Speaker 1: today is really a conflict now over to competing visions
Speaker 1: of regional order with Turkeys based on the right ring
Speaker 1: wing neo liberal nation state and the Kurdish movement's vision
Speaker 1: of a Middle East based on self determination, liberation, equality
Speaker 1: for women, and other values not only for birds but
Speaker 1: for all people. So because Northern East Syria represents UM
Speaker 1: both Kurdish success and in creating an autonomous region, and
Speaker 1: it represents these ideas of the Kurdish Freedom movement that
Speaker 1: challenge Turkey's nationalist project UM. Turkey has been trying to
Speaker 1: destroy the Autonomous Administration of Northern East Syria by all
Speaker 1: possible means for a very long time now. They've invaded
Speaker 1: Syrian territory twice to attack the Autonomous Administration and the SDF,
Speaker 1: the Syrian Democratic Forces, once in a frena in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eighteen a frina Is in northwestern Syria, and
Speaker 1: then once in two thousand nineteen after UM, you know
Speaker 1: Trump and air Tawan's phone call that we all infamously
Speaker 1: remember in Sarah Kanyer and tal Abiad in northeastern Syria.
Speaker 1: So you've had these two invasions and occupations of UM
Speaker 1: North and East Syria territory that have included not only
Speaker 1: the terrible violence of invasion and occupation, but also all
Speaker 1: kinds of crimes against civilians who remained. We've seen uptakes
Speaker 1: in violence and abuse of women, ethnically motivated, religiously motivated
Speaker 1: hatred and persecution that's driven virtually all of the non
Speaker 1: Arab and non Muslim people living in these regions to
Speaker 1: flee their homes. Attacks on anyone who is perceived as
Speaker 1: having collaborated with the prior administration all being carried out
Speaker 1: by Turkey and Turkish back Syrian militia groups. So we've
Speaker 1: seen the persecution of the civilians in these areas with
Speaker 1: the intent of changing demographics and installing not only a
Speaker 1: government sympathetic to Turkey and the military structure sympathetic to Turkey,
Speaker 1: but also removing the social base for the Autonomous Administration's project.
Speaker 1: And then, in addition to these all out attacks on
Speaker 1: the Autonomous Administration in these regions, Turkey continues to threaten
Speaker 1: the territory that North Aneast Syria does have left, which
Speaker 1: is still nearly one third of Syrian territory concentrated in
Speaker 1: the northeast. There's been an escalating campaign of drone strikes
Speaker 1: targeting leaders in the Autonomous Administration and the STF, as
Speaker 1: well as Syrian civilians. Turkey is cutting water access to
Speaker 1: northern East Syria by restricting the flow of the Euphrates River.
Speaker 1: This is an agricultural region. People depend on that water
Speaker 1: for all aspects of life um and certainly for the economy.
Speaker 1: That's caused a great deal of suffering. The entire Turkish
Speaker 1: Syrian border is very heavily militarized. When you drive by
Speaker 1: it and you see the wall and you know, very
Speaker 1: lit up at night with the barbed wire and everything,
Speaker 1: and you just look at, you know, these civilian towns,
Speaker 1: very peaceful on both sides. It's something very disturbing to
Speaker 1: see UM. But it's a highly militarized border and it
Speaker 1: is completely sealed border. UM. Turkey does not trade with
Speaker 1: northern East Syria and supports an international economic blockade on
Speaker 1: the reed En, including by pressuring its allies to restrict
Speaker 1: the access of goods to North and East Syria. So
Speaker 1: there's economics they're going on there. There are really every
Speaker 1: tactic that Turkey is able to use, whether military, economic, environmental, political,
Speaker 1: or anything else in order to crush and destroy on
Speaker 1: with any serious political project and force the Kurdish people
Speaker 1: and the other peoples of that region to flee so
Speaker 1: that there is no base for such a project again
Speaker 1: in the future. Uh. They're doing everything they can to
Speaker 1: achieve that outcome. So the situation is very difficult and
Speaker 1: it is a direct result of Turkeys, you know, century
Speaker 1: old Kurdish question that it has been unable and unwilling
Speaker 1: to honestly and in good faith a peaceful solution to UM.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to it later, but the international community
Speaker 1: has played a very big role in ensuring that that
Speaker 1: conflict goes on with all of those at its consequences
Speaker 1: for Northeast Aria. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the so obviously Turkey is the second largest military in
Speaker 1: NATO UM and has you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that is such like so messy about this is that
Speaker 1: on paper and on the ground, in fact, the United
Speaker 1: States has been supporting the Autonomous Region um IN in
Speaker 1: northeast Syria and particularly the White PG in the White PJ,
Speaker 1: which is you know, the militia essentially um AS as
Speaker 1: partners in the fight against ISIS. And still to this day,
Speaker 1: right now, there's an operation going on in the Al
Speaker 1: Whole Camp, which is where a lot of ISIS prisoners
Speaker 1: are held. UM that is like a coalition supported operation.
Speaker 1: At the same time that the United States is doing this,
Speaker 1: we're selling weapons to the people who are have essentially
Speaker 1: declared the folks that are military has been aiding a
Speaker 1: terrorist organization UM, which is a peculiar in frustrating situation
Speaker 1: to say the least. Yeah. And and actually the other
Speaker 1: thing that's happening, Robert is that you know, Turkey, while
Speaker 1: it's threatening a full scale invasion, they've been doing all
Speaker 1: of these things that Megan described sort of on this
Speaker 1: sort of low intensity warfare scale. A kind of military
Speaker 1: strategy that uses a whole variety of tactics um that
Speaker 1: are short of you know, a full scale invasion, which
Speaker 1: still may come. And so you know, there's these extra
Speaker 1: judicial killings of uh, some of the leaders of the SDF,
Speaker 1: which is the Syrian Democratic Forces which is the sort
Speaker 1: of umbrella group of the two militia Kurdish militias that
Speaker 1: you described, and which also includes many Arab fighters and
Speaker 1: others who have who have been central and defeating ISIS
Speaker 1: at the cost I might add of about thirteen thousand lives,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, you know, and the and the
Speaker 1: use of their pro see groups like the Syrian so
Speaker 1: called you know s N, a Syrian National Army, which
Speaker 1: is really you know, a group of jihadi militias that
Speaker 1: Turkey has kind of assembled and now completely is responsive
Speaker 1: to Turkey and and is the sort of shock troops
Speaker 1: for when they went did go into Afron and for
Speaker 1: these other invasions, um, you know, economic pressures as Megan described.
Speaker 1: But the point is that this kind of warfare, it
Speaker 1: produces these sort of ongoing low level attacks, but it
Speaker 1: keeps it sort of off the radar of the of
Speaker 1: the bigger political and media machine, and therefore it keeps
Speaker 1: it from getting the attention that it really deserves in
Speaker 1: Western societies. It also has the impact of displacing hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people and and uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: and many hundreds have also been killed. I'm sure probably
Speaker 1: you're familiar with some of the recent bombings by drone
Speaker 1: that have been occurring in Rojeva, which you know, including
Speaker 1: many civilians, school children. Turkey. Turkey is doesn't care at
Speaker 1: all about about who gets hit, and they have been
Speaker 1: very aggressive, um, without any respect for civilian casualties as well.
Speaker 1: So you know, So, I mean, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: important to also just note that this democratic project is
Speaker 1: in Syria is a deep threat to Turkey because and
Speaker 1: and that every time Airdoan steps up these military sort
Speaker 1: of disaggression, um, it leads him to Brice slightly in
Speaker 1: the polls, which is something that's important to him because
Speaker 1: he has an election coming up next year. So there's
Speaker 1: that sort of political dimension to it. But the fact
Speaker 1: is that that Rojeva is basically a women's revolution. Women
Speaker 1: are involved in every aspect of running society there, the political,
Speaker 1: the social, the economic, and Turkey is essentially a femicidal state.
