Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 3: about things falling apart and how we try to put
Speaker 3: them back together again. I'm your guest host, Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 3: and with me this week is one of your regular hosts. Here,
Speaker 3: higare Hello, this week is one of those putting things
Speaker 3: back together episodes. The premise of this episode is simple.
Speaker 3: Let's say you're newly radicalized. Maybe you are participant in
Speaker 3: the occupations and now the school year is over, or
Speaker 3: you got expelled and you're wondering what the next steps are.
Speaker 3: This won't be an it's all in one guide to
Speaker 3: how to become an activist, but it's sort of a
Speaker 3: sketch of one. It's also not quite a complete Summer
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four guide to Protests, but there's some of
Speaker 3: that in here too. It's a Magpie's guide to getting
Speaker 3: started in activism. I want to start with my own
Speaker 3: biases upfront because it's going to inform everything that I
Speaker 3: have to say about all of this. I'm an anarchist.
Speaker 3: It's also been decades since I've broke into the movement.
Speaker 3: I've been doing this stuff since two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: when I dropped out of college to join the ultra
Speaker 3: globalization movement. So I have biases towards things like dropping
Speaker 3: out of college because it worked for me, and I
Speaker 3: have You know, a lot of my experience isn't recent,
Speaker 3: at least my direct experience personally, but I've been watching
Speaker 3: people come into the movement for a very long time.
Speaker 3: I also have biases against authoritarian organizing and electoral organizing,
Speaker 3: and biases towards direct action and autonomy as models for
Speaker 3: radical social change. I believe this is how you build
Speaker 3: a freer and better world by practicing freedom along the way.
Speaker 3: But you can adapt this to suit your own interests.
Speaker 3: That's not to say I have any interest in guiding
Speaker 3: people towards specific paths, specific actions, specific issues, and movements
Speaker 3: exactly the opposite. This is my attempt to kind of
Speaker 3: give a the big picture view of how one might
Speaker 3: get involved right now. I don't know if you knew this, Gaar,
Speaker 3: the world's kind of in trouble.
Speaker 4: I have heard this before. I have heard this said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you ever like think about how your job
Speaker 3: is to be a professional chicken little?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Sometimes I guess so. Yeah, I mean I'm definitely in
Speaker 4: the dredges trying to find what horrible things are always happening.
Speaker 3: Certainly, yeah, I would say, even though the world is
Speaker 3: always in serious trouble, it's like extra in serious trouble
Speaker 3: right now, and we are in desperate need of people
Speaker 3: who dedicate their time, whether part of it or all
Speaker 3: of it, to trying to stop the terrible things that
Speaker 3: are happening and trying to build beautiful things and beautiful alternatives.
Speaker 3: So how do you get started? I want you to
Speaker 3: think about a couple different things that are separate from
Speaker 3: each other. I want you to think about This isn't
Speaker 3: necessarily you gare, although you could if you want, sure,
Speaker 3: why not?
Speaker 5: Yeah? What do you care about?
Speaker 3: Like? What issues are specifically important to you? It's the
Speaker 3: first thing to think about. The second is what do
Speaker 3: you want to do about it? And if you have
Speaker 3: a sense of that, and like also kind of how
Speaker 3: far you're willing to go. If you get a sense
Speaker 3: of those things before you throw yourself into the fight,
Speaker 3: you're going to start off strong. Those things can change,
Speaker 3: they will change over time, but getting a sense of
Speaker 3: those ahead of time is a good way to figure
Speaker 3: out which door you want to go in, and then
Speaker 3: also to avoid some of the dangers that lie on
Speaker 3: the other side of any given door. What do you
Speaker 3: care about? What movements and projects speak loudest to you?
Speaker 3: A ton of causes are interconnected, of course, right the
Speaker 3: fight for Palestinian liberation is not at its core separate
Speaker 3: project than the fight against policing in the United States,
Speaker 3: for example, the rise of a global police state is
Speaker 3: everyone's problem, and so is the US and Zionist imperial project.
Speaker 3: Causes are interconnected, but you can rarely start by trying
Speaker 3: to fix everything. Usually got to pick somewhere to start working.
Speaker 3: You don't climb a mountain by just willing yourself to
Speaker 3: the top. You climb it by picking a place and
Speaker 3: then starting to climb it. Maybe you're concerned about the
Speaker 3: police state or surveillance, or the erosion of rights or
Speaker 3: Palestinian liberation, or fighting for prisoners in the US to
Speaker 3: still have access to books, or for LGBT rights, or
Speaker 3: for migrants at the border, or for the protection of
Speaker 3: the remaining national ecosystems and stopping the expansion of fossil
Speaker 3: fuel infrastructure. Maybe you're concerned about something hyper local, like
Speaker 3: the destruction of a local park or the sweeping of
Speaker 3: homeless encampments. Maybe it's something a bit broader and more abstract,
Speaker 3: like you want to get involved in explaining the need
Speaker 3: for police abolition, but there's something, there's some that you
Speaker 3: want to change. As a place to start, the second
Speaker 3: question is what do you want to do. There's multiple
Speaker 3: questions embedded in this. There's how far are you willing
Speaker 3: to go? We'll talk more of that later, more immediately,
Speaker 3: what is your skill set or what skill sets do
Speaker 3: you wish you had? Like a lot of times I'll
Speaker 3: just be like, oh, hey, what are you good at?
Speaker 3: And now I'll go do that. But sometimes like what
Speaker 3: you're good at isn't what you want to be doing.
Speaker 3: And it's also totally okay to be like, well, what
Speaker 3: do I want to be good at, Like what do
Speaker 3: I want to be trying to focus on what do
Speaker 3: you have to offer the revolution or what do you
Speaker 3: wish you had to offer. Are you in med school
Speaker 3: or have other first aid or medical experience, Maybe you
Speaker 3: want to plug in with your local street medics. Are
Speaker 3: you studying law? Movement lawyers need paralegal help, and there
Speaker 3: are groups that use volunteers to get people out of
Speaker 3: jail or through difficult court cases. If graphic design is
Speaker 3: your passion, this is me referencing a meme from a
Speaker 3: million years ago and totally winning people over. Every group
Speaker 3: that exists needs help with their flyers or Instagram slideshows.
Speaker 5: Or whatever the fuck.
Speaker 4: That is certainly the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's it's funny too, right, because it's like
Speaker 3: it's one of those things where if you do graphic design,
Speaker 3: you sort of think like, oh, everyone sort of does
Speaker 3: this or whatever, right, And then I've been part of
Speaker 3: groups where people are like, no one knows how to
Speaker 3: do this at all, and everything is that we make
Speaker 3: as garbage, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although there is actually a careful needle to thread
Speaker 4: in this vein, because if you've had enough experience, you
Speaker 4: can kind of figure out what type of action it's
Speaker 4: gonna be based on how well designed and the flyer is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and which way. If it's kind of corporate well designed,
Speaker 3: it's like gonna tie into electoral politics and be boring.
Speaker 3: But if it's hip and well designed, it's a riot.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: Sometimes there's sometimes there's some like very like well designed
Speaker 4: flyers that are not like very electoral, but they're like, okay,
Speaker 4: this will be a marge, will be some speeches, we'll
Speaker 4: kind of walk around a little bit, because it's like
Speaker 4: a very well potad flyer versus when you have like
Speaker 4: a white background of big block attacks, maybe one poorly
Speaker 4: cropped picture, you're like, okay, this is obviously a riot flyer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: It takes a degree of subtlety to get the instincttional
Speaker 4: difference when you're looking at a collection of flyers that
Speaker 4: are going out.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 3: This is interesting to me because in like about fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago, the like the people throwing the best riots
Speaker 3: were like a bunch of graphic designers, and so it
Speaker 3: was the specific anymore. Yeah, okay, okay, Well you know,
Speaker 3: and actually, as a good graphic designer knows the language
Speaker 3: that they are speaking with and that is what they're communicating,
Speaker 3: So that might be what you want to do is
Speaker 3: get involved in making the flyers. If you spend all
Speaker 3: day on Twitter. A lot of activist groups can't find
Speaker 3: someone to run their social media, or they have people
Speaker 3: who run it very badly. Sometimes being an extrovert is
Speaker 3: a superpower. Building strong movements means building strong communities, and
Speaker 3: every meeting and party needs someone willing to introduce themselves
Speaker 3: to the new people and help them figure out where
Speaker 3: to go. The best activist meetings I've ever been to
Speaker 3: have like someone who's there to sit next to new
Speaker 3: people and explain what's going on. Also, if you can
Speaker 3: plan a party, you can plan a benefit show to
Speaker 3: raise money for bail funds. There's kind of this like
Speaker 3: like whenever I talk about this, like oh, everyone has
Speaker 3: their place, and people are like, why don't I'm a
Speaker 3: fucking bookkeeper, and I'm like, oh my god, we need you,
Speaker 3: or like, you know, all kinds of different skill sets
Speaker 3: that people like don't think apply actually do project manager. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're we're not all instinctively good at that, you know.
Speaker 3: And so the quickest way to sum this part of
Speaker 3: it up is you think about what's wrong, and you
Speaker 3: think about what you're good at, and then you get
Speaker 3: together with other people and apply what you're good at
Speaker 3: to stopping what's wrong. That is the like one sentence
Speaker 3: version of how to start getting involved in making the
Speaker 3: world better. But the last part of it that I
Speaker 3: I want the question of it beforehand is risk analysis.
Speaker 3: It is very easy to get swept up in the
Speaker 3: moment and go beyond your comfort zone in terms of
Speaker 3: risk in a lot of different environments. The more you
Speaker 3: have sorted out ahead of time about what kinds of
Speaker 3: actions you're comfortable with strategically, morally, and personally, the easier
Speaker 3: it is to stick to your decisions when things get hard.
Speaker 3: For example, you might tell yourself I will risk arrest,
Speaker 3: but I will not get arrested on purpose because I
Speaker 3: have a massage license I don't want to lose. Or
Speaker 3: I have kids at home, or I'm undocumented, or I
Speaker 3: don't like the idea of jail. Whatever your reason is,
Speaker 3: there's plenty of reasons to make that decision. You might
Speaker 3: be willing to risk arrest, like be in a hectic riot,
Speaker 3: but you're not willing to lock your neck to a bulldozer.
Speaker 3: So when you go to the planning meeting for the
Speaker 3: lock your neck to a bulldozer action and you're trying
Speaker 3: to figure out who wants to lock their neck to
Speaker 3: the bulldozer. You've already made up your mind, and you're
Speaker 3: less likely to kind of pressure your self into volunteering.
Speaker 4: Or feel pressured by others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm imagining the positive version. Well, okay, because it's
Speaker 3: very rarely someone's like, hey, gear been a while since
Speaker 3: you locked your neck to anything, and it's usually more like, man,
Speaker 3: it just sure would be good if someone was bold
Speaker 3: and noble enough to just step up right now and
Speaker 3: then yeah, yeah, I mean I've organized some of my
Speaker 3: friends arrests before, and it's it's not always. That's not
Speaker 3: always the strategy that people want to be doing anyway.
Speaker 3: I'm just using this as an example, like what kind
Speaker 3: of Earth first style thing? If you know what your
Speaker 3: risk models are, you can make better decisions. Maybe you're
Speaker 3: fine with a spirited march, but as soon as windows
Speaker 3: start getting broken, you're like, you know, I want to leave.