Speaker 1: You know it not only reviews women within within Turkey
Speaker 1: is less than human where husbands can basically get away
Speaker 1: with murdering their wives. But you know it targets girls
Speaker 1: with drones, as it did on August eighteenth when a
Speaker 1: Turkish drone bombed to you and supported education center for
Speaker 1: young girls and in Herseka and Roosjeva. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's very much, as Megan said, a war of
Speaker 1: ideologies as well. Again, one of the things that's so
Speaker 1: frustrating with this so historically, the reason why Turkey was
Speaker 1: it was so important for NATO to get Turkey as
Speaker 1: a member is because that's essentially NATO's eastern flank. If
Speaker 1: you're still thinking about that big theoretical conflict between you know,
Speaker 1: Russia and UH and the Western democracies. That was why,
Speaker 1: you know, part of why why initially like Turkey was
Speaker 1: such a valued partner, and then as time has gone on,
Speaker 1: it's um primary early I'm one of the big things
Speaker 1: is we have a massive air base in Turkey, in
Speaker 1: sirlick Um where a number of US nuclear warheads are kept. Um,
Speaker 1: so there's a tremendous fear cowardice might be a better
Speaker 1: way to say it, on behalf of politicians in the
Speaker 1: United States and other Western countries to actually engage with
Speaker 1: the ethnic cleansings UM and with the human rights abuses
Speaker 1: that the Turkish government, particularly under Air to one has
Speaker 1: has continued. And one of the things that's really frustrating
Speaker 1: about this, you know, if you think about the way
Speaker 1: in which ISIS was discussed by US media, was discussed
Speaker 1: by conservatives by Donald Trump during his campaign, you know,
Speaker 1: it was this ultimate boogeyman. Well, a huge chunk of
Speaker 1: the support for for ISIS and in fact, even logistics
Speaker 1: for some of their fighters came allegedly courtesy of the
Speaker 1: Turkish state. And there's some evidence for this. There's certainly
Speaker 1: evidence of support for wounded fighters and kind of a
Speaker 1: a lax policy that allowed a lot of people to
Speaker 1: come through Turkey and get into Northeast Syria to fight UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, as you noted earlier thirteen thousand, somewhere
Speaker 1: around there fighters men and women UM in the YPG
Speaker 1: and J died fighting ISIS in you know, UM, and
Speaker 1: we're you know, not just fighting ISIS kind of with
Speaker 1: the backing of the United States, but prior to getting
Speaker 1: any support. One of the most important things they did.
Speaker 1: The while ISIS was on the move in Iraq as
Speaker 1: well as Syria, they were carrying out an active ethnic cleansing,
Speaker 1: a genocidal operation in Mount Sinjar against the z ds
Speaker 1: UM and that was only really stopped because while they
Speaker 1: were fighting a defensive war in northeast Syria, the YPG
Speaker 1: sent fighters into Iraq to stop the genocide UM and
Speaker 1: they were successful in this. You know you talked to IS.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of y ZD survivors of the genocide,
Speaker 1: and I'll say the only reason we got out is
Speaker 1: because of you know, the YPG, UM and the PKK
Speaker 1: and the well and that is the it is. It is,
Speaker 1: so we should we could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the p k K. They are the the y PG
Speaker 1: and J and the SDF, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: umbrella organization, are not recognized as terrorist organizations by the
Speaker 1: United States or by most Western democracies. The p k
Speaker 1: K is recognized as a terrorist organization Turkeys. Allegations would
Speaker 1: be that the y PG and J and and other
Speaker 1: you know militias are just p KK affiliates UM. The
Speaker 1: reality is that they are in quite a fact, quite
Speaker 1: closely tied um Uh and you will, you know, but
Speaker 1: also there it's not the exact like when you're in
Speaker 1: Rajaba and you encounter people who are p KK, people
Speaker 1: will speak about them differently than they will talk about
Speaker 1: other people who are kind of you know, that they're
Speaker 1: the folks from the mountains is the term that I
Speaker 1: here use the most. But the thing is, see, here's
Speaker 1: the problem. The problem is that that whatever the p
Speaker 1: k K is, history is and has been and where
Speaker 1: more than we can get into, the p k K
Speaker 1: made a dramatic shift in its ideology and has done
Speaker 1: everything possible to try to restart peace negotiations with Turkey.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you know, there are several as
Speaker 1: Megan mentioned before, there was a peace initiative that went
Speaker 1: on for a few years that then everyone decided wasn't
Speaker 1: um you know, beneficial to him, so he stopped it.
Speaker 1: But the p KK, and as recently as I think
Speaker 1: a year or two ago, the leader of the p
Speaker 1: KK in the Mountains, right Najamil Bayek, wrote an op
Speaker 1: ed for the Washington Post saying, we want to have talks,
Speaker 1: we want to have reconciliation with Turkey. We're not asking
Speaker 1: for a separate Cornish state. All we want is some
Speaker 1: degree of autonomy. And and uh, you know, and and
Speaker 1: it's actually to the enduring shame of the Western media,
Speaker 1: including the New York Times, that they continue to talk
Speaker 1: about them as a separatist organization. But that's an other
Speaker 1: story as well. The fact is that these um ideologies
Speaker 1: that they both subscribe to p k K and the
Speaker 1: YPG YPG, regardless of whether to what extent they may
Speaker 1: be related, the political ideology is an ideology about direct democracy.
Speaker 1: It's about empowering people at the local level. It's about
Speaker 1: making sure that every adult and also the youth have
Speaker 1: a say in their communities. And it's as grassroots democratic
Speaker 1: as anything that you could ever imagine. And so really,
Speaker 1: you would think that the United States, you know, would
Speaker 1: understand that there's certainly no threat that the neither the
Speaker 1: YPG nor the YPGJ has ever shown any aggression towards Turkey,
Speaker 1: which is what makes this idea of a buff the
Speaker 1: idea that they need a buffers own kind of a joke,
Speaker 1: you know. So really it's it's an ideological shift that's
Speaker 1: so profound and so empowering to local people that it's
Speaker 1: also something that frankly, those of us who are on
Speaker 1: the left should be much more supportive of, I think,
Speaker 1: than than people have been so far. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the thing that is most remarkable because I spent a lot,
Speaker 1: I spent more time, certainly in Iraq than in Syria.
Speaker 1: And we should note here that we're talking about Syria
Speaker 1: today and we're talking about Rojava. Turkish aggression against particularly UM,
Speaker 1: against the p k K, but against you know, Kurd's
Speaker 1: kind of in an ethnic sense, UM extends beyond Syria.
Speaker 1: Turkey has illegally attacked Iraq and in fact moved troops
Speaker 1: into Iraqi soil a number of times, escalating within the
Speaker 1: last year, and killed a substantial number of people in
Speaker 1: the in the Kurdish regional government territories. UM. So that
Speaker 1: is also occurring here. Although it's it's worth noting again
Speaker 1: because people mix this up a lot, what's happening in
Speaker 1: Kurdish control Iraq is profoundly different from what's happening in
Speaker 1: Rojava and the extremely different political organization. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's also worth mentioning that it's not just UM. Curtish
Speaker 1: groups have been attacking in a rock There's been a
Speaker 1: bunch of attacks like after these Yeah, it's killed a
Speaker 1: bunch of those people too. It is the yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're doing the genocide again. Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's UM,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, you know, I uh, it's also kind of worth.
Speaker 1: The thing that was perhaps most surprising to me there
Speaker 1: was the degree to which people I would meet who
Speaker 1: were just like in many cases just like kind of
Speaker 1: you know, terrorism police assays guys, or people who are
Speaker 1: like working traffic checkpoints, are working in the farms. There
Speaker 1: were people were really careful to not refer or talk
Speaker 1: to like what the project was as a state. And
Speaker 1: it's it's not on a state a state, it's an
Speaker 1: autonomous region. That's one of the terms I heard the
Speaker 1: most is the autonomous regions, which is is really interesting
Speaker 1: to me. And it's it's hard. It's something certainly like
Speaker 1: mainstream media writing about it. UM seems to have trouble grasping,
Speaker 1: as you say, And it's it's interesting because obviously, Debbie
Speaker 1: and case folks haven't put it together. You are the
Speaker 1: daughter of Marie book Chin, who is the UM, who
Speaker 1: is the political philosopher whose ideas formed a significant like
Speaker 1: core of of sort of what the organizational structure in
Speaker 1: Roja is UM. Well, I just want to say, first
Speaker 1: of all, thank you for that. I also just want
Speaker 1: to say that I really want to remind everybody that,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, Abdullah Chellan read hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of books, not just my dad's, so I mean, I
Speaker 1: appreciate that, but you know they have he has really
Speaker 1: especially placed emphasis on the need for any revolutionary project
Speaker 1: to have the liberation of women at its core. My
Speaker 1: dad talked a lot about hierarchy and patriarchy, but Allan,
Speaker 1: by making women central, has really done something unique, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, in in the history of because in the
Speaker 1: history of sort of revolutionary movements, because as many women
Speaker 1: who have participated in those movements in the past can
Speaker 1: tell you, it was always sure, fight with us and
Speaker 1: we'll deal with the women's issue when the revolution is over.
Speaker 1: And a Gelant turned that upside down, you know, and
Speaker 1: he said it's got to be a women's revolution at all.
Speaker 1: And the women in those movements over there really fought
Speaker 1: for that themselves to UM. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that you know, it was most interesting for me to see,
Speaker 1: UM was when I would go into meetings there with
Speaker 1: women in all kinds of different you know, military and
Speaker 1: civilian institutions and different cities across the region that before
Speaker 1: I would even bring it up as a researcher, you know,
Speaker 1: women would say to me that if it weren't for
Speaker 1: A Gelan's theories, we wouldn't have the organizations that we had,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have the political power that we have. And
Speaker 1: they have this incredible articulation of how they use these ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, as inspiration for their own work and also
Speaker 1: as almost clitical cover to do kinds of things that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be accepted in other places because they can go
Speaker 1: to men who they work with, who might be suspicious,
Speaker 1: but who you know, have this public stated claim to
Speaker 1: this ideology, and they can say, well, Gelon's books say
Speaker 1: that society can never be free without women's liberation, that
Speaker 1: women's can have their own separate institutions. So they've been
Speaker 1: able to really take these ideas and expand on them
Speaker 1: and you know, push them and use them with their
Speaker 1: own practice. UM and the way that the ideas came
Speaker 1: about themselves. One book that I would recommend anyone interested
Speaker 1: in the Kurdish movement UM in Revolutionary Women's movements anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world, and really any topic related to any
Speaker 1: of this to read is UM, the autobiography of Sekina Johnson's,
Speaker 1: who was the only woman present for the founding of
Speaker 1: the PKK and was really instrumental in organizing both the
Speaker 1: armed and so billion sides of the Kurdish women's movement
Speaker 1: in Turkey. UM. There are pictures of her everywhere in Syria.
Speaker 1: She was assassinated in France in two thousand thirteen by
Speaker 1: Turkish nationalists affiliated with the state, likely suspected, you know,
Speaker 1: hoping to disrupt the peace negotiations that were ongoing at
Speaker 1: that time. But she's remembered everywhere in northeast Syria for
Speaker 1: her role, and you can see in her book her
Speaker 1: talking about seeing the inequalities that, as Debbie mentioned, women
Speaker 1: in socialist movements and revolutionary movements often faced where they
Speaker 1: were asked to, you know, be as committed to this
Speaker 1: struggle as their male comrades were, but we're still treated
Speaker 1: in very patriarchal ways by men that they worked with
Speaker 1: because of, you know, the patriarchy inbedded into these societies.
Speaker 1: And you see her talking about organizing women to overcome
Speaker 1: this um and when you look at the history of
Speaker 1: the Kurdish movement moving into what you see in Northeast
Speaker 1: Syria as well. You know, women were really able to
Speaker 1: do so much in practice that the theory had to
Speaker 1: move to catch up to them, and then to take
Speaker 1: this new incredible theory of you know, women's oppression being
Speaker 1: the basis of all oppression, UM and the form of
Speaker 1: oppression that you know, must be addressed to free all
Speaker 1: members of society in all ways. You know, they took
Speaker 1: this and they continued to expand it so in a
Speaker 1: very difficult place in context to do so. I mean
Speaker 1: we know that in more UM, there's more violence against women,
Speaker 1: there's more discrimination, there's more emphasis on traditional gender roles.
Speaker 1: That this holds true across different societies and different conflicts.
Speaker 1: So they have, UM that they face many challenges. They're
Speaker 1: up against a lot here, certainly, you know, with all
Speaker 1: the problems UM that they're facing in Northeast Syria because
Speaker 1: of conflict and poverty, UM, everything that Turkey is doing
Speaker 1: that we've discussed. So they're up against a lot and
Speaker 1: it's not easy. But they've really you know, they've come
Speaker 1: incredibly far UM and seeing how you know, they've taken
Speaker 1: very high level theoretical ideas and then done so much
Speaker 1: in practice, and how their practice and theory from each other.
Speaker 1: Um is really one of the most incredible things to
Speaker 1: see over there. Um. And it's another reason why Turkey
Speaker 1: wants to destroy them, because arid Land does not believe
Speaker 1: that women can be equal to men. Um. He does
Speaker 1: not see male violence against women as a problem. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, as we've discussed, Turkey and the Kurdish movement
Speaker 1: couldn't be any more different on this question. No, And
Speaker 1: it's UM, I think the thing because you know, going
Speaker 1: over there, I went with THEE as a journalist, where
Speaker 1: like I had heard all these things and and Rojava
Speaker 1: has kind of become among some chunks of the left,
Speaker 1: chunks of the left to cause celeb in part because
Speaker 1: of you know, the achievements of the revolution in that space,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see how legitimate is it? And Um,
Speaker 1: part of why you know I kind of went in
Speaker 1: with that attitude is that I had spent so much
Speaker 1: time in the Kurdish regions of Iraq and if if
Speaker 1: you remember when the fighting against ISIS was at its height,
Speaker 1: there was a tremendous amount of coverage of the female
Speaker 1: Peshmerga and the fact that you know, the Kurds in
Speaker 1: northern Iraq, who were the first force in Iraq that
Speaker 1: collapsed the least when ISIS was on the advance. Um,
Speaker 1: it's overstated how well they did. That's why the YPG
Speaker 1: needed to rescue the z e s At sinjar Is.
Speaker 1: The Kurdish military in northern Iraq just kind of bounced
Speaker 1: at that point. But um, you know I had heard
Speaker 1: about you know these that that this woman's right situation
Speaker 1: is great in northern Iraq. It's very egalitarian. There's women fighters,
Speaker 1: and it is it's certainly and anyone who lives there
Speaker 1: will tell you much safer and easier to be a woman.
Speaker 1: In the KRG, the Kurdish region like control Kurdish Regional
Speaker 1: Government parts of Iraq than it is further south in
Speaker 1: the country. But that doesn't mean it's it's good. It
Speaker 1: is it is more like certain things. There's somewhat more tolerated,
Speaker 1: there's more freedom, but it's still a very traditionalist society.
Speaker 1: And for example, I didn't see any al Peshmerga. Um,
Speaker 1: they did not make much of a presence on the ground,
Speaker 1: and and there their their involvement in the fighting was
Speaker 1: exaggerated somewhat as part of a conscious pr strategy. Um,
Speaker 1: as soon as you cross in to northeast Syria, you
Speaker 1: see women manning and running checkpoints stations you see as
Speaker 1: you go in because they're like you know, they like
Speaker 1: you get like passport and stuff like looked at and
Speaker 1: you get like stamps and whatnot. When you kind of
Speaker 1: come into the to the region, UM, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of women like running that part of the operation.
Speaker 1: You go in to the actual country itself and there's
Speaker 1: we we visited a restaurant that was run by a
Speaker 1: collective of women who had all lost husbands in the fighting.
Speaker 1: We ran. We went to a farm that was all
Speaker 1: young women who had left their families who were very
Speaker 1: traditionalist in their religious attitude. Um, and and go on
Speaker 1: independent and of course you see um female military units
Speaker 1: and female we saw mixed male and female like military
Speaker 1: policing units and stuff. And it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that if who are going there kind of with
Speaker 1: a critical eye to try and see how extensive the
Speaker 1: revolution can be, I can't imagine not being convinced of
Speaker 1: the reality of it, because it's it's just so stark
Speaker 1: well also Robert. You know, first of all, just to again,
Speaker 1: you could say a lot about what's going on in
Speaker 1: Iraqi Kurdistan, but just to very quickly sum it up.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a capitalist petrol state run by
Speaker 1: a plan the Barzanies, you know who who a crew
Speaker 1: basically all the wealth to themselves. And you can't even
Speaker 1: begin to compare it with with the kind of revolutionary
Speaker 1: project in Syria. So I mean, I just want to
Speaker 1: in case so people understand. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to use I hate to use the word socialist because
Speaker 1: it's such a it's so fraught, but you could the
Speaker 1: closest thing, you know, it's a it's built on a
Speaker 1: socialist economic model, except a better one, well more like
Speaker 1: what my father and what Abdullah Shelan have an mind,
Speaker 1: which my father called communalism, and this democratic confederalist model
Speaker 1: is based on cooperatives, you know, where people really do
Speaker 1: um have the means control the means of production as
Speaker 1: much as possible. I mean, it's obviously all you know,
Speaker 1: still in formation, it's still growing, and it's like the
Speaker 1: energy sector where things that you know are less like that.
Speaker 1: But are I hope in that direction. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously no, this is certainly not some kind of perfect
Speaker 1: utopian in the middle of a war zone. But but
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, what you see when you go
Speaker 1: there is women so active in every aspect. I would
Speaker 1: add to to what the great examples you gave the
Speaker 1: women's houses to talk about that right where they are
Speaker 1: literally resolving so many problems for both men and women,
Speaker 1: you know, at the community level, and and so it's
Speaker 1: it's really quite an extraordinary you know. I guess what
Speaker 1: I want to say about it is that like if
Speaker 1: if we all got on board of you know, one
Speaker 1: of that that Cretan elon Musk spaceships and found a
Speaker 1: colony you know where they were doing this, we'd be
Speaker 1: cherishing it. We'd be going, oh my god. You know,
Speaker 1: look at these people. They're like they have a cooperative
Speaker 1: economy and they have women's councils at every level. Wow,
Speaker 1: men can't overrule women on a decision that comes to
Speaker 1: say women's bodies. Think here the Dobbs decision right on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Women only women can can decide those
Speaker 1: issues that are related to women. And there there are
Speaker 1: councils at every level and people sending delegates, you know,
Speaker 1: meeting in their little villages and towns and communities and
Speaker 1: electing delegates to the next level. It is a true
Speaker 1: grassroots democracy, and it's ecological, and it's feminist. It's like
Speaker 1: if Ursula La Gwyn we're writing about it and the disgust,
Speaker 1: we'd all be going wow. So so really, you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that I think, especially anybody who considers themselves
Speaker 1: a feminist, you know, should be supporting. And and certainly,
Speaker 1: and I hope all of us do, you know, And
Speaker 1: and certainly anybody you know, I would think who's an anarchist.