Speaker 3: That's gonna not be my scene. You know, I'm not
Speaker 3: mad that the people did it, but it's not what
Speaker 3: I am willing to get arrested in response to it's
Speaker 3: also important to know your risk levels, which kind of
Speaker 3: course shift because there are predators in the ranks of
Speaker 3: direct action activists. I don't know if you knew this,
Speaker 3: gre there's a shadowy, unaccountable group that tries to get
Speaker 3: people to break laws. They're called the FEDS. They're called
Speaker 3: the FBI. They have a history going back decades and
Speaker 3: then trapping people by coming up with bomb plots or
Speaker 3: ur some plots or whatever. And we're not going to
Speaker 3: go into this in depth in this episode, but if
Speaker 3: you want to do more research, people should look up.
Speaker 3: They should read about co intel pro it's an acronym,
Speaker 3: or read about the case of Eric McDavid, or read
Speaker 3: about how the FBI set up Muslim Americans in the
Speaker 3: wake of nine to eleven. But another thing you should
Speaker 3: go into all this knowing is that that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that everyone who wants to do those kinds of actions
Speaker 3: is working with the FEDS.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you shouldn't go around accusing everyone you don't
Speaker 4: like of possibly being a secret and federal agent.
Speaker 3: Because you know who likes accusing people of being federal agents. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And also our sponsors they don't they don't they're all great.
Speaker 3: They might, they might, I don't know. I can't really
Speaker 3: speak to them, but here they are, they can speak
Speaker 3: to you, and we're back. That is a thing that
Speaker 3: is absolutely worth anyone who's getting involved in activism, especially
Speaker 3: direct action activism, including above grounds of this obedient style action.
Speaker 3: It is really worth understanding the ways in which federal
Speaker 3: oppression works, and how federal oppression works often by the
Speaker 3: fear of federal oppression and getting people to spread paranoia.
Speaker 3: And so as a general rule, the way that I've
Speaker 3: always heard it talked about is that it's like you
Speaker 3: never want to be like, hey, I think that guy's
Speaker 3: a fed. Instead you're like, hey, guy, that kind of
Speaker 3: behavior is disruptive and leads towards bad things, you know,
Speaker 3: Like yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think I even have some hesitation to just
Speaker 4: be like you should just just go google co intel
Speaker 4: pro and learn all about it, because I feel like
Speaker 4: that can also lead to someone kind of falling down
Speaker 4: like some conspiracy brained rabbit holes, and like I've gotten
Speaker 4: the best information by just talking to older people who've
Speaker 4: like been in the movement for a while, and like
Speaker 4: just like if someone has like over ten years of experience,
Speaker 4: and they're like, you can learn a lot about what
Speaker 4: has happened before through just like actual, like in person conversations.
Speaker 4: And I found that to be much more useful than
Speaker 4: just like going down like a Google rabbit hole, because
Speaker 4: that can just kind of lead to I think slightly
Speaker 4: even slightly more like paranoid thinking or just it just
Speaker 4: becomes like less applicable than like, Hey, you have like
Speaker 4: a friend of a friend who's like done this for
Speaker 4: a while, and you just ask, hey, like what if
Speaker 4: what do you know about this sort of thing? Now
Speaker 4: you're right, what are your experiences of kind of of
Speaker 4: facing like repression in the past. The true chances are
Speaker 4: some of them will probably know people who've either turned
Speaker 4: out to be like informants, has started informing, or we're
Speaker 4: bad actors from the from the get go, like it's
Speaker 4: it does, it does happen. And there's even been case
Speaker 4: it's not even just stuff from ten fifteen years ago.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of that stuff post twenty twenty. Some
Speaker 4: really some stuff in h in Chicago, some stuff in
Speaker 4: Colorado Springs have gotten decent news coverage. I think you
Speaker 4: can also you can look to articles specifically of the
Speaker 4: Colorado Springs infiltration that that that the FBI was running
Speaker 4: around twenty twenty. I think that's a really useful case
Speaker 4: study for a more recent version as opposed to like
Speaker 4: the green scare stuff from at this point like twenty
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's true, and there's a good there's actually
Speaker 3: a good podcast series where I liked it called Alphabet Boys.
Speaker 3: The first season is about that case. No, that's a
Speaker 3: good point that you that random internet search is not
Speaker 3: the way to get this kind of information, this information
Speaker 3: like you'll Honestly, it's kind of funny. I would trust
Speaker 3: a random zine in a radical bookstore far more than
Speaker 3: I would trust a Google search result, agreed, which is
Speaker 3: not true for everything like healthcare. Well, you're gonna get
Speaker 3: shit answers no.
Speaker 5: Matter what if you do that.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, the internet is gonna tell you have cancer,
Speaker 3: and the zine's going to tell you that tea tree
Speaker 3: oil will fix it.
Speaker 5: Yes, there we go.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that is actually a very good point, and
Speaker 3: it is the kind of thing that Yeah, the longer
Speaker 3: you're involved, the more you're just like, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 3: you know my ex who's a snitch that sucks? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know Anyway, now you have what you care about,
Speaker 3: what your skills are, and your risk analysis, it's time
Speaker 3: to get started. How there's two basic ways, and they're
Speaker 3: not really a dichotomy, but you can plug into something
Speaker 3: that exists and you can start something of your own,
Speaker 3: and both are valid and both have advantages and disadvantages.
Speaker 3: There are structures and movements that are already in place
Speaker 3: that are desperate for your help. There's a catch. Many,
Speaker 3: not all, but many of the more reasonable groups are
Speaker 3: challenging to break into. Very few groups have a truly
Speaker 3: open door policy, and those that do honestly sometimes or suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 3: some of those people are just trying to use you.
Speaker 3: They're trying to suck you into a political political cult
Speaker 3: or use your energy and burn you out for some
Speaker 3: vaguely progressive politician or activist cause. So either way, you're
Speaker 3: going to need to exercise some common sense and do
Speaker 3: some reading and research about what you're getting into. The
Speaker 3: best publicly accessible groups and movements are the ones that
Speaker 3: are organized from the bottom up, because the participants themselves
Speaker 3: have a say in what's happening. There is less ability
Speaker 3: to be sucked into a cult and used. That's not
Speaker 3: to say it's impossible, and there are such things as
Speaker 3: decentralized cults that don't do any you.
Speaker 4: Know, many such cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I know it's easy and convenient to join
Speaker 3: a group that'll just tell you what to do. It's
Speaker 3: very nice to imagine that there's benevolent people who will
Speaker 3: just do the hard part of making decisions and you
Speaker 3: can just show up and clock in and listen to
Speaker 3: what they have to say and make the world better place.
Speaker 3: This is rarely, if ever the case. I can't point
Speaker 3: to examples of it being the case. Movements that maintain
Speaker 3: everyone's autonomy instead, I think are what are interesting, and
Speaker 3: they often do it by not being a group at all,
Speaker 3: just a movement. The uprisings of twenty twenty, I think
Speaker 3: are a brilliant example of this. There's not the group
Speaker 3: that organized, no, but.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of smaller, smaller groups, whether that be
Speaker 4: some like informal organizations, formal organizations, or just like groups
Speaker 4: of friends that it's made up of a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of these smaller groups. And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: times the best case scenario in many cases is if
Speaker 4: you have like a friend or too because you shouldn't
Speaker 4: really show it to things alone, I would say, but
Speaker 4: if you have a friend or two, go with the
Speaker 4: friender too. Just like just go to things. And if
Speaker 4: you go to enough things and people see you, you
Speaker 4: can chat with people, you can start learning more about
Speaker 4: kind of what the different mechanisms in each different city,
Speaker 4: each each even't seen how how they operate. It's it's
Speaker 4: it's it's kind of silly just to be like, no,
Speaker 4: you just like have to like show up. But like
Speaker 4: that is kind of a lot of how it works.
Speaker 4: You'll maybe hear about a Instagram account that posts flyers
Speaker 4: for semi weekly like picnics organized by some of these
Speaker 4: same people, and then you can go to events like
Speaker 4: that and learn to like socialize. And it really just
Speaker 4: does require a degree of just showing up. And you
Speaker 4: shouldn't go by yourself. You should if you you should
Speaker 4: ideally have a friend or two that you that is
Speaker 4: that they would be okay going with you. But then
Speaker 4: you'll you'll find people to connect with and you'll kind
Speaker 4: of maybe find a different group of people that you
Speaker 4: want to start hanging out with more. And I think
Speaker 4: in general that's kind of how the best case scenario works,
Speaker 4: as opposed to like joining like a big above ground
Speaker 4: organization which is just going to use your body as
Speaker 4: a tool to get arrested as or just treat you
Speaker 4: as disposable or in other cases just be actually kind
Speaker 4: of like abuse of.
Speaker 3: I agree with that, and that's some of that we're
Speaker 3: going to get into also. But yeah, no, and I
Speaker 3: will say overall, absolutely it is better to do those
Speaker 3: things with friends. I didn't I started going to things alone.
Speaker 3: That has something to do with my temperament, and that
Speaker 3: has something to do with my social standing when I
Speaker 3: was in college and decided to get involved in the movement.
Speaker 3: But overall, that is the best practice. But if you're
Speaker 3: listening to this and you're like, I don't have friends
Speaker 3: I can go do this stuff with, there are more
Speaker 3: risks involved, and you're also kind of stuck. You're going
Speaker 3: to go to a lot of things where no one
Speaker 3: will talk to you, yeah, you know, and you can't
Speaker 3: necessarily expect that people talk to you immediately or like,
Speaker 3: and you're going to have to be a little bit
Speaker 3: more self motivated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And if you're going to a zine fair, you
Speaker 4: can chow some people at like the tables when you're
Speaker 4: looking for a zine. It's like it's, yeah, now everyone's
Speaker 4: going to want to get into a deep personal conversation
Speaker 4: with a stranger they met at an event like this
Speaker 4: because it also has like security risks. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean it's it's going to require a little bit of
Speaker 4: uncomfortable social interactions, which for yeah, for someone like you
Speaker 4: or me who did go to a lot of these
Speaker 4: things just by ourselves, you know, it just it just
Speaker 4: kind of takes more time.
Speaker 3: No, totally. And I think actually ze fairs and things
Speaker 3: like that and anarchist book fairs and all that are
Speaker 3: like really good examples of places that are publicly facing
Speaker 3: that are designed for people to interact with each other.
Speaker 3: And also, like one of the main pieces of advice
Speaker 3: that we we have is be brave, right, and we
Speaker 3: talk about that in terms of like street actions, but like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: also social anxiety exactly exactly, because how much of so
Speaker 3: social anxiety will become like an inhibiting factor similar to
Speaker 3: like the state not saying these things are equal, but
Speaker 3: they can both like inhibit you from doing things, and
Speaker 3: it's both you can you can kind of approach it
Speaker 3: via similar means of trying to like overcome this thing
Speaker 3: that is limiting your autonomy. Yeah, no, totally. So to
Speaker 3: go back to if you're joining an existing group, some
Speaker 3: groups maintain everyone's autonomy by being struck horizontally. Some groups
Speaker 3: that exist as a structure will do it by being
Speaker 3: structured horizontally. If you found yourself for go ahead, claim
Speaker 3: to be structured horizontally as well. No, it's true, but
Speaker 3: like like if you join a local Earth First chapter,
Speaker 3: you're going to find there's absolutely informal hierarchies that exist
Speaker 3: within these things, and they're like worth being aware of.
Speaker 3: But the decision about who's going to lock their neck
Speaker 3: to the bulldozer is going to involve everyone who might
Speaker 3: lock their neck to the bulldozer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not the same as like the DSA or
Speaker 4: the PSL, Like it's it's going to be a very
Speaker 4: different organizational structure.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, And so you know you want to be
Speaker 3: part of the decision making about locking your neck to
Speaker 3: a bulldozer because it's your neck on the line. That's
Speaker 3: my best joke in the whole script. I'm sorry, we'll
Speaker 3: just move past it quickly. Thanks. Plugging into an existing
Speaker 3: project is often a good first step. What I did personally.
Speaker 3: I started showing up to the meetings of this radical
Speaker 3: media project, Indie Media. I had film skills, and soon
Speaker 3: enough I found myself in the film collective. I spent
Speaker 3: a year or two bouncing around from demonstration to demonstration,
Speaker 3: coordinating with all the radical videographers to collect everyone's footage
Speaker 3: and edit together news videos about what had happened, while
Speaker 3: we collectively fostered a culture of like respectful riot videography.
Speaker 4: I did not realize we had that similar background.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, that it's interesting because I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't do that stuff anymore. But that was like my
Speaker 3: thing for a long time.
Speaker 4: Me either, actually, But no, I did not realize we
Speaker 4: had we had that, we had that overlap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and it was It was great and it
Speaker 3: was fun and we you know, we taught how to
Speaker 3: not film people's faces. We coordinated runners where in order
Speaker 3: to get footage out before the cops could get it.
Speaker 3: We'd make sure everyone, you know, someone, every videographer had
Speaker 3: someone next to them, like ready to run out of
Speaker 3: the situation.
Speaker 4: Take this SD card and run yep, exactly.
Speaker 3: And I started off by joining an existing group that
Speaker 3: was doing this, but within a few months I was
Speaker 3: doing it independently and coordinating with different groups that came
Speaker 3: together at all these different summit protests because I was
Speaker 3: a known entity to people. You know, it was fun.
Speaker 3: I dropped out of school where I've been studying film
Speaker 3: and photography, and even before I would have graduated, a
Speaker 3: film I had edited sold out a movie theater in Portland.
Speaker 3: We didn't have YouTube, so we organized in person.
Speaker 4: Kate, that makes sense, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. When when we shut the city down on
Speaker 3: like March twentieth or whatever, twenty two thousand and three
Speaker 3: for to try and stop the Iraq war, I like
Speaker 3: didn't sleep and just edited everyone's film footage together and
Speaker 3: made a like thirty minute documentary about the day of
Speaker 3: protest and sold out a movie theater. And I was like, damn,
Speaker 3: this was way better for my career than going to
Speaker 3: fuck it stay it's school. I mean, like, my name
Speaker 3: isn't on it, but that like didn't matter to me. Sure,
Speaker 3: And then everyone the local news media got really mad
Speaker 3: because I didn't include the stuff that could have been
Speaker 3: used in people's court cases, like the time that people
Speaker 3: attack cops on the bridge, because I was like, nope,
Speaker 3: that's too recent. We don't know what's happening there anyway,
Speaker 3: And getting into certain types of groups is kind of
Speaker 3: like applying for a shitty job. A job that'll take
Speaker 3: you without reference is going to treat you like shit.
Speaker 3: But jobs that are worth having require you to somehow
Speaker 3: have already been doing the job before you got hired,
Speaker 3: and once people know who you are, it's easier to
Speaker 3: find folks who work with And I think gear Suggestions
Speaker 3: is like the main way you go about that is
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily show up to organize. You just show
Speaker 3: up to participate. You show up to talks, you show
Speaker 3: up to radical bookstores and public events and zine fairs
Speaker 3: and protests and whatever interests you you know. And I
Speaker 3: would say that if you're going to actions and you're new,
Speaker 3: remember to be both brave and cautious. If you tend
Speaker 3: towards recklessness and being so wept into things, maybe make
Speaker 3: sure you take less of a frontline's role until you
Speaker 3: get your legs underneath you. But it really is okay
Speaker 3: to be brave. I think we're asked by the times
Speaker 3: we live in to be brave, and sometimes we're gonna
Speaker 3: have to step outside of our comfort zone. We should
Speaker 3: just always look to make sure it's us encouraging us
Speaker 3: to step outside of our comfort zone instead of political
Speaker 3: actors whatever political ideology they call themselves.
Speaker 4: And also if you can another collective that people you know,
Speaker 4: these are like usually like medic collectives will maybe maybe
Speaker 4: we'll have like a radical media collective and another another
Speaker 4: one will be a jail support collective is very common
Speaker 4: a lot of cities, and not even if you don't
Speaker 4: want to take part in that, if you can at
Speaker 4: least get in touch with them to fill out a
Speaker 4: jail support form before going to things. That will also
Speaker 4: be useful in case you do end up getting arrested,
Speaker 4: so people can actually find you in the system and
Speaker 4: help you get out of get out. Just another quick tip,
Speaker 4: I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if you want more quick tips, I've got
Speaker 3: some for you right now and we're back. Don't do
Speaker 3: anything that you just got told by voices that aren't
Speaker 3: me or there.
Speaker 4: They were trying to saihap you it is it is
Speaker 4: the yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Another way that you might get involved in something is
Speaker 3: you Some groups are semi open where you can contact
Speaker 3: them and express interest and they might do some basic
Speaker 3: screening to make sure you're not like a Nazi infiltrator
Speaker 3: or whatever. I'm in the process right now of doing
Speaker 3: that with clinic escorting. It's like funny because I haven't
Speaker 3: had to like prove myself to any group in a
Speaker 3: long time, right because I'm like I've been around forever.
Speaker 3: The clinic escorting group, it's like, we don't fucking know
Speaker 3: who you are, like, and I'm like, yeah, that's fair,
Speaker 3: give me, yeah, no, absolutely. I live in a place
Speaker 3: is not where abortion is not particularly popular with the
Speaker 3: right wing, and so I submitted my name and social
Speaker 3: media accounts to the to the abortion clinic escorting place,
Speaker 3: and then we'll go to a training at some point
Speaker 3: soon for folks living in southern California or willing to
Speaker 3: go there. For example, there are groups that do border
Speaker 3: solidarity working with refugees to make sure they're fed in house.
Speaker 3: If you listen to this podcast, you've heard James talking
Speaker 3: about this, and this is the first episode you've listened to,
Speaker 3: in which case, go back and listen to James talking
Speaker 3: about border solidarity work. If you want to show up
Speaker 3: and distribute food and water, track border patrol activity, build shelters,
Speaker 3: do first DAID, all of that. Feel like you're part
Speaker 3: of something because you are and are like saving people's
Speaker 3: lives directly, that's something you can likely get involved with,
Speaker 3: but it's not something you just show up at. There
Speaker 3: are a few groups doing that work, any of whom
Speaker 3: you can reach out to and express interest. There's border Kindness,
Speaker 3: there's Borderlands Relief Collective and Al Ultra Lado, and there's
Speaker 3: other groups like this in different areas. But these are
Speaker 3: the examples where I asked James being like, Hey, how
Speaker 3: do I explain the following concept? In general, you want
Speaker 3: to look for groups. If you're looking for groups, you
Speaker 3: want to look for groups that are grassroots and non authoritarian.
Speaker 3: You want to watch out for electoral campaigns, and you
Speaker 3: want to watch out for nonprofits. This is not to
Speaker 3: say that the people doing these things are necessarily bad.
Speaker 3: There are local political campaigns that matter, and there are
Speaker 3: nonprofits that do good work. Some of the best political
Speaker 3: work I ever did was two years out a nonprofit, honestly,
Speaker 3: but I got I was with one of the good ones.
Speaker 3: And structurally those systems, even the good ones, are set
Speaker 3: up to take advantage of people's energy and then like
Speaker 3: kind of profit off of it, right, and to accomplish
Speaker 3: goals that are often tangential to or even counter to
Speaker 3: the goals that they claim. For example, both politicians and
Speaker 3: nonprofits live off of donations. These donations are easy for
Speaker 3: them to get when those groups are seen as necessary,
Speaker 3: so a nonprofit has a financial interest in not winning.
Speaker 3: Some nonprofits manage to maintain their focus and make themselves
Speaker 3: work to make themselves obsolete, but frankly those are the minority.
Speaker 3: You also want to look out for groups that are
Speaker 3: front groups for thor tearing. Groups attached to communist political
Speaker 3: parties you mentioned earlier, like the PSL the Party for
Speaker 3: Socialism and Liberation. Generally speaking, these groups will go to
Speaker 3: protests and run events, primarily as a way to recruit
Speaker 3: people into a hierarchical structure. These groups are often trying
Speaker 3: to control broader movements that they're involved in. They'll tell
Speaker 3: people how they can and can't protest, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to essentially own movements that were built by others. So
Speaker 3: those are things to be careful around. You can also
Speaker 3: just not worry about any of that stuff and start
Speaker 3: something yourself. It is not the easy mode to get
Speaker 3: into the movement by starting your own projects. We're going
Speaker 3: to talk about afinity groups later. Actually it was the
Speaker 3: thing that you kind of started to bring up. But
Speaker 3: it is very rewarding to start your own projects. It's
Speaker 3: like freelancing instead of looking for a job. There's no
Speaker 3: gatekeepers to cross, and the only person who's trying to
Speaker 3: take advantage of you is you. If you want to
Speaker 3: never not be working another day in your life, you
Speaker 3: can freelance or start your own political project. It'll be
Speaker 3: what you think about every hour you're alive. In essence,
Speaker 3: the idea here is to say, okay, what's wrong and
Speaker 3: what are we willing to do about it, and then
Speaker 3: get together with your friends and start doing something about it.
Speaker 3: This can look like anything.
Speaker 8: You could start.
Speaker 3: A mutual aid group, a radical bookstore, an anti fascist
Speaker 3: gym to trained to defend yourself from fascists, illegal HRT
Speaker 3: distribution in band States, a direct action abortion collective, a
Speaker 3: zine distributor that goes to shows and parties with free
Speaker 3: literature about anarchism. A podcast about how things fall apart
Speaker 3: and how to put them back together again. A click
Speaker 3: of saboteurs who attack billboards, a group that draws attention
Speaker 3: to international movement prisoners, and support them like you can
Speaker 3: do anything. And that's one of the things that people.
Speaker 3: Our society is designed to tell us that we can't
Speaker 3: just do anything we want. There's obviously things that if
Speaker 3: we do, we'll get in trouble eventually.
Speaker 4: But like you know, okay, like like if you make
Speaker 4: a podcast that's too good, Yeah, they will, they will
Speaker 4: turn on you like Jesus, Yeah exactly. Or if you
Speaker 4: go around, you know, wanting to destroy construction equipment.
Speaker 3: Right, not usually legal. I'm not a lawyer. I can't
Speaker 3: tell you whether or not any given bulldozer is illegal
Speaker 3: to destroy. That is the kind of research you might
Speaker 3: have to do on your own. The difference between start
Speaker 3: something and enjoining something is often blurry. For example, you
Speaker 3: can unionize your workplace. You probably should, but you might
Speaker 3: want to do that in the context of an existing
Speaker 3: union like the Industrial Workers of the World or whatever
Speaker 3: union makes the most sense where the writer's field of America,
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. If you have a podcast, but how the
Speaker 3: world's falling apart?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: If you're going to start something above ground, it's worth
Speaker 3: looking around and making sure that the need isn't already
Speaker 3: being met by someone else.