Speaker 1: To me, it's pretty close to an every anarchist's dream,
Speaker 1: you know. And and so I think I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make that contrast with Iraq because I think it's
Speaker 1: really important. Really goes to why the Kurdish project really
Speaker 1: needs very badly the support of people in the United States,
Speaker 1: because in so many ways, the United States kind of
Speaker 1: calls the shots about what can and cannot happen over
Speaker 1: there if you look at the problems they have, you know,
Speaker 1: to all of that, because of course, all of these
Speaker 1: places are not perfect, and have you know, these serious
Speaker 1: issues alongside these serious achievements. Every issue that they have
Speaker 1: is an issue that any society would have if that
Speaker 1: society had been through ten years of war. Um, we're
Speaker 1: impoverished and blockaded from virtually all economic activity with the
Speaker 1: outside world, if they had had to not only you know,
Speaker 1: fight the occupation of a group like ISIS, but then
Speaker 1: immediately turn around to fight a state army much larger
Speaker 1: than them, you know, bent on taking and occupying their territory.
Speaker 1: A society where people fear going outside because they don't
Speaker 1: know if they'll be in the wrong place at the
Speaker 1: wrong time when they'll be a drone strike on a
Speaker 1: local military leader going around doing their job keeping their
Speaker 1: communities safe from ISIS, or a local political leader going
Speaker 1: around doing their job trying to you know, build this
Speaker 1: new system. So I think when we look at the flaws,
Speaker 1: their flaws that are the result of in large part
Speaker 1: poverty and conflict and all of the compounding crisis crises
Speaker 1: that the people of North Anyst Syria have to face
Speaker 1: because of what they have gone through, you know, as
Speaker 1: Debbie mentioned, much at the hands of larger powers. So
Speaker 1: much of what happens in Syria is up to what
Speaker 1: the United States wants up to what Russia wants, up
Speaker 1: to what Turkey wants. Um, all of these countries and regions,
Speaker 1: you know, with different priorities, different outlooks, but it somehow
Speaker 1: happens that at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: the one thing they can all agree on is that, UM,
Speaker 1: it's okay to sell out the autonomous administration, It's okay
Speaker 1: to have consequences for them. You know, if the Courtish
Speaker 1: people suffer, the zd people suffer, the people of northern
Speaker 1: East Syria, all of these different demographics, if they're the
Speaker 1: people who are victimized, you know, because they don't have
Speaker 1: a state, because they're fighting for something different, because they're
Speaker 1: challenging the status quo, it's okay if they're the ones
Speaker 1: who faced the consequences. We saw this, you know, with
Speaker 1: what happened with Isis. We saw this with the complete
Speaker 1: international silence when a fren was invaded, with the you know,
Speaker 1: piecemeal response that stopped the Turkish invasion in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: but allow them to convert what they were doing to
Speaker 1: this kind of low intensity war, um, you know, with
Speaker 1: a terrible ceasefire, you know, with undefined lines, and with
Speaker 1: these drone strikes being allowed in areas where Russia and
Speaker 1: the United States, both of which have agreements with Turkey
Speaker 1: are active, um, you know, and both of whom tolerate this.
Speaker 1: So essentially every powerful interest in Syria can agree on,
Speaker 1: you know, ensuring that the autonomous administration comes in last.
Speaker 1: And as people in the US, you know, anyone who
Speaker 1: considers themselves on the left, who considers themselves a feminist,
Speaker 1: who cares about persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, who opposes
Speaker 1: endless war and militarist foreign policy that props up autocrats
Speaker 1: and you know, props up far right regimes. Anyone with
Speaker 1: any of those values should be very concerned about the
Speaker 1: situation in Northeast Syria right now and should be looking
Speaker 1: at what we can do to UH, to get our
Speaker 1: government to stop supporting some of these very harmful policies
Speaker 1: against the region, you know, even while it claims to
Speaker 1: be supporting their fight against isis. What can people listening here,
Speaker 1: presumably most of you are in the United States or
Speaker 1: Canada or Western Europe. What can people listening here, particularly
Speaker 1: in the US, do they have an impact to help? Well,
Speaker 1: we could talk about that, Um, we could have an
Speaker 1: entire other podcast episode on that because there's a lot
Speaker 1: to be done. But you know, to summarize in a
Speaker 1: few words, the way that the United States supports Turkey's
Speaker 1: war on the Kurdish people, all the peoples of the
Speaker 1: region and the Kurdish National Liberation movement is through military
Speaker 1: cooperation and support, through diplomatic cooperation and support, intelligence sharing,
Speaker 1: and these pro war legal pretexts. So go tell Congress
Speaker 1: that you don't want them to send weapons to Turkey.
Speaker 1: There's an EP six team sale right now that um,
Speaker 1: it was really great to see the majority of Congress,
Speaker 1: including all of the squad members, people like AOHC. Rashida Talai,
Speaker 1: Bilhan Omar all opposed that sale. So opposing armed sales
Speaker 1: very important something that there's momentum there for um and
Speaker 1: that there's momentum among progressives therefore, which is very heartening.
Speaker 1: Opposing military aid and security assistance to Turkey. You know,
Speaker 1: I've done research on this. U S security assistance has
Speaker 1: trained senior Turkish officials, including the country's current defense minister
Speaker 1: and several perpetrators of the violent, repressive nineteen eighty military coup. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we should not be training coup plotters and war criminals
Speaker 1: that is not something I think most people learning this
Speaker 1: want their tax dollars to go to. So calling for
Speaker 1: an end to US security assistance to Turkey very important,
Speaker 1: in addition to ending those arms sales and challenging the
Speaker 1: pro war legal pretexts and designations that allow Turkey to
Speaker 1: get this kind of Western and support. You know, a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing that we saw a couple of weeks back
Speaker 1: was the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization
Speaker 1: in the US, saying that they oppose the terror designation
Speaker 1: of the p k K and believe it it should
Speaker 1: be delisted. That's something that progressive support very strongly. In Europe.
Speaker 1: We've seen, you know, calls from places like Ireland and
Speaker 1: South Africa where people know a lot about you know
Speaker 1: what terror designations, and you know, the criminalization of struggles,
Speaker 1: you know, can can have impacts on conflict resolution. You know,
Speaker 1: people who participated in these kinds of post conflict processes
Speaker 1: in some of these places saying get rid of the designation.
Speaker 1: It's harmful for peace. You know, it will be difficult
Speaker 1: to end this less violently without it. So that's something
Speaker 1: where you know, it seems the international case for it
Speaker 1: is something that's rather obvious, and where pressure in the
Speaker 1: US on the US designation to remove it would be
Speaker 1: an important step for facilitating dialogue and a negotiated end
Speaker 1: to this conflict. So understanding how the US supports Turkey's
Speaker 1: wars on the Kurdish people and opposing all of those
Speaker 1: different policies and programs as one of the most important
Speaker 1: things that we can do to say this war is
Speaker 1: not in our name. We stand with the people of
Speaker 1: northeast Syria, with the people in Turkey suffering from Turkish authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: with the people in Iraqi, Kurdistan, uzd S and Shngal
Speaker 1: being bombed by Turkish drones. When we say that we
Speaker 1: don't want to support this war, we stand with all
Speaker 1: of those people. Um And I think that that kind
Speaker 1: of action against arms, sales, security assistance, and pro war
Speaker 1: legal pretexts could be a really great base for solidarity
Speaker 1: opposing endless war in the Middle East and standing up
Speaker 1: for you know, peacefully ending this conflict. Um. And it
Speaker 1: would align us with progressives all around the world, and
Speaker 1: you know, people who really believe in in peace and
Speaker 1: in ending these kinds of things. And and if I
Speaker 1: could just add, you know, one one element to that
Speaker 1: would also be really pressing for a diplomatic solution to
Speaker 1: the whole so called Kurdish question, because Rojeva will remain
Speaker 1: in danger as long as air dewan And and his
Speaker 1: and his party think that they can basically that they
Speaker 1: have to be fighting Kurds because you know, to them,
Speaker 1: as Megan said before, Rojeva is an extension of their
Speaker 1: own Kurds and of the PKK. So what But but
Speaker 1: what really needs to happen, just as as it happened
Speaker 1: in South Africa, is there has to be a negotiated settlement.