Speaker 9: Already.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's better to figure out how to help an
Speaker 3: existing bail fund rather than start another. But also sometimes
Speaker 3: it is better to start another, like it's harder for
Speaker 3: the police tarrade, for example, which didn't used to be
Speaker 3: an issue when you start bail funds, but is now
Speaker 3: an issue, which is worth pointing out that like there's
Speaker 3: no true safety, you know, like when we talk about
Speaker 3: risk analysis, like running a bail fund is entirely legal
Speaker 3: and is the kind of thing that often is done
Speaker 3: by the people who care about a movement and are
Speaker 3: like not frontlines people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, aren't wanting to do felonies in downtown right Portland
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the more successful a movement is the broader. The
Speaker 3: state repression will reach out to the fringes, not the fringe.
Speaker 3: I mean, the bail fund isn't the fringe, but the
Speaker 3: less privery. The people who aren't committing the felon felonies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: are going to get tagged with felonies anyway, because the
Speaker 3: state being repressive is the reason we're fighting it.
Speaker 4: They will still get their houses rated. And it's the
Speaker 4: same same thing ad demos. You don't need to be
Speaker 4: the one breaking windows for the least to tackle you, Like,
Speaker 4: at a certain point, it actually doesn't. It seems to
Speaker 4: matter very little. I mean, if things get to trial,
Speaker 4: then things you know will maybe matter a bit more.
Speaker 4: But in like how police display the power of the state,
Speaker 4: Like out in the open world, it really doesn't matter
Speaker 4: if you're holding a sign or you're holding a hammer
Speaker 4: when you're getting tackled from behind by a big man
Speaker 4: with a gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, which is why it's like kind of worth.
Speaker 3: I mean that's like almost like what the the answer
Speaker 3: to that is like solidarity, and by recognizing that to
Speaker 3: a certain degree, if you were at a protest and
Speaker 3: people are breaking windows and it's like, okay, well now
Speaker 3: we're all in danger together. And if that is a
Speaker 3: danger beyond what you particularly feel like exposing yourself to,
Speaker 3: that is probably the time to depart. Another pitfall to
Speaker 3: avoid if you're starting your own thing. Any group that
Speaker 3: involves money will at some point have someone from that
Speaker 3: group steal the money.
Speaker 4: Including bail funds. Unfortunately, it does, It does happen, and
Speaker 4: it sucks.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have lost count of the number of times someone
Speaker 3: who was an organizer has stolen all of the money
Speaker 3: from this or that thing, and that's because capitalism puts
Speaker 3: people in absolutely weird and terrible positions. Right, It's still
Speaker 3: not okay for people to steal the bail fund, and
Speaker 3: we should stop them. But often the people who steal
Speaker 3: the stuff, if they're the organizers, they don't even necessarily
Speaker 3: conceptualize what they did as stealing. They're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna pay that back. I don't think anyone needs it
Speaker 3: right now. I just need it for rent.
Speaker 4: In order for the bail fund to continue, I have
Speaker 4: to have stable housing. So we need to use these
Speaker 4: two thousand dollars right now, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right without checking with the rest of the group,
Speaker 3: and like, you know, like, and so if there's money involved,
Speaker 3: you should set up some best practices around multiple eyes
Speaker 3: on the money at any given point and making sure
Speaker 3: that it's accountable to the broader group. One organizing model
Speaker 3: that is worth considering is the affinity group. This is
Speaker 3: basically you and some of your closest friends that you
Speaker 3: feel like doing safe with actions with. Whatever the scale
Speaker 3: of actions, you get together with your friends.
Speaker 4: Or people you're not even necessarily like social friends with,
Speaker 4: but people you feel comfortable working with. Because there sometimes
Speaker 4: is a distinction like you said, sometimes you have a
Speaker 4: lot of close friends you don't want in your affinity group,
Speaker 4: and sometimes there's people in your affinity group that you
Speaker 4: may not really want to hang out with like every
Speaker 4: week totally, but they're good to work with. Now, that's
Speaker 4: a really good point. It's about trust rather than like
Speaker 4: getting along with sometimes. You know, Yeah, it might function
Speaker 4: better if you know you don't all hate each other, ah,
Speaker 4: have some affinity. Yeah, yes, you know, but perhaps you
Speaker 4: have a shared affinity within the group.
Speaker 5: Ideally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. If you're in a riot, whether by
Speaker 3: choice or by accident, you are safer and you can
Speaker 3: feel more comfortable if you are there with two or
Speaker 3: seven of your closest and most trustworthy friends or frenemies.
Speaker 3: These are the people who are the most likely to
Speaker 3: de arrest you. These are the people who are there
Speaker 3: to notice if you are caught and will organize your bail.
Speaker 3: These are the people who will be in direct You'll
Speaker 3: be in direct communication with during the protest, so you
Speaker 3: can coordinate your actions together.
Speaker 4: It's figure out how you want to get into the
Speaker 4: area get out of the area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that's like a going alone is sort
Speaker 3: of expert mode and so you should take fewer risks
Speaker 3: if you go alone until you are good, you know,
Speaker 3: and most people do not prefer and do not are
Speaker 3: not better off going to protest alone. And then the
Speaker 3: final thing kind of tying together the existing groups versus
Speaker 3: whatever else existing protests movements EBB and flow protests are contagious,
Speaker 3: especially when they're rowdy and they show that they take
Speaker 3: themselves seriously enough to not just go along with whatever
Speaker 3: professional protest managers tell them to do, and take them
Speaker 3: seriously enough to resist the police and authorities. It's more
Speaker 3: or less impossible to know which protests like sparks will
Speaker 3: catch a bigger fire. It is good and useful to
Speaker 3: cast sparks and see what catches, or to notice when
Speaker 3: something is starting to spread and to help it spread.
Speaker 4: Like what happened a few weeks ago with the campus stuff,
Speaker 4: right exactly, one or two places really start popping off
Speaker 4: and you're like, hey, I know some people in college
Speaker 4: who are in whatever town I'm in. Maybe we can
Speaker 4: figure something out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so's if that was your involvement. And you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's not currently happening where I am anymore. What do
Speaker 3: I do next? Things like that will happen again, and
Speaker 3: you can also make things like that happen. Most of
Speaker 3: the time they will not catch. However, sometimes they do,
Speaker 3: and that is like kind of our job in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, is to organize things and try things
Speaker 3: and see what catches. I'm curious your take. There are
Speaker 3: two political conventions happening this year. The Republican National Convention
Speaker 3: been from July fifteenth to eighteenth, twenty twenty four in Milwaukee,
Speaker 3: and then in August nineteenth to twenty second in Chicago
Speaker 3: is the Democratic National Convention. They're basically always protests at
Speaker 3: these conventions to me, and I'm a little bit out
Speaker 3: of touch with it. There's going to be more this year, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm thinking. There certainly will, I think, especially
Speaker 3: at the DNC. I don't have much to say on
Speaker 3: this at this point besides read up on the previous
Speaker 3: ones that have happened. You can go all the way
Speaker 3: back to sixty eight if you want to read about
Speaker 3: Chicago and the DNC, but also like the RNC protests
Speaker 3: from the Iraq War era, I think would be verly
Speaker 3: useful to look at if you want to go back
Speaker 3: to like two thousand and eight and see how those
Speaker 3: protests were. I would just recommend reading up on it.
Speaker 3: I don't really have much else to say on those
Speaker 3: in the moment.
Speaker 4: They're too far out totally to forecast. Yeah, and I yeah,
Speaker 4: that's kind of all I'll say at the moment.
Speaker 5: These will become a recurring.
Speaker 4: Top on this podcast the next few months.
Speaker 3: So yeah, And so keep track of what's happening, and
Speaker 3: get ready to go to what you feel comfortable with,
Speaker 3: and don't be afraid to be brave, but don't let
Speaker 3: anyone trick you into doing stuff that you're not comfortable with.
Speaker 3: But we need you. We're glad you're here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't be so down that the school year is
Speaker 4: over and these campus protests only had a few weeks
Speaker 4: to live. I know there were certainly people who were
Speaker 4: really hoping that after we saw you know, what happened
Speaker 4: during April and May, that maybe this would you know,
Speaker 4: trigger things happening off campus around the summer.
Speaker 5: And maybe they still will.
Speaker 4: And at the very least, we have a lot of
Speaker 4: young people listener possibly included, who like experienced their first
Speaker 4: example of like actual state violence like on them, and
Speaker 4: that could be a very radicalizing experience. So yeah, don't
Speaker 4: don't be so down that maybe your occupation didn't go
Speaker 4: as well as you wanted to. Maybe you're protested, and
Speaker 4: but I think there's a lot of lessons to learn
Speaker 4: from what happened the past month, and they will become applicable,
Speaker 4: possibly this summer, possibly two years from now, who knows.
Speaker 4: Like it's hard to say, but yeah, it's Whenever you
Speaker 4: get that first hint of tear gas, you kind of
Speaker 4: become a different person in my opinion, So congratulations to
Speaker 4: everyone who did that. Hopefully didn't get arrested, and if
Speaker 4: you did, hopefully you have a jail support crew that
Speaker 4: is helping you out.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I think that people never really
Speaker 3: recover from isn't the right word. The first time you
Speaker 3: see the police retreat totally, you recognize that this thing
Speaker 3: you have been taught is completely unassailable. The reason they're
Speaker 3: building cop cities is they know they are assailable and
Speaker 3: they want to be less. So well, listen to this podcast,
Speaker 3: and that's the only place you'll ever find anything useful.
Speaker 3: That's the fine.
Speaker 5: I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, but there are other podcasts that there's
Speaker 4: a lot of books, because there's a lot of zines,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of sketchy noblog sites which may sometimes
Speaker 4: have misinformation and sometimes have good information yay. And you
Speaker 4: could certainly certainly check out Margaret. I've heard that you
Speaker 4: yourself had a few other podcasts what I do well
Speaker 4: if you want to hear a lot of the history
Speaker 4: around some of the stuff we talked about, including like
Speaker 4: the co Intel pro stuff. For example, I run a
Speaker 4: podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff on this
Speaker 4: very network, cool Zone Media, and you can listen to
Speaker 4: it every Monday and Wednesday. I just finished a very long,
Speaker 4: but I swear entertaining series of episodes about the Russian
Speaker 4: Revolution in the Civil War. I've did an episode about
Speaker 4: the Burglars for Peace who exposed co Intel pro by
Speaker 4: robbing an FBI office in the middle of the night
Speaker 4: in the early seventies, and all kinds of other stories,
Speaker 4: So you can listen to that, or if you want
Speaker 4: to know more about the end of the world. I
Speaker 4: help run a podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying,
Speaker 4: comes out every Friday, and that one is Prepper Butt Community. Yep,
Speaker 4: there were go And I have a book coming out.
Speaker 4: It comes out of September. It's called The Sapling Cage
Speaker 4: and it's going to be kickstarted in June, and if
Speaker 4: you go to Kickstarter you can sign up for announcements
Speaker 4: about that. And it is the best book I've ever written,
Speaker 4: so you all should read it. Very excited to see
Speaker 4: that that does it for us, that it could happen here.
Speaker 4: We will probably see you out there.
Speaker 10: Good luck.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Could Happen Here, the only sue where things happen.
Speaker 6: I'm Ani Siege of Future Channel Antraism and I'm joined
Speaker 6: by Garrison Clo Hello.
Speaker 7: Nice.
Speaker 6: Recently I've been researching and writing on education and anarchista Honestly,
Speaker 6: it's one of my favorite topics to look into, and
Speaker 6: it's one of the topics I think I'm most passionate about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's definitely a hot topic within this political field.
Speaker 4: There's a large, large variety of opinions.
Speaker 6: One might say for sure, for sure, for sure, I
Speaker 6: mean consciousness does form the basis of revolution, and there's
Speaker 6: a long history of anarchist struggle around education, whether it
Speaker 6: be in terms of critiquing US role in social control
Speaker 6: and socialization, or discussing news liberation, or talking about the
Speaker 6: inequalities of the current education system, or the influenza statist
Speaker 6: capitalists and religious ideologies, or the whole discussion around sex education.
Speaker 6: These are all things that anarchists have looked into discussed,
Speaker 6: and so it's to wrestle with.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because anarchists have, like I believe, the large
Speaker 4: number of people who are like, very like militantly like
Speaker 4: anti school but also have a really high number of
Speaker 4: people who become teachers. So it's always kind of interesting
Speaker 4: when you're ever at like an anarchist gathering, you have
Speaker 4: half the people are like school teachers, the other half
Speaker 4: are like destroy the schools, which is always just a
Speaker 4: little bit amusing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, for sure. So it's really I think
Speaker 6: people have to deal with that sort of tension. Anarchists
Speaker 6: find themselves in those sort of tensions, but then they
Speaker 6: also find themselves put themselves in those positions in part
Speaker 6: because they see the potential of those positions we you know,
Speaker 6: in sort of shape in the future. But I don't
Speaker 6: mean to mislead anybody this episode, would it's only tangentially
Speaker 6: related to education. Okay, Yeah, So basically in my research
Speaker 6: on education, I stumbled upon this article called anarchists of
Speaker 6: an Education and early Republican Cuba from eighteen ninety eight
Speaker 6: to nineteen twenty five. And also I found some other
Speaker 6: works on anarchist Cuba in general and his all thanks
Speaker 6: to the scholarship of Kubin Shaffer. And I mean, for
Speaker 6: some time now, I've been meaning to dig deeper into
Speaker 6: the history of anarchism in Cuba. Dare I say, I
Speaker 6: think it's been forgotten, and so I took a dive
Speaker 6: into it. I first started with Stephen J. Hersh and
Speaker 6: Lucian van der Wald's work in anarchism and syndicalism in
Speaker 6: the colonial and post colonial world. And in my research
Speaker 6: I also founder work of Sam Dorkoff and Frank Finandez,
Speaker 6: both of whom were apparently highly influential in the scholarship,
Speaker 6: the historical research and the present understanding of Cuban anarchism.
Speaker 6: It's thanks to their research that we know what we know,
Speaker 6: bringing all those different things together, all those different sources together.
Speaker 6: So here we go, Akivamos, Let's discuss the history of
Speaker 6: Cuban anarchism, and our story begins in the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 6: You know, the sun on colonial Cuba, casting a long
Speaker 6: and heavy shadow across the vibe and streets of Havana.
Speaker 6: The gentle salty breezes carried I'm trying a new thing.
Speaker 6: I see a facial ext friend. I'm trying I like
Speaker 6: Can I like it? I'm trying to said the same,
Speaker 6: you know, feel those salty breezes carrying the scent of
Speaker 6: tobacco and coffee and sugar cane. But let's not get
Speaker 6: too romantic. You know, this was a plantation society where
Speaker 6: African slaves remained in chains and toiled in the hot
Speaker 6: sun while many of their contemporaries gained their freedom and
Speaker 6: plantition known as navigated the web of politics and power.
Speaker 6: Cuba was among the last countries to abolish slavery, and
Speaker 6: the Cuban aristocracy, being uniquely loyal to the Spanish crown,
Speaker 6: was primarily responsible for the persistence to that institution. You know,
Speaker 6: they were dedicated to Spain long after much of Latin
Speaker 6: America had won their independence, and despite the aristocrat's loyalty,
Speaker 6: there were still whispers of liberation and revolution in corners
Speaker 6: of the city. In eighteen fifty seven, just nearly two
Speaker 6: decades after the French track called pered Joseph Prudin declared
Speaker 6: himself an anarchists and a mutualist. The first Proonian Mutualist
Speaker 6: Society would be founded in Cuba, marking the early beginnings
Speaker 6: of the organized labor movement on the island. A decade later,
Speaker 6: in eighteen sixty five, lecturers or readings places where political
Speaker 6: ideas we read in cigar factories. They became very widespread
Speaker 6: considering the predominance of the tobacco industry, and in the
Speaker 6: same year, the first strike threat would occur at a
Speaker 6: tobacco works in Havana, leading to successful negotiations for increased wages.
Speaker 6: In eighteen sixty six, Havana based artisans would establish the
Speaker 6: first evening school for workers, lay in the foundation for
Speaker 6: worker based Education. Between eighteen sixty eight and eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 6: conflict would erupt into violence as the sugar mill owner
Speaker 6: Carlos Manuel de Sespides and his followers proclaimed independence, beginning
Speaker 6: the first of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain.
Speaker 6: The first, a horizon led by wealthy planters, would be
Speaker 6: known as the Ten Years' War, and it would be
Speaker 6: followed by a second uprising, the Little War, from eighteen
Speaker 6: seventy nineteighteen eighty, and meanwhile, the Cubas anarchist movement would
Speaker 6: look to establish another worker's school and a newspaper. These
Speaker 6: efforts were led by cigar makers Enrique roy De Saint
Speaker 6: Martin and Enrique Messonier. In Havana, greg San Martin founded
Speaker 6: this Center of Instruction and Recreation. Its purpose was to
Speaker 6: defend worker organizations and distribute anarchal collectivist literature from Spain.
Speaker 6: The doors of the center opened to all Cubans, regardless
Speaker 6: of their social position, political leanings, or color differences. Gregson
Speaker 6: Martin also took the position of editor at the newspaper
Speaker 6: El Obrero, co opting it from the Democratic Republicans and
Speaker 6: turned it into an explicitly anarchist newspaper. The anarchists and
Speaker 6: tobacco industry were pioneering the emergent labour struggle, bolstered by
Speaker 6: the transport of anarchist periodicals from Spain to Cuba and
Speaker 6: the transmission of ideas by Spanish immigrant workers. The first
Speaker 6: regional centers, clinics, secular schools, mutual aid associations and Free
Speaker 6: Association of tobacco workers, typographers, carpenters, day laborers and artisans
Speaker 6: were emerging thanks to the influence of Prudon's ideas. While
Speaker 6: some in the labor movement were appreciate reformism and collaboration
Speaker 6: with capitalist interests, the anarchists stood firm in their rejection
Speaker 6: of submission to the feat of capital. In eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 6: the Junta Central de r Tisnos was founded to unite
Speaker 6: Cuba's workers in federations. In the same year, in the
Speaker 6: RecA Massoniir launched the Circulo de Trabajadores or Workers Circle,
Speaker 6: which was focused on educational and cultural activities. The Worker's
Speaker 6: Circle became the largest labor organization in Cuba in the
Speaker 6: late eighteen eighties. It hosted a secular school for five
Speaker 6: hundred poor students to challenge Cuba's public and religious schools.
Speaker 6: It held rally for groups of workers, and it led
Speaker 6: anti nationalist and anti racist education efforts. Anarchists will also
Speaker 6: challenge in discrimination in labor and immigration policies. By eighteen
Speaker 6: eighty six, Spain finally outlawed slavery, and the Cuban anarchists
Speaker 6: would attempt to welcome Afro Cubans into the labor organizations,
Speaker 6: with mixed success. And we'll get to that soon. In
Speaker 6: eighteen eighty seven, Roixamartin launched Al Productor, a weekly newspaper
Speaker 6: that will become a must read for the work in
Speaker 6: people of Cuba, and to coordinate it to publication and
Speaker 6: the efforts of the various workers groups, workers founded the
Speaker 6: Alianza Oprera or Workers' Alliance. With the founder of the
Speaker 6: Alliance and the sponsorship of another organization, La Ferracion de
Speaker 6: Tabadores de Cuba or FDC or Federation of Cuban Workers,
Speaker 6: the first Congresso Obrero de Cuba would be held in Havana.
Speaker 6: Majority of the members of the FDC were tobacco workers,
Speaker 6: but members of other trades also participated, like tailors and
Speaker 6: drivers and bakers and baro makers and dock workers. So
Speaker 6: that's a lot of organizations in quick succession. So to summarize,
Speaker 6: we have the center of instruction recreation, the newspapers El
Speaker 6: Peructor and Obrero, the Junta Centrale de Artisanos or Central
Speaker 6: Union of Artisans, El Sercuilo de Travajadores or Workers Circle,
Speaker 6: the Alianza Obrera or Workers Alliance, and Laferracion de Travajadores
Speaker 6: de Cuba or FDC, which held the first Congresso Obrero
Speaker 6: or Workers Congress in Cuba. All these organized efforts would
Speaker 6: spark another strike. Remember the first threat, which did not
Speaker 6: lead to a strike, took place in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 6: but this time it was different. In July eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 6: the tobacco workers call a strike at the Henry Clay
Speaker 6: tobacco factory in Havana. The Workers Circle met and agreed
Speaker 6: to begin collecting donations to support the workers out in
Speaker 6: the streets, and sent delegates to Key West in Florida
Speaker 6: to solicit aid from the tobacco workers there. The Worker's
Speaker 6: Circle was very much involved in a lot of these
Speaker 6: things because they actually had a large headquarters that coordinated
Speaker 6: the offices of many workers associations. In addition to the
Speaker 6: school that I mentioned they founded, they had their fingers
Speaker 6: and a lot of the associations and solidarity efforts that
Speaker 6: had taken place. By eighteen eighty nine, they founded yet
Speaker 6: another school, teaching over one hundred men at night and
Speaker 6: eight hundred children during the day. Elegance the establishment of
Speaker 6: new schools across the island, And also in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 6: those same tobacco workers in Key West called their own
Speaker 6: general strike due to poor working conditions, low wages, and
Speaker 6: stock living conditions. And guess what they stood in solidarity
Speaker 6: with the Cuban workers, and the Cuban workers stood in
Speaker 6: solidarity with them. The Workers Alliance also connected with workers
Speaker 6: organizations in Florida and fosters solidarity between workers in Florida
Speaker 6: and Cuba. In addition to Key West, strikes would also
Speaker 6: break out in Tampa and Ybor City. Despite some violence
Speaker 6: and the expulsion of the strike leaders, the strike in
Speaker 6: Florida ended in early eighteen ninety with a triumph for
Speaker 6: Florida's tobacco workers as the owners acceded to the demands
Speaker 6: for a pay increase. On May first International Workers Day,
Speaker 6: over three thousand workers marched through Havana, and in this
Speaker 6: time the workers Circle was continuously expanding. But within this
Speaker 6: year also came tragedy, as in August Enrique Roig San
Speaker 6: Martin died at the age of forty six, and the
Speaker 6: last of the three conflicts against Spain would be the
Speaker 6: Cuban War of Independence, which raged from eighteen ninety five
Speaker 6: to eighteen ninety eight. Anarchists in Cuba, New York, and
Speaker 6: Spain debated support for Cuba's independent struggle but despite concerns,
Speaker 6: most anarchists did support independence, seeing it as an anti
Speaker 6: colonial fight against Spanish imperialism and an opportunity to transform
Speaker 6: the island along anarchist principles. Figures like Jose Garcia, Rafael Serra,
Speaker 6: and Adrian del Valle promoted anarchist internationalism while also seek
Speaker 6: in Cuban national liberation. The final three months that conflict
Speaker 6: escalated with US involvement becoming known as the Spanish American War,
Speaker 6: and following Spain's defeat, the US briefly occupied Cuba with
Speaker 6: the promise of greater autonomy in the future. Of course,
Speaker 6: we all know how that promised to endow with repeated
Speaker 6: interventions Kim Crowen anarchist opposition. The US occupiers overhauled the
Speaker 6: Cuban education system and introduced a new model influenced by
Speaker 6: American principles, emphasizing liberal arts, manual instruction, and civic education
Speaker 6: to republicanize the children of Cuba and promote democracy. In
Speaker 6: spite of some reforms, the Cuban education system still suffered corruption,
Speaker 6: inadequate and infrastructure, and overcrowded classrooms. In eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 6: just a year after independence, the Workers Alliance organized a
Speaker 6: mason's strike which extended into the construction trade and also
Speaker 6: led to several arrests and the overall repression of the anarchists.