Speaker 1: One of the things that would help with this, and
Speaker 1: there are movements that people can get involved with if
Speaker 1: they want, would be freeing a Chilan who has been
Speaker 1: in a sitting in a Turkish jail for the last
Speaker 1: twenty two years because he is sort of the Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela really of of the Kurdish freedom movement and he
Speaker 1: should be involved in these negotiations and was even while
Speaker 1: he was in jail. But really, you know, a jail
Speaker 1: person can't really do that properly. So pressing for a
Speaker 1: diplomatic solution because basically rat one uses the p K
Speaker 1: k UM and the listing of the PKK as a
Speaker 1: terrorist organization to basically kill all Kurds everywhere. And in
Speaker 1: order to stop that, somehow there has to be a
Speaker 1: break in this. And so I think that, you know, people,
Speaker 1: there are certainly plenty of peace organizations and people who
Speaker 1: want to work on peace, and I think this is
Speaker 1: a really important demand that they begin that the United
Speaker 1: States and the United States has nothing to lose by
Speaker 1: pressuring Turkey to engage in negotiations with the p k K.
Speaker 1: This is an hour war. The p KK has never
Speaker 1: done anything to the United States. It would make, as
Speaker 1: Megan said, for a lasting peace in the entire or
Speaker 1: Middle East, and would you know, And and so what
Speaker 1: I would say is, first of all, folks, would be
Speaker 1: great if people who want more information about any of
Speaker 1: this could contact the organization that I helped co found,
Speaker 1: the Emergency Committee for Rojeva, which is at Defend Rojeva
Speaker 1: dot org. And we have scripts to call congress Person's
Speaker 1: resources and we even have fun monthly meetings that people
Speaker 1: can come to. Um you know, and there's of course
Speaker 1: a lot of information at Megan's website also Kurdish Peace
Speaker 1: dot org. But you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: people could do is go out and talk to their communities,
Speaker 1: whether it's a religious community or a labor union or
Speaker 1: a food coop or your kids nursery school or reading group,
Speaker 1: women's group, and sort of talk and and help. Because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people so surprisingly really don't know
Speaker 1: much about Roojeva. I think maybe because there because the
Speaker 1: Zabatistas are a little closer geographically, that that project is
Speaker 1: a bit better known, you know, So talking to people
Speaker 1: and getting people engaged, and for example, if there's anybody
Speaker 1: listening from New Jersey. Bob Menendez is the chairman of
Speaker 1: the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he's been pretty hostile
Speaker 1: towards air to one and and keeping on him with
Speaker 1: phone calls emails is a great way, you know, for
Speaker 1: for our m As somebody who worked in Washington for
Speaker 1: a while when I worked for Bernie Sanders, I know
Speaker 1: that these guys listen to their constituents, you know, and
Speaker 1: if they get enough calls, they start to pay attention
Speaker 1: to those things that they come around. We could even get,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody to send a letter around to their
Speaker 1: colleagues in Congress saying, you know, it's time to start
Speaker 1: peace negotiations. Those kinds of things do have impact because,
Speaker 1: as I said before, unfortunately the United States is really
Speaker 1: at the helm and so many ways of what happens
Speaker 1: internationally in these geopolitical battles. UM. Well, thank you so much, Debbie,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Megan. UM. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: going to do it for us today. UM. Please, you know,
Speaker 1: continue paying attention to this. UM. Did you want to
Speaker 1: you know, Megan, did you have anything else you wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of kind of add um or let people
Speaker 1: know actually both of you would let people know where
Speaker 1: they can follow you on the internet. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that that about covers it. Look, the
Speaker 1: only solution for peace, democracy and self determination in Turkey
Speaker 1: and in the wider Middle East is a just and democratic,
Speaker 1: negotiated settlement to the Kurdish question. And I think that
Speaker 1: just as Debbie said, learn about what's going on, reach
Speaker 1: out to your communities, talk to your local Kurdish community
Speaker 1: if there is one, find the opportunities that there are
Speaker 1: to engage with people in Turkey, in Syria and all
Speaker 1: of these places, you know, working for peace and standing
Speaker 1: up for these ideas. And then no efforts too small,
Speaker 1: because ending this conflict would benefit everyone in Northeast Syria,
Speaker 1: everyone in Turkey and all of us here, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that our government was no longer supporting this terrible,
Speaker 1: unjust war. UM, So just get out there and do something. UM.
Speaker 1: To see the work that the think tank where I
Speaker 1: work UM is doing on this issue, you can go
Speaker 1: to Kurdish Peace dot org where we have research and
Speaker 1: analysis on everything related to do related to the Kurdish
Speaker 1: issue from all different perspectives, and you can check out
Speaker 1: our work there UM. And you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter UM Megan Bodette and the Twitter handle is at
Speaker 1: five underscores m j b excellent. My Twitter is simpler.
Speaker 1: It's just Debbi book at the the books and and
Speaker 1: again I just want to say that you know people
Speaker 1: we do at defend Rojeva dot org and we're also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at defend Rojeva. We have so many ideas
Speaker 1: and so much information about how people can get involved.
Speaker 1: Is making said, if nothing else, no more weapons to
Speaker 1: Turkey until they begin peace negotiations, give Rojeva political recognition.
Speaker 1: That would be another thing people can be demanding also
Speaker 1: that Curds have a place at the bargaining table and
Speaker 1: any discussions about the future of Syria. So we have
Speaker 1: all those kinds of ideas, scripts, as I said, model
Speaker 1: emails and more at defend rojeva dot org. Awesome, UM,
Speaker 1: thank you all for for being on and um yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to do it for us here. It could
Speaker 1: happen here for the day. Thank you for having us. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Ye hi everyone, it's James here, Welcome to It could
Speaker 1: happen here today. It's just me and we're talking again
Speaker 1: about the UC strike. But the audio is not great.
Speaker 1: We had some technical issues on my end, not not
Speaker 1: on Matt's end, but we wanted to put it out
Speaker 1: in one the list because we felt that was very
Speaker 1: important episode and things of developing very rapidly at the
Speaker 1: u S and we thought that a listeners would like it.
Speaker 1: So apologies for the poor quality of the audio. We
Speaker 1: hope you can get through it anyway. All right, So
Speaker 1: I'm talking today with Matthew, a literally the seven seventh
Speaker 1: to PhD candidate in the history department. Matthew, would you
Speaker 1: like to explain a little bit of who you are
Speaker 1: and what you've been doing with reference to the strike
Speaker 1: in the last three weeks and maybe before as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I studied Spanish history, like you said, a free empire.
Speaker 1: I've been at u c SC for seven years. UM.
Speaker 1: I do research in Spain for two years during the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic. So there was sort of great in my
Speaker 1: university of participation between my mind qual of buying exams
Speaker 1: for the three years I was there, UM, and then
Speaker 1: I left. When I came back and i'd go on.
Speaker 1: The campus was was quite different from both from COVID
Speaker 1: and from the increasing economic hardships UM. So in the
Speaker 1: last few year, UH, we involved in UM targeting UM
Speaker 1: trying to buy a new contract UM as I'm sure
Speaker 1: all your listeners are aware by this point. Uh not
Speaker 1: for more than a year, in eighteen months in some
Speaker 1: cases without a successful resolution, and with I know on
Speaker 1: bare labor practices on behalf of the UC administration. I
Speaker 1: saw in November fifteen, I believe it was to day
Speaker 1: we walked out on strength. I had signed up several
Speaker 1: months earlier to be a strike captain for the history department.