Speaker 6: This is a persistent theme, of course.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean it's interesting, how like in a lot
Speaker 4: of like the political stuff we learned about Cuba, it's
Speaker 4: more based on like the socialist and more communist struggles
Speaker 4: of the twentieth century. And I knew that there were
Speaker 4: like anarchists active before that and even during that time
Speaker 4: period as well, but there is a lot of this
Speaker 4: that seems to be not nearly as talked about it
Speaker 4: emphasized as the later more socialist leaning struggles that came.
Speaker 6: And you'll notice that, you know, in places where the
Speaker 6: Marxists won, basically any of the pre Marxist victory history
Speaker 6: of anarchists involvement tends to be diminished to ever raised entirely. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like in literally every in every struggle all across
Speaker 4: the world where that's happened. That does seem to be
Speaker 4: the case.
Speaker 6: Exactly exactly when I found this information and my mind
Speaker 6: was blowing, you know, I had no idea all of
Speaker 6: this was going on. Yeah, the fact that from as
Speaker 6: early as Prudon's lifetime, there were anarchists in Cuba organizing associations.
Speaker 4: I mean, come on, yeah, in like the eighteen fifties
Speaker 4: and it.
Speaker 6: Gets bigger, a lot more takes place. I haven't even
Speaker 6: really breached the other twentieth century yet. That's when things
Speaker 6: really kick off.
Speaker 4: Let's get to that after this message from our sponsors.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back. Let's return to Andrew's discussion
Speaker 4: of anarchism in Cuba.
Speaker 6: Yes, so so. Also in eighteen ninety nine, some new
Speaker 6: anarchist projects dropped onto the scene. You know, you had
Speaker 6: the Liga General de Travadores or General League of Workers,
Speaker 6: which emerged with the back in the Missonia and another
Speaker 6: anarchist ramone Rivero eve Rivero, and also the publication Tierra,
Speaker 6: which was founded by anarchists Abelardo Savedra and Francisco Gonzalees Sola.
Speaker 6: And the publication El Nuevo Idl was also founded, but
Speaker 6: it only lasted a couple of years. Notably, it loudly
Speaker 6: opposed the US's plans for ANIX and Cuba and the
Speaker 6: introduction of the plat Amendment to the Cuban Constitution, which
Speaker 6: would provide pretense for US intervention in the future. The
Speaker 6: plat Amendment was really that point in the Cuban constitution
Speaker 6: that would justify us infusion and involvement for years to come.
Speaker 6: Here's a little easter egg, a little fun fact. It
Speaker 6: will come you. In fact, you could call him a
Speaker 6: run income you for the anarchist worldwide, a familiar face
Speaker 6: because he showed up in Havana in this year, and
Speaker 6: he also showed up in Egypt during their anarchist struggle
Speaker 6: for those who remember that episode, any ideas.
Speaker 4: Too to try to think of this time period who
Speaker 4: at this.
Speaker 6: Point, at this point you could call him mister worldwide,
Speaker 6: the anarchist, mister Worldwide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think so. I think I'll only make
Speaker 4: a fool of myself.
Speaker 6: Yeah. The one and only Erko Malichester arrives in Cuba.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, okay, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, mister worldwide. Of course, it didn't take long before
Speaker 6: he was barred from speaking in public and he very
Speaker 6: quickly had to leave Cuba, but he was there. He
Speaker 6: did show up and let me reach the you know,
Speaker 6: the turn of the century. Right just after the turn
Speaker 6: of the century, on May twentieth nineteen oh two, the
Speaker 6: First Republic of Cuba was inaugurated with the recognition of
Speaker 6: the US, but despite the survey opposition, the US retained
Speaker 6: influence over Cuba with that plat amendment. With independence, many
Speaker 6: Cubans aspired to build a more egalitarian nation. The Cuban
Speaker 6: anarchists continued to struggle even as they were becoming disillusioned
Speaker 6: by the continued prioritization of individual profits of a society,
Speaker 6: wellbon the oppression of labor and the terrible educational systems.
Speaker 6: They had their first truly general strike in nineteen oh two,
Speaker 6: known as the Apprentice Strike, but it was suppressed and failed,
Speaker 6: and with its failure, leading figures in the Lega Heeneral
Speaker 6: de Trebadores like Messonniea and Rivero Yirverro, retired from the
Speaker 6: labour struggle. A year later, in nineteen oh three, anarchists
Speaker 6: organized in the sugar industry, which was met with a
Speaker 6: violent response from the owners, including the murder of two
Speaker 6: prominent anarchist figures, Casanias and Buntero. The year before the
Speaker 6: US recognition of Cuban independence in nineteen oh one, just
Speaker 6: across the pond in Spain, Francisco Ferrer had found that
Speaker 6: his first modern school. Ferrer is an icon in the
Speaker 6: sphere of anarchist education for his pioneer and efforts as
Speaker 6: anarchists and Cuba condemn in public schools for their condition pedagogy,
Speaker 6: patriotic indoctrination, and lack of critical thinking. They were inspired
Speaker 6: by they alternative education rooted in rationalism and free inquiry
Speaker 6: that was introduced by Ferrer.
Speaker 4: At this point, is there like a decent bit of
Speaker 4: communication between the anarchists in Spain and the anarchists in Cuba,
Speaker 4: because all the stuff you've been mentioning sounds very reminiscent
Speaker 4: of some of like the anarchosympicalist models that would grow
Speaker 4: to more prominence in Spain in the coming decades.
Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: In this field, Yeah, it feels very very similar.
Speaker 6: There was a very large Spanish immigrant community in Cuba
Speaker 6: at the time of Spanish workers, and that would actually
Speaker 6: end up biting the anarchist movement in the but later
Speaker 6: on and you know, you'll see how Okay, Yeah, there
Speaker 6: was a lot of there was a lot of cross
Speaker 6: pollination between the Spanish anarchists and the Cuban anarchists that
Speaker 6: makes sense. In many cases they were both Spanish and Cuba. Sure,
Speaker 6: and so when for Popstar with this school in Barcelona
Speaker 6: and in other places in Spain. I mean, the Cuban
Speaker 6: Anarchists had already been organized in education before, as their
Speaker 6: program had always sought to raise consciousness and prepare for
Speaker 6: social revolution. But Ferrer offered that extra dose of inspiration.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: His modern schools introduced things like free play and individual
Speaker 6: liberty and really inspired the founding of educational experiments across Europe,
Speaker 6: Asia and the Americas. In nineteen oh five, Covino Vilar
Speaker 6: opened for that a co educational primary and secondary school
Speaker 6: in Havana, following Frea's principles of free in Korean individual liberty.
Speaker 6: In nineteen oh six, the CEES School was established in Regular,
Speaker 6: embracing the advanced pedagogical perspective methods of these Spanish Anarchists schools.
Speaker 6: And that very same year, nineteen oh six, the US
Speaker 6: intervened in Cuba again. You know, they can't even let
Speaker 6: decade go by of independence before they say, nap were
Speaker 6: stepping in, you know. So of course, in response, strikes
Speaker 6: breakout in Havana, Siego de a Vila and Santiago de
Speaker 6: Cuba anyway, so that's going on, and anarchists are also
Speaker 6: organized and speaking tours. In nineteen oh eight, anarchists formed
Speaker 6: the group at Ucaciondale Porvenir or Education of the Future
Speaker 6: in Regular which sought to established modern schools across the island.
Speaker 6: The LGA Heneral de Trabahadories also got involved in the
Speaker 6: group's efforts. Unfortunately, internal conflicts and financial difficulties undermined the
Speaker 6: initial wave of anarchist schools in this time. Meanwhile, private
Speaker 6: school options, particularly of the religious variety, were proliferated across Cuba. Eventually,
Speaker 6: in nineteen oh nine, Ferrero was arrested and executed by
Speaker 6: Spanish authorities, which actually triggered a protest in Cuba and
Speaker 6: also triggered resistance elsewhere in the world. That would simultaneously
Speaker 6: seek to advocate his ideas further and of course, was
Speaker 6: to honor his memory. Turning out went to the nineteen tens.
Speaker 6: It was a very eventful period. Let's just say, you know,
Speaker 6: the Mexican Revolution was a current which inspired Cubas workers
Speaker 6: and peasants. The Mexican Revolution was a current and that
Speaker 6: inspired Cuba's workers and peasants there was actually, just as
Speaker 6: there was cross pollination between Spanish anarchists and Cuban anarchists,
Speaker 6: there was cross pollination between Cuban anarchists and Mexican anarchists,
Speaker 6: you know, anarchists. Ricardo Flores Magon, a Titanic figure in
Speaker 6: Mexican revolution, actually had a stand in a relationship with
Speaker 6: the Cuban paper Tierra, as the paper was critical of
Speaker 6: the Mexican dictator of the time, Portfyrio DS. So while
Speaker 6: the guns of the revolutionary Imiliano Zapata were firing in Mexico,
Speaker 6: tobacco workers, teamsters and bakers were striking in Cuba. In
Speaker 6: nineteen twelve, a congress was formed in Crusius with the
Speaker 6: aim to create an island wide labor federation. But another
Speaker 6: significant event occurred in nineteen twelve. You see, all this time,
Speaker 6: Afrocubans will play in significant roles in the island's labor movements,
Speaker 6: particularly through strikes such as the eighteen ninety nine Mason
Speaker 6: strike and the sugar workers' struggles. Despite this, they were
Speaker 6: dealing with a lot of political and cultural persecution and
Speaker 6: faced high literacy rates, job discrimination, and disenfranchisement due to
Speaker 6: literacy and property requirements. For voting. Naturally, Afrocubans wanted to
Speaker 6: fight against this, so they formed their own political party,
Speaker 6: the Independent Party of Color or PIC, and the government
Speaker 6: quickly outlawed it, which triggered several violent attacks on PIC
Speaker 6: supporter meetings throughout nineteen twelve. It was essentially a race riot,
Speaker 6: and it killed as many as six thousand Afrocubans and
Speaker 6: resulted in another nine hundred thrown in jail and charged
Speaker 6: with rebellion. This time, the anarchist response was weaker than
Speaker 6: it could have been. Writers like Adrian del Vallier and
Speaker 6: Eugenio Leante presented pressed the importance of education and the
Speaker 6: good upbringing of children to root out the racist attitudes
Speaker 6: that led to the massacre. Writers like Adrian de la
Speaker 6: Vallei and Eugenio Leante pressed the importance of education and
Speaker 6: the importance of a good upbringing of children to root
Speaker 6: out the racial attitudes. The racist attitudes that led to
Speaker 6: the massacre, as those attitudes are still present a mere
Speaker 6: generation after ablition. The anarchists were, as would be consisted
Speaker 6: of the principles critical of the PIC's political approach of
Speaker 6: bourgeois elections, but they did admire Africuman culture and recognize
Speaker 6: their contributions to workers liberation movements, but as far as
Speaker 6: I can tell, they didn't do much else beyond education
Speaker 6: to combat racist attitudes, likely feeling powerless to prevent the
Speaker 6: violence in nineteen twelve due to their own repression by
Speaker 6: the state. And of course, it isn't a binary of
Speaker 6: Africubans and anarchists, as there were Africubans in the anarchist movement,
Speaker 6: including problem figures like Raphael Sarah who remained active into
Speaker 6: the nineteen forties, the printer Pablo Guira, and Margarito Iglesias,
Speaker 6: who is the black anarchist leader of the Manufacturers Union
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenties. Still, despite this overlap, the anarchists still
Speaker 6: couldn't shake their perception as white and foreigners, which.