Speaker 1: I just assisted by a sort of the informable committee
Speaker 1: of five of the younger equals, sort of due to
Speaker 1: the pandemic of a lot of my colleagues, in my
Speaker 1: codeboord UM and we're not able to go do their research,
Speaker 1: so they're generally out of the country right now doing
Speaker 1: their field research. So we have a really great department
Speaker 1: of primarily first through third years that are participating UM
Speaker 1: and and leading younger. I also had signed up to
Speaker 1: be a ticket uh a ticket leader UM kind boiled
Speaker 1: down today. What I have been really occupying myself and
Speaker 1: saying has been uh being a food captain. So we
Speaker 1: have been cooking for about a hundred fifty people at
Speaker 1: our location on campus. UM. We've been getting lots of
Speaker 1: great donations UM food and nash and even real dusting
Speaker 1: that to feed hundred picketers. That's really cool. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's really nice to to bring up actually, because
Speaker 1: that we were speaking about before the core right, So
Speaker 1: many people are familiar with and supportive of the concept
Speaker 1: of unions and unionization and workers right, but I think
Speaker 1: relatively few people have actually been on strike and seeing
Speaker 1: what it takes to organize and all the little things
Speaker 1: you have to take care of. And so did you
Speaker 1: just step into that food captain role like kind of
Speaker 1: ad hoc Yeah, more or less night. I showed up
Speaker 1: on the first day and I realized we had been
Speaker 1: marching around and shouting ourselves for the grocery storey night,
Speaker 1: and I bought a bunch of water and that's sort
Speaker 1: of snowballed into cooking. Now we have about dat or night. Um,
Speaker 1: we rotate shifts and fild planning. We actually used the
Speaker 1: History of Parking graduate lounge. But yeah, you know that's
Speaker 1: st our experience of ticketting is for all the organization
Speaker 1: and signing up for different tasks that need to be
Speaker 1: more in hand, hitting around and seeing what what has
Speaker 1: needed to sustain that a level as has been a journey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet, but it seems to have been a lot
Speaker 1: to be a successful one. Like everyone is out energetic. Um,
Speaker 1: there have been some really impressive actions actually, like I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're part of the village drive shut down,
Speaker 1: I know what you want to call that yesterday, But
Speaker 1: did you take part in that? No? I was, I was,
Speaker 1: I was okay, yeah yeah, the people who were amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. We actually found a faculty spy in the
Speaker 1: eight before who went in and asked what time that
Speaker 1: was one game? I'm sort of uh, our window. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of direct action and it's been very
Speaker 1: successful for the moral perspective and the conversation. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're a where we uh approached Chancellor Goldslaw yesterday the
Speaker 1: day before and even though obviously we didn't get a
Speaker 1: promise from him that he would raise our wages until
Speaker 1: President Drake to raise our wages. Uh, it was you know,
Speaker 1: very energizing for people who have you been been not
Speaker 1: able to show up because things give me great or
Speaker 1: involved between their people with direct nations is one of
Speaker 1: our strong suits at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is wonderful to see actually, like so many of
Speaker 1: us spent so much of our lives like studying workers
Speaker 1: movements and unionization and strikes, and it's cool to see
Speaker 1: people walking the talk out a little bit also very
Speaker 1: import What are the really great things about going on
Speaker 1: strike with a bunch of you have the smartest minds
Speaker 1: and in practically every feble to get you know, com
Speaker 1: in patients that are are working on emails and erst philosophy,
Speaker 1: you know, being phlosophers, are you know, quoting working class
Speaker 1: movements of the past of shape our strategy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a cool thing to see. And I remember a
Speaker 1: long time ago in like and when the last time
Speaker 1: we were on strike, and yeah, it was very cool.
Speaker 1: One of the professors I was working with with a
Speaker 1: lit professor, and she came and read some stuff and
Speaker 1: then you know, I made people listen to me talking
Speaker 1: about the Ruti for a while and I enjoyed myself,
Speaker 1: even if maybe they didn't. So yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit as well about like you're in
Speaker 1: week three now and you said, like you've been maintaining
Speaker 1: the energy and you're feeding people, which is great. How
Speaker 1: has obviously, like strikes come with an element of economic
Speaker 1: hardship and that that's somewhat offset by union strike funds,
Speaker 1: but it's given the economic procarity of people who are
Speaker 1: graduate students anyway, it could be really tough. So how
Speaker 1: has that been with not quite a December first yet?
Speaker 1: Which would that be the first miss paycheck? If people
Speaker 1: are going to not get paid, yes, uh we are.
Speaker 1: Most of us could vince that the you see, will
Speaker 1: not have gotten their their house in order by this point.
Speaker 1: We were working until November fifteen, so at least you
Speaker 1: kind to have a month to day. But because there's
Speaker 1: no real way or you see, to determine exactly which
Speaker 1: workers are withholding labor and exactly which workers runs right,
Speaker 1: It seems like the majority of workers will be receiving
Speaker 1: their first that there there no venay check UM tomorrow.
Speaker 1: We have also been receiving the striker system the SPROM
Speaker 1: communion w UM. We're all aware that if we do
Speaker 1: receive our p check from the university, you will have
Speaker 1: to return that money, so that you will you sure
Speaker 1: uh strength assistance um and we're cutting large okay with
Speaker 1: that uh you know thats iound out between that we'll
Speaker 1: actually do meet for it makes me a they they
Speaker 1: noble the strength existance sort of holiday okay, So for
Speaker 1: this month long way or another, UM, we are all
Speaker 1: very hopeful that will be able to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: UH next month is is you know if the strike
Speaker 1: does continue, um sort of which that will have to cross.
Speaker 1: I was spoken to a lot of words and the
Speaker 1: intitute parte who are very concerned about about this achex uh,
Speaker 1: particularly also from the program that I teach for the
Speaker 1: Making of the Modern World, which recruits heavily from the
Speaker 1: history of parts has a non student t A s
Speaker 1: and are not covered by the union and are not
Speaker 1: uh I whish hortor strike fully their labored solidarity, but
Speaker 1: they're very concerned that uh, you know, they're primarily working
Speaker 1: as their full time job. That's tough. Actually, I've taught
Speaker 1: that program to both as a student and a non student,
Speaker 1: and it's a good program, but it doesn't pay a
Speaker 1: ton and you don't save a lot of money living
Speaker 1: in southern California, so it could be tough. Is there
Speaker 1: a way to contribute people want to contribute to those
Speaker 1: people who are sort of withholding labor and solidarity. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we are. There is a U A W strike
Speaker 1: hardship funds have yeah, yeah, I'll including the note people.
Speaker 1: And there's also avent mode that we're in checting donations
Speaker 1: for which the natural that's on the US embassy momently
Speaker 1: that just overwhelmed with good willing si you know, depending
Speaker 1: on how on the strike, those would definitely be something
Speaker 1: like large protect support anything I think that the public
Speaker 1: of large and be doing is concerning the pressure on
Speaker 1: the to uh age. Yeah, and yeah, I hope they
Speaker 1: continue to do so. And let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about everyone we've talked to so far has been a
Speaker 1: science or engineering person, and obviously the experience is a
Speaker 1: little different when you're a historian or upt so humanities person.
Speaker 1: Because you you don't go to a lab, right you don't,
Speaker 1: your research is a bit different and your work is
Speaker 1: a bit different. So can you explain a little bit
Speaker 1: about the work the work that one does as a
Speaker 1: history grad student, that the labor that one does for
Speaker 1: the university, and and that what the differences in what
Speaker 1: it's like withholding that labor. The differences is that we
Speaker 1: we are the vast majority of us that are in
Speaker 1: the industry department are A S S. We are t
Speaker 1: A and of the majority of us teach for either
Speaker 1: the writing programs for for the history department. UM. So
Speaker 1: when we look at what we can contribute to the strike,
Speaker 1: we are looking at the withholding only a grade, the
Speaker 1: type of grading that cannot be replaced the course I
Speaker 1: tacheen or now there's five or six E A S.
Speaker 1: There's six hundred and fifty students. I'm responsible for sixty
Speaker 1: of those tents. Each of those students has a weekly
Speaker 1: discussion uh animalism five six hundred words. They have a
Speaker 1: content analysis papers which there's now two of them arenessing.
Speaker 1: Those are things that can that cannot be reverted to
Speaker 1: hold choice and to writing. It's not a formula. It's
Speaker 1: not something that be easily UH place. We are aware
Speaker 1: that there has been some tension in terms of strategic
Speaker 1: planning between the A S S and and S are
Speaker 1: using in the STEM fields. UH that on the one hand,
Speaker 1: in their in their teaching duties, UM, they are very
Speaker 1: great that their professors will be able to co opt
Speaker 1: the teaching process. UM, I make the exams will choice
Speaker 1: or or something else. And I'm not how that would work.
Speaker 1: I know that that's just not really possible. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: uh in humanities UM. And the other the issue which
Speaker 1: can I you don't really speak to, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: your other contributors have explained this is we don't work
Speaker 1: in labs. Are researching is a much more long term
Speaker 1: We primarily that research either in uh the an absent
Speaker 1: SIA during this warrior with external fellowships or during the summer,
Speaker 1: whereas SR used and to be working in their labs
Speaker 1: more or less constantly. I've heard it said that one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that SR use are RUDD to be
Speaker 1: less uh committed to a long term strike is because
Speaker 1: missing two weeks in a lab since that back by
Speaker 1: six months in their career or for the mass majority
Speaker 1: of humanities uh A S C. S and I talked
Speaker 1: to two weeks is is very to be picked up
Speaker 1: if you're reading a book in hers fair time, and
Speaker 1: it's not something that we need to be in with
Speaker 1: buns and burners and to animals. So there seems to
Speaker 1: be uh material conditions divide us an scus on one
Speaker 1: an the standing humanities Faunda, Right, yeah, yeah, there were
Speaker 1: definitely like two week periods I spent on my research
Speaker 1: and stuff that I never used in any of my
Speaker 1: final projects. We could trying to get an archive to
Speaker 1: open in Spain you can often take that long. So
Speaker 1: I think one thing I'd like to talk about is
Speaker 1: like the as it stands now, what you're hearing from
Speaker 1: the bargaining team and how that's being received. Like I know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different demands, a lot of
Speaker 1: different things that brought people to strike, right, the access
Speaker 1: needs to COLA, the NFL labor practices, etcetera, etcetera. Who
Speaker 1: what are you hearing on the picket line and how
Speaker 1: is it being received? So the news for the first
Speaker 1: week was on date bo the s r U bargaining
Speaker 1: team to accept a seven percent yearly increase cerviuss he
Speaker 1: adjustment that would be paid and I believe for the
Speaker 1: median uh rent an increase in I think in the
Speaker 1: most expensive cities to help working commune San Diego and
Speaker 1: answer system UM. And to be honest, the strike was
Speaker 1: sold to the vast majority of of the uh N
Speaker 1: radicalized on fund educated rank and file as being about
Speaker 1: the fifty four thousand base paying as well as the
Speaker 1: access needs as well as uh you know, uh here
Speaker 1: in the timer employment for some units, UM and various
Speaker 1: different things. But there was a lot of consternation in
Speaker 1: on day four, and I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: became very radicalized, UM when we realized that, not only
Speaker 1: at the SRU bargaining team, apparently the concession on day
Speaker 1: four of what was what was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: very powerful strike, UM, but that concession didn't really resolve
Speaker 1: the issue of skyrocketing inflation and rent process and um,
Speaker 1: you know, different campuses weighing in the saying beyond Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz event went up something like sixty percent in the
Speaker 1: last year. I'm seven black increase doesn't help us at all.
Speaker 1: Like the University of California, the largest employer and the
Speaker 1: largest landlord the state of California is raising you know,
Speaker 1: their wages by a black rate, and then all the
Speaker 1: landlords in that area will continue to raise wag of
Speaker 1: a rent even higher. UM. So a lot of us
Speaker 1: who were really I wasn't around for the two thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty Cola wildcat strike. UM. But in the process
Speaker 1: of this consternation of the s r u BT giving
Speaker 1: up this uh whole out and space to the media
Speaker 1: evnt UM, a lot of us we think very uh
Speaker 1: I also disillusioned, but very radicalized and UM start looking
Speaker 1: into it more uh HU identities. I could say that
Speaker 1: our thinketline where we have a philosophy, literature, UH history
Speaker 1: UM A number of other regulated departments. Who's very militant. UH.
Speaker 1: That was the first kind of moment of uh consciousness
Speaker 1: of awareness I think for a lot of us UM.
Speaker 1: And over the last week is the last two weeks, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of internal UM struggle over over tactics and strategy,
Speaker 1: whether it's reasonable to expect that we can hold out
Speaker 1: for our aimed the bargaining teams on our campus at
Speaker 1: least and there are exceptions UM have had generally have
Speaker 1: generally advanced a sort of moderate line that yeah, before
Speaker 1: a thousand is high in the sky is great to me.
Speaker 1: But you know, the way the bargaining works is is
Speaker 1: you walk or something high and you can get something low.
Speaker 1: I think we're all, you know, willing to accept that
Speaker 1: that is how bargaining works. But we have, at least
Speaker 1: in my figure mine, at least in the humanity has
Speaker 1: been very uncerted by the tactical decisions to make certain
Speaker 1: possessions at certain stages without letting the full power of
Speaker 1: our strike take hold, especially the reholding of brains, which
Speaker 1: is ing out this week an text week. UM. Another
Speaker 1: thing which you know, most of us have not been
Speaker 1: on the bargaining team, and a lot of us are
Speaker 1: just kind of checking me in, uh to this this
Speaker 1: very long term process. Pretty late the game, we watched
Speaker 1: these bargaining and processions and see what you see he's
Speaker 1: offering definitely just not seem like the bargaining strategy of
Speaker 1: operating session or to get something else there it is
Speaker 1: working at home. UM. I think made some compromises on
Speaker 1: accessibility needs in the hopes that would provoke the u
Speaker 1: SEE to offer a contragensive economic package. Last TEA included
Speaker 1: the one white five percent increase for the s R
Speaker 1: U S proposal and nothing for the A s C S. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's a that's you're still a long way apart then,
Speaker 1: so in both, in both the reprouple of Pola on
Speaker 1: date four, bargaining, I think there's real concern that the
Speaker 1: bargaining team is getting the short end of stay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough if people don't remember from last time. By
Speaker 1: the way, color is the cost of living adjustment that
Speaker 1: was the initial cause of the weldcats right, YESLA is
Speaker 1: possibility adjustment and there is a lot of um uh
Speaker 1: really in justesting discorse from out what that people are changing.
Speaker 1: No hola, no contracts data mind. COLA has as meetings
Speaker 1: specifically a yearly percentage increase that is tied to exmedient
Speaker 1: rent exmedian man, whereas party team has had argued that
Speaker 1: a seven percent yearly increased qualify as form right, but
Speaker 1: maybe less than inflation given certainly less in rent, given
Speaker 1: what rent has done in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: And these universities are in very desirable places to live
Speaker 1: with very high rents. They don't offer subsidut or they
Speaker 1: didn't offer significantly subsidized housing, especially to grad students often
Speaker 1: assescially not to all grad students, and so yeah, it
Speaker 1: becomes very difficult to live even on what would seem
Speaker 1: like a decent wage and unless you want to commute
Speaker 1: a long way something like and I have the story
Speaker 1: and I political Sciences that the vast majority of graduate
Speaker 1: streets through report said that they were event burned to
Speaker 1: them by signed for there anyone to meant most people
Speaker 1: not to its more like sementins. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: you can find yourself in that situation working for the
Speaker 1: university and with the university also as your landlord, and
Speaker 1: you're paying the Sciences, which you know it has control
Speaker 1: over both ends, and it's not doing much to help anyone.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about withholding grade because that's coming up, right,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the next level of escalation, I suppose,
Speaker 1: or like that the next hurdle um that's coming up.
Speaker 1: So what do is withholding grades look like? Can and
Speaker 1: can you explain why there's sort of a pedagogical reason
Speaker 1: that people would be obviously like worried about doing that
Speaker 1: or so it's this sort of barrier and what it
Speaker 1: would do to the university and what it would do
Speaker 1: to your students as well. Yes, so fundamentally, the with
Speaker 1: holding grades is the withholding of the alternate finishing product
Speaker 1: of our labor. Uh. We can talk about pedagogy and
Speaker 1: ideology and and you know, high the Ivory Tower rush
Speaker 1: as we want, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: when when UH undergraduate at the University of California pays
Speaker 1: their fruition, they expect to get grades and transcripts in return.
Speaker 1: And the reputation of that, you see that makes it
Speaker 1: one of the premier public institutions in the world is
Speaker 1: that that grading uh is is accredited to be reflective
Speaker 1: a very high quality and of education. We are saying
Speaker 1: that we are not providing that old tomate. The record UM,
Speaker 1: which any end is is you know, uh, what a
Speaker 1: student would uh demonstrate if they were applying to graduate school, UH,
Speaker 1: if they were um b d internship, really anything that
Speaker 1: uh reflax their college experience, UH would be hide that great.
Speaker 1: We are also saying that, you know, in addition to
Speaker 1: that very brutal kind of explicit uh, the result uh
Speaker 1: the pedagogy itself is also it's not that you know,
Speaker 1: students are here to learn and and they might complain
Speaker 1: in an individual class, but by largely do get a
Speaker 1: lot from their education. And if they're not being actively
Speaker 1: taught by their teaching assistance, UM, they're suffering. In the
Speaker 1: MMW program that you and I vote up for. The
Speaker 1: lectures are but they're very you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a very large lecture hall. It's kind of a general
Speaker 1: just the vast majority of instruction, both in the historical
Speaker 1: cultural UH content of the course as well as in
Speaker 1: the UH the writing UH aspect, which is the point
Speaker 1: of the program to deploy skilled analytical academic writers UM,
Speaker 1: and they are not getting that at all. That's something
Speaker 1: that's a burden that is carried on under present by
Speaker 1: the t A s and by holding that and UH,
Speaker 1: it prevents the students from receiving equality education essentially. So
Speaker 1: you're hoping that, particularly in the humanities, where our LABORI
Speaker 1: is comply irreplaceable, UM, that will pressure the university. Now
Speaker 1: we have been hearing that UM some universities have been
Speaker 1: given the laterally extending the deadline for final bids. And
Speaker 1: I believe that UH either Riverside or Irvine, and just
Speaker 1: a message about this kind of extended January. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of confusion about what that would entail it.
Speaker 1: You know, the strike is over and we all go back.
Speaker 1: We then not to facto. Um. It seems like some
Speaker 1: faculty have either in solidarity or are in uh desperation,
Speaker 1: decided to final exam change the format of those exams.