Speaker 4: Is still a dynamic at play today with anarchists as
Speaker 4: people free anarchists. Saul is like white teenagers, I guess,
Speaker 4: and will often discount the presence of black anarchists and
Speaker 4: other anarchists or people of color.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm a bit of at a loss as to
Speaker 6: what I could say, like from this arm chair position,
Speaker 6: that they could have done differently in nineteen twelve. Sure,
Speaker 6: they definitely could have stepped up in tried with what
Speaker 6: to defend those communities and to start with those communities
Speaker 6: and solidarity. But at the same time, I wasn't there
Speaker 6: in nineteen twelve, so I'm not sure how things played out.
Speaker 6: But I do think that while the heart is in
Speaker 6: the right place with education to roots out racist attitudes,
Speaker 6: you know, consciousness raising is one thing which you really
Speaker 6: do have to, you know, put yourself on the line
Speaker 6: when it comes to defending marginalized groups, especially if you're
Speaker 6: coming from opposition of relative privilege, being white, to be
Speaker 6: in Spanish, in you know, recently post colonial Cuba, barely
Speaker 6: even post colonial Cuba, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I'm in the same position as you
Speaker 4: here or even further possessing an inability to try to
Speaker 4: critique from the twenty first century. But do you know
Speaker 4: what I do feel comfortable in calling is this next
Speaker 4: ad break?
Speaker 5: All right, we are back.
Speaker 4: Let's return to our discussion of anarchistsm in Cuba in
Speaker 4: the nineteen tenths.
Speaker 6: So in nineteen thirteen, as we was speaking of the
Speaker 6: repression of the anarchist movement, the third President of Cuba
Speaker 6: would step up, that is, General Mario Garcia Menocal and
Speaker 6: during his reign, the government would ramp up the repression
Speaker 6: of the anarchists with the passing of anti anarchist laws
Speaker 6: and the closure of anarchist organizations. There were crackdowns against
Speaker 6: the radical activities from nineteen fourteen on and the suspension
Speaker 6: of the Tierra publication and the deportation of many anarchists.
Speaker 6: Because in spite of the oppression, the anarchists movement began
Speaker 6: to recover by nineteen seventeen with the Centro Oberero or
Speaker 6: Worker's Center being established in Havana lead into resurgence of
Speaker 6: anarchist education and organized activity. Between nineteen eighteen and nineteen
Speaker 6: nineteen four general strikes a breakout in Havana and the
Speaker 6: US sent a flotilla in response to the disorder. The
Speaker 6: government suspended constitutional guarantees, deported even more anarchists, and closed
Speaker 6: the Centrol Obrero. Around this time, you also had the
Speaker 6: anaqual Naturists, which I really don't know where to fit
Speaker 6: into all of this, so I'll just put them here
Speaker 6: to give you from the repression.
Speaker 4: Naturists.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, So let's take this as like a breath
Speaker 6: of fresh air from all of the repression and against anarchists.
Speaker 6: By the state you had the anquo naturists.
Speaker 4: That's what I haven't heard before. Are these like old
Speaker 4: timey green anarchists.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 6: No, I'll actually be the judge of that. I'll actually
Speaker 6: the that.
Speaker 4: It's like actual naturist philosophy. Yes, ah, oh weird.
Speaker 6: Yes. The naturist movement was developed in Europe and North
Speaker 6: America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and
Speaker 6: it focused on alternative personal health and lifestyle practices such
Speaker 6: as adopted vegetarianism, exercise, nudism, and small village life to
Speaker 6: combat the effects of industrial mass society.
Speaker 4: Okay, so there is like little tidbits of like anarchop
Speaker 4: of like what would become anarcho primitivism in here, but
Speaker 4: it's definitely not like a one to one overlap.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, especially not in Cuba. In Cuba, the anarchists
Speaker 6: aimed to shift the naturist movements focused away from primarily
Speaker 6: individual health concerns to an emphasis on social emaspiratory themes.
Speaker 6: So why in nineteen ten you had lectures on nitarismo
Speaker 6: and although it didn't have the broader emaspiratory dimensions initially,
Speaker 6: later in the decade, the movement would gain its momentum
Speaker 6: and the Nature's Association would expand to establish branches across
Speaker 6: Cuba and even Tampa, Florida.
Speaker 4: Huh Okay.
Speaker 6: Now, anacin naturism in Cuba wasn't too big on the
Speaker 6: nudism aspect of the naturism, but they did emphasize the
Speaker 6: vegetarian self sufficiency against the reliance and capitalism and so
Speaker 6: to learn and teach alternative medicine to help people deal
Speaker 6: with the health problems brought about by factory and field
Speaker 6: work and toxic living conditions. Okay, I know the anical
Speaker 6: nature has actually lasted well into the nineteen fifties, so
Speaker 6: good for them. But let's get back into the timeline.
Speaker 6: If you know anything about history, you know what significant
Speaker 6: event takes place in Russia in nineteen seventeen. The Russian
Speaker 6: Revolution would reverberate across the landscape of workers struggles for
Speaker 6: decades to come. In the next episode, we'll see how
Speaker 6: the Bolsheviks rise would shape the anarchist movement in Cuba
Speaker 6: leading up to the Rise of Castro, as well as
Speaker 6: how anarchists have endured since then until then. And it
Speaker 6: could happen here. And this is Andrewism. I'll pout to
Speaker 6: all the people peace, Welcome to could happen here. I'm
Speaker 6: Andrew Sage of futuree Channel Antraism. I'm again joined by Garrison.
Speaker 6: Say hello again, Hello again.
Speaker 4: See see what it did there? Very very good, very original,
Speaker 4: and very funny, fantastic.
Speaker 6: So last time we were discussing the forgotten history of
Speaker 6: Cuban anarchism, I mean took you by surprise. It's you
Speaker 6: by surprise, and I think it's taken some of the
Speaker 6: audience by surprise too. You know the fact that from
Speaker 6: the very first Prunian and Mutualist Society in eighteen fifty seven,
Speaker 6: to the rise of the anarchist organizations, the strike activities
Speaker 6: that the schools, to even the anequ niaturists, all of
Speaker 6: this was going on from the mid nineteenth century all
Speaker 6: the way into the early twentieth century, even in the
Speaker 6: height of repression in the nineteen tenths, and the cycle
Speaker 6: of US intervention as well.
Speaker 4: I guess what I'm kind of curious about in this
Speaker 4: time period is, like before like the Socialist Revolution, were
Speaker 4: like the anarchists more prominent than some of like the
Speaker 4: actual communists.
Speaker 6: For my research, it does seem so yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like that's that's kind of what it sounds like.
Speaker 4: They were kind of the main political block for like
Speaker 4: almost seventy five years.
Speaker 6: Well things things do make it to in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like the main the main political block on like
Speaker 4: like the like the left specifically, I guess, like the
Speaker 4: if you count anarchism as part of the left, which
Speaker 4: means for the case of simplicity, let's say.
Speaker 6: Sure, I don't, yes, but listenly I wouldn't be caught
Speaker 6: dead at here and to like French political taxonomy, but.
Speaker 4: Totally me in terms of its relation to like labor,
Speaker 4: especially especially this time period of like I.
Speaker 6: Know what you mean, I just like being difficult.
Speaker 4: Sometimes absolutely, I mean yeah that is, I agree with
Speaker 4: you in a lot of cases. But from a like
Speaker 4: a historical standpoint, it kind of makes sense when like
Speaker 4: all these almost all these people are like anarcho communists
Speaker 4: or anarcho synicalists.
Speaker 6: Or I mean you did have the anarcineaturists too, and
Speaker 6: the anarcho naturist.
Speaker 4: There you go, the three genders.
Speaker 6: And I mean t I completely mutualists as well. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 6: the divide, the stringent divide between the anarchist schools of
Speaker 6: thought wouldn't really come into play until we get into
Speaker 6: like the the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: So which we are entering right now.
Speaker 6: Yes, which we have vented. So where do we leave off?
Speaker 6: We left off on the big bang that was the
Speaker 6: Russian Revolution. Remember I said that things will take her turn.
Speaker 6: That is the turn the Russian wizard has been killed. Sad. Indeed,
Speaker 6: I promise to discuss how the death of that Russian
Speaker 6: wizard would impact Cuba going forward into the nineteen twenties
Speaker 6: and beyond. So there we are akiestamos once again, this
Speaker 6: infost thanks to the work of Kuen R. Shaffer, Stephen J. Hush,
Speaker 6: Lucien van der Walt, Sam Dolgov and Frank Fernandez. So
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenty the anarchists formed a Congress to advocate
Speaker 6: a series of immediate and transitory economic measures to resolve
Speaker 6: the high cost of living brought about by the decrease
Speaker 6: in sugar prices, because you remember, Cuba's economy was dependent
Speaker 6: on sugar and tobacco and coffee. They also formed the
Speaker 6: Archist sutter is the confederaci Nacional de Tobajo or a
Speaker 6: national confederation of workers. Following the Bolshevik victory in Russia.
Speaker 6: It took a minute for the world to find out
Speaker 6: what happened to all the anarchists in Russia. I mean,
Speaker 6: it was the nineteen twenties. They didn't have Twitter. But
Speaker 6: in the meantime, the anarchists sent a fraternal salute to
Speaker 6: the brothers who in Russia have established the USSR. Which
Speaker 6: is interesting.
Speaker 4: And ye, that is interesting.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's like a whole thing. Come in.
Speaker 4: It's exciting for the time though, right like you're seeing
Speaker 4: like this thing finally happen. You're like, oh, we have
Speaker 4: like we have like a real chance.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, but I mean I feel like it's like
Speaker 6: a two panel meme, you know, it's like the.
Speaker 5: Victory before the Yeah, very much.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean they knew that the anarchists. But
Speaker 6: they did know, of course, was the anarchists had a
Speaker 6: visible and vital role in that revolution. Absolutely reality that
Speaker 6: has unfortunately forgotten today but very well known back then.
Speaker 6: So the rise of the Soviets, it seemed as though
Speaker 6: the dream of three generations of struggles against the injustices
Speaker 6: of capitalism of the state had reached its conclusion. Again,
Speaker 6: they didn't know what happened to the Anarchists and the Lenin.