Speaker 1: Um we are I think that group the most afraid
Speaker 1: that the university will uh ran some sort of doesn't
Speaker 1: how everybody gets pass. If it would, it would theory
Speaker 1: weaken the union's power, but it would also weaken the universities. Yea,
Speaker 1: to require those rates to uh progress de college education
Speaker 1: in their life, it would be a huge low for
Speaker 1: them to receive not a letter date, Um yeah, just ape.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there would be a massive step for the
Speaker 1: university to take in undermining their own status and the
Speaker 1: well being of their students. Right Like if you have
Speaker 1: a required class or required great in a certain class
Speaker 1: to progress to graduate school or to breas to a
Speaker 1: vocational degree, then um yeah, that that would make it.
Speaker 1: They could have long term implications for those students, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a big step for them. So will
Speaker 1: I suppose Yeah, that's interesting if they extend it what
Speaker 1: are you required to go back and redo. That's a
Speaker 1: huge amount of labor that you would then be doing
Speaker 1: in a very compact amount of time. Two grade three
Speaker 1: MW assignments is an endurance challenge. Great normally due in
Speaker 1: like mid December. Is that still the case, UCSD right now?
Speaker 1: This is this is weekend? Yeah, the clock is taking
Speaker 1: So how does the how does this strike look if
Speaker 1: you go past week ten? Right? If you go not
Speaker 1: just in terms of withholding grades, but obviously campus is
Speaker 1: very different when the undergrads aren't there. I don't think
Speaker 1: really we have discussions about whether or not we're in
Speaker 1: it for the long haul. We are, I think at
Speaker 1: the moment, hedging our bets on the next two weeks
Speaker 1: being in some ways decisive. There are a fashion uh
Speaker 1: you know, the once finals are are over, are power
Speaker 1: dramatically weakens. I'm certainly give the UC decided to uh
Speaker 1: by us the rating for this seemed like that would
Speaker 1: be a happen hosist. I'm not convinced that they would
Speaker 1: do that. Um In I do the longer that we
Speaker 1: withhold those rates, um the look you have the leverage,
Speaker 1: I don't think the US will just throw up their hands.
Speaker 1: You know, well be done to find and say, oh,
Speaker 1: well it's right off, see you next quarter. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they have been back trying to hold you out.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know, like to close out what you've
Speaker 1: learned through the the three in a bit weeks you've
Speaker 1: been on strike, and what you think like people should
Speaker 1: take from this, Like it's an unprecedented era for workers
Speaker 1: organization in the last thirty years. We've seen more strikes
Speaker 1: in the last few years and we have in decades.
Speaker 1: So what can people learn from the UC experience? Yes? Absolutely, UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I have learned which is
Speaker 1: very salient in my mind. UM, as somebody who started
Speaker 1: organizing about three or four months before the strike, I
Speaker 1: was approached to uh be a strikethapton and thinking later
Speaker 1: I went to various trainings, I h sat in on
Speaker 1: campus organizing compete meetings, UH and the the ship we
Speaker 1: were given kind of before the strike began was that
Speaker 1: we had an incredible amount of power the strike gratification vote,
Speaker 1: where UH we uh more than three quarters of the
Speaker 1: graduate students voted overwhelmingly in the many percentile to strike.
Speaker 1: We all went in with a very powerful sense of
Speaker 1: the historic nature of the strike and our our our
Speaker 1: bargains power in our solidarity UM that seemed to be
Speaker 1: treated by any of the un we d ship as
Speaker 1: a finite resource, as something that we want of us
Speaker 1: full to trigger on sent the workers out hope growers
Speaker 1: part resolution and if we didn't get it, then UM
Speaker 1: worked to wrap it up as quickly as we can.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I'm giving them a short shrift and
Speaker 1: that this is probably ultimately an unfair analysis, very much
Speaker 1: the percentagely that you know this isn't sustainable that we
Speaker 1: are reaching our pet power. UM. Now is the time
Speaker 1: to start UH kind of pivoting to making these concessions.
Speaker 1: And we're all I'm saying that no, this the organizing
Speaker 1: doesn't stop when you walk out. The organizing begins when
Speaker 1: you walk out. And for for people like me who
Speaker 1: you know, had some knowledge I I've experienced in organizing.
Speaker 1: I've been occupy whom I consider myself very well educated radical,
Speaker 1: but just at the fact of getting on the picket line,
Speaker 1: experiencing and talking to my bellow workers across campuses, across
Speaker 1: picket mines has been energizing and maticalizing all on its
Speaker 1: own and don't think that the union leadership really knew
Speaker 1: what to do with that account of language. It the
Speaker 1: bushes where efficient or horses or whatever that a lot
Speaker 1: of speel with the our campus MUNI leadership ought to
Speaker 1: have done a better job with the uh the day
Speaker 1: to day energizing UM. One issue that uh you know
Speaker 1: a camblames specifically on a specific barbeting unit or uh
Speaker 1: even that you U a w T suspive Um, but
Speaker 1: it's a hunter wal comes from above is at um.
Speaker 1: If you do not pick it, you do not actively
Speaker 1: sign up or picket ships that you do in know
Speaker 1: this long round, you do not get strike and um
Speaker 1: And for a lot of us who have accessibility needs
Speaker 1: or are are not closed to campus, or are withholding
Speaker 1: their labor and active in the strength in other ways,
Speaker 1: they feel like there's not really a place for them
Speaker 1: um and and they're doing equally crucial work. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: good to have people picketing and on that visibility. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: if there were two people hitting and everybody else was
Speaker 1: withholding their labor, we would still win the strength. UM.
Speaker 1: So there seems to be an overwhelming emphasis on the
Speaker 1: visible single of our power and our solidarity and the
Speaker 1: concession that was made in day four was explained by
Speaker 1: the dwindling uh amount of people who were showing up
Speaker 1: for pickets, you know from day one to two excreation
Speaker 1: be four um, and a lot of us tried to
Speaker 1: push that on that. So yes, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to sustain that physical progressing. Yeah, but we should
Speaker 1: be also working to bolster and encourage and harness the
Speaker 1: power of those workers many every day, but nevertheless doing
Speaker 1: apprecial labor stop. Yeah, is this did a remote picking
Speaker 1: option to that account? Yes, yes, there is, uh you know,
Speaker 1: in any in any organization by uh you know, uh
Speaker 1: massive workers. There's these growing pains and nariations in the
Speaker 1: first in the first week of I am dueling remote
Speaker 1: coordinators with separate lists. They resolved, and they seem to
Speaker 1: have been resolved by now the same thing with some
Speaker 1: delays in process things strike, pay count disbursements. Again, there's
Speaker 1: there's no shading as happening. It's just doing this for
Speaker 1: the first time. Um. But for but for people who
Speaker 1: for uh you know, sort of on the fence or
Speaker 1: not I really important this h that was a real
Speaker 1: big stressor for them. Their their willingness to kind of
Speaker 1: be out there. Really. Yeah, that totally makes sense, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's already a stressful time, but like you said,
Speaker 1: these things will have people will learning the process, right,
Speaker 1: like it's new for so many people. It's unprecedented to
Speaker 1: have like ten percent of the graduate students in the
Speaker 1: country with holding their labor and so like, they will
Speaker 1: of course be growing paint. And I think often when
Speaker 1: we look at strikes, like both you and me as
Speaker 1: historians and as consumers of the news, we like we
Speaker 1: see one photo of a bunch of people like in hives,
Speaker 1: standing around a brazier, and then three weeks later we
Speaker 1: read another story about a resolution contract, right, and in fact,
Speaker 1: what makes a strike powerful is feeding people and being
Speaker 1: showing up and looking out for one another. So like
Speaker 1: that's what we're trying to document. Thanks so much, Matt,
Speaker 1: And I wonder where people can find if you'd like
Speaker 1: to give your own social media or where people can
Speaker 1: find strike updates from the u S and from UC
Speaker 1: San Diego, anything like that you want to plug. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm partisan in this, but I would highly recommend not
Speaker 1: getting strike updates from the u C San Diego. So yeah,
Speaker 1: from the campus, now from the university here, so fair
Speaker 1: you see now dot org. Yeah, I think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's an old on the ground. Yeah, dealing with
Speaker 1: documents too much. A great place on Twitter has also
Speaker 1: been very all of its current yeah to date information.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us e venmo where people can like
Speaker 1: hell in the true Spanish historian fashion feed? Everyone? Have
Speaker 1: you got a giant pie out there? You like with
Speaker 1: the spade? So I will clarify this is a This
Speaker 1: is an uneficial Yeah, this is not the u a
Speaker 1: WU worldwide, but the particulars on the USC campus organizing
Speaker 1: meeting the problem lines is at UCSD dash strike nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: easy to remember and hopefully you get some donations. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm your time, Matt, I appreciate it. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 1: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 1: the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here
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Speaker 1: for listening.