Speaker 6: Yet their attitude of jubilation towards the success of the
Speaker 6: Bolsheviks would of course change very shortly, but the anarchists
Speaker 6: in Cuba still had some hope in unity, though despite
Speaker 6: some debate amongst themselves about aligning with the Marxists in
Speaker 6: Cuba see At the time, the anarchost syndicalist movement was
Speaker 6: leading the formation of labor organizations and federations with figures
Speaker 6: like Alfredo Lopez and Antonio Pinichet, and while they were
Speaker 6: largely in favor of cross sectarian alliances and collaboration in
Speaker 6: the promotion of alternative education projects, and after the Congress
Speaker 6: of nineteen twenty Cuba's workers pressed their demands with renewed
Speaker 6: force in solidarity all together, leading to bombings and Havana
Speaker 6: and another general strike on medi Figures like Penichet and
Speaker 6: Salinas were jailed and a bomb was set off in
Speaker 6: the Teatro Nacional in protest. So Initially condemned to death,
Speaker 6: Penichet and Salinas were eventually pardoned and released at the
Speaker 6: beginning of nineteen twenty one, with the fall of Garcio
Speaker 6: Mencalists government. This is when Fedrozias's moderate government came into power,
Speaker 6: and this is when the Anarchos Syndicolas Feracion Oprera de
Speaker 6: la Habana or FOH or Workers Cleation of Havana was founded.
Speaker 6: The Workers Federation of Havana inaugurated its rational School and
Speaker 6: library in nineteen twenty two, aiming to counter public and
Speaker 6: private education emphasis on religion and patriotism. In nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 6: the second Congresso Nacional Oprero is celebrated in San Fuegos
Speaker 6: and the Confederacio Nacabrera the Cuba or National Confederation of
Speaker 6: Human Workers or SCENOC, is founded by anachosyndicalists in Kama Way.
Speaker 6: The SCENOC was a big tent organization, so although it
Speaker 6: was initially led by anachosyndicalists, there were reformists and Marxist
Speaker 6: elements in there as well, and you'll see the results
Speaker 6: of big tent organization very soon. Also nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 6: the Partido Communista Kubano or PCC was founded in Havana,
Speaker 6: and in nineteen twenty five there was a strike among
Speaker 6: railway and sugar workers which would provoke government repression and
Speaker 6: the nineteen twenty five Gerardo Machado would be elected to
Speaker 6: the office of presidency. Now pay attention to the PCC
Speaker 6: because they become relevant again later on.
Speaker 4: They're going to be a recurring character.
Speaker 6: Yes. So President Gerardo Machado's administration vowed to suppress worker militancy,
Speaker 6: lead into an another crackdown on foreigners and radicals, including
Speaker 6: the anarchist schools, and marking another decline of the anarchist
Speaker 6: movements influence. But despite repression under the Macharo dictatorship, anarchists
Speaker 6: continued to agitate, with some fleeing into exile and overall
Speaker 6: refusing to cooperate with the government. They founded militant groups
Speaker 6: such as Espartaco and Losildarios and later the Federation the
Speaker 6: Federacion de Groupos Anarchistas de Cuba or FGC. They engaged
Speaker 6: in street fighting against the government and also in several
Speaker 6: failed assassination attempts against Machado. I don't know what it
Speaker 6: is with Cuban leaders, but they seem to have trouble
Speaker 6: getting assassinated. So while the anarchists and I would like
Speaker 6: to give them the benefit of the doubt, presumably some
Speaker 6: Marxists were engaged in such resistance and I say presumably
Speaker 6: because I didn't they were into focus of my research.
Speaker 6: But from what I could see was the anarchists who
Speaker 6: were engaged in such resistance. Anyway, that's tangential. The operatives
Speaker 6: of the Popular Socialist Party or PSP chose to make
Speaker 6: compromises with the various dictatorial governments in order to be
Speaker 6: allowed control of the labor unions as well as some
Speaker 6: other pooks.
Speaker 4: Well, that doesn't sound like it could result in any problems.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so lock in here, okay. The PSP would later
Speaker 6: be absorbed by the organizac Revolution Scenarios in Tigradas, which
Speaker 6: would later become the Partido Unido de la Revolution Socialista
Speaker 6: the Cuba, which would later be refounded as the Partido
Speaker 6: Communista Gubano or PCC the Cuban Anarchists part cubas the
Speaker 6: Communist part of Cuba.
Speaker 4: There's like this weird loop happening here.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, So the PSP would go on to become
Speaker 6: part of the PCC, even though when they were initially founded,
Speaker 6: the PSP and the PCC with separate organizations totally okay,
Speaker 6: So coming into the nineteen thirty Starting with nineteen thirty,
Speaker 6: a streetcar strike led to a general strike, backed by
Speaker 6: almost all of the unions. The strike failed, unfortunately due
Speaker 6: to a poor planning by the SCENOC, which had come
Speaker 6: into the hands of the PCC. You see, with the
Speaker 6: continuous deportation, exile and murder of anarchists by the Machado government,
Speaker 6: the Marxists and the SCENOC, who had been taken orders
Speaker 6: from the PCC the whole time, were told, Okay, now
Speaker 6: it's your chance, take advantage of the situation. The anarchists
Speaker 6: out of the way, let's take over the SCENOC. So
Speaker 6: in nineteen thirty three, another transportation strike breaks out in Havana,
Speaker 6: which leads to another general strike and further violence, and
Speaker 6: the PCC used their control over the SCENOC to make
Speaker 6: a deal with Mature Shado and the general strike, even
Speaker 6: though they were not the ones that started in the first.
Speaker 4: Place, making a deal to end a strike that they
Speaker 4: didn't start. Indeed, very very cool stuff.
Speaker 6: Now they called this real politic power move the August Eraror,
Speaker 6: But to me, that's way too soft considering what they did.
Speaker 6: You see, it was no mayor whoopsie. You know. The
Speaker 6: PCC ordered the strike and workers to return to their
Speaker 6: jobs and they tried to work with Machado's murderous secret
Speaker 6: police to make that happen.
Speaker 4: No, it's it's just like counterinsurgency.
Speaker 6: Thankfully, the PCC's attempt to sick my shadows dogs on
Speaker 6: the strike and workers failed due to the resistance of
Speaker 6: the anarchists of the Havana Federation of Labor and other
Speaker 6: organized labor forces.
Speaker 4: It's it's funny how like it's it's not the same
Speaker 4: things happen now, I guess, but very similar things happen
Speaker 4: while you have like these like big above ground kind
Speaker 4: of orgs. They'll try to make concessions with with like
Speaker 4: whether that's like like police or with like whatever kind
Speaker 4: of institution that people are like opposing. They'll have these
Speaker 4: these big, like you know, big groups trying trying to
Speaker 4: make concessions, and it's always left to the anarchists to
Speaker 4: be like, no, we actually have to keep fighting. This
Speaker 4: actually doesn't this sort of this this this sort of
Speaker 4: like attempts at calling like victory or trying to end
Speaker 4: things actually is not what you claim it to be,
Speaker 4: and we have to keep going. And it's is something
Speaker 4: that always falls back on like some of the more
Speaker 4: anarchist aligned contingents in popular struggles.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I see why the why the old anarchists
Speaker 6: get a bit jaded and crotchet tea, you know, because yeah,
Speaker 6: you see these feelings happening again and again, Like why
Speaker 6: you cheer in, you know, like you have not one
Speaker 6: you know, this is not a victory. This is the
Speaker 6: precursor to squad wipe, to like absolute defeat. You know, yeah,
Speaker 6: game over. But unfortunately some people have to to learn,
Speaker 6: it seems. Unfortunately, until we speak more prominently of the
Speaker 6: mistakes of the past, more honestly of the mistakes of
Speaker 6: the past, instead of this sort of whitewashed oh the
Speaker 6: glorious revolutionary movements of the past. Oh, you know, like wow,
Speaker 6: so cool. Until we start to like engage honest without
Speaker 6: history and like the mistakes and whatnot, these kind of
Speaker 6: things are just going to continue to happen, you know.
Speaker 6: And that's why I also appreciate, you know, the sort
Speaker 6: of honesty that anarchists have, where they'll be willing to
Speaker 6: call I mean not not all you know, especially new
Speaker 6: anarchists tend to be more defensive, but and I appreciate
Speaker 6: the willness to call out like what the CNT did
Speaker 6: in Spain that was wrong, or what the Black Arm
Speaker 6: in Ukraine did that was wrong.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't have to follow a lot like
Speaker 4: the party line.
Speaker 6: Sweeping like you have to defend their honor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, we don't have to like follow along the
Speaker 4: party line in the same way that all these other
Speaker 4: groups seem to do. There is a much more open
Speaker 4: consideration towards critiquing things that even you feel like you
Speaker 4: can learn from and you feel like we're like like
Speaker 4: struggles like struggles worth learning from and struggles worth fighting for.
Speaker 4: But you don't have this the need to be like
Speaker 4: you have to defend every single thing that X person
Speaker 4: did because it's like, I know it, it gets it
Speaker 4: gets very weird when you have these like nineteen year
Speaker 4: old communists who are like, no, Stalin's good actually, which
Speaker 4: is a whole other topic, but but yeah, even in
Speaker 4: like smaller scale things, just the resistance to having to
Speaker 4: to adhere to the party line on a lot of
Speaker 4: a lot of these topics when you just don't have
Speaker 4: a party so it allows you to be way more
Speaker 4: open in your consideration of what has worked, what hasn't worked.
Speaker 6: Yeah, free association for the win.
Speaker 4: I don't have a funny ad pivot based on free association.
Speaker 4: But here's some ads that you can freely listen to
Speaker 4: if you desire.
Speaker 5: All right, we're back.
Speaker 6: So the very same month that the PCC tried and
Speaker 6: failed to call off a strike that they never started
Speaker 6: in the first place, Machado was forced from office by
Speaker 6: a military coup backed by the US working with several
Speaker 6: political factions, including the PCC. So the PCC was kind
Speaker 6: of playing both sides. They were like, yeah, let's let's
Speaker 6: work with Machado, and then that's also like help over
Speaker 6: through Machado a lot of stings. Huh, very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 6: So that coup, along with the nineteen thirty three revolution,
Speaker 6: it was part of resulting from the opposition of the
Speaker 6: human people to President MacHall those attempts to keep himself
Speaker 6: in power with flames further fanned by the widespread misery
Speaker 6: caused by the economic collapse of nineteen twenty nine. Anarchists were,
Speaker 6: of course participants in the strikes and the revolutionary actions
Speaker 6: during this time. Military forces and student activists were also
Speaker 6: very much involved. So Carlos Manuel de Sispires i Quesada
Speaker 6: came to lead a provisional government which led to the
Speaker 6: installation of a new government led by a five man
Speaker 6: coalition known as the Pentarchy of nineteen twenty three. But
Speaker 6: after only five days, the Pentarchy gave way to the
Speaker 6: presidency of Ramon Grau San Martin, whose term became known
Speaker 6: as the one hundred Days Government for obvious reasons. It
Speaker 6: really only lasted about one hundred days because it decided
Speaker 6: to defy the US and remove the Platinum nment from
Speaker 6: the Cuban constitution, and it also introduced the eight hour
Speaker 6: workday and tried to intervene in the American owned electrical
Speaker 6: and telephone utility companies. But before you sell that government
Speaker 6: as a champion of the work in people, it also
Speaker 6: contributed to the suppression of the Cuban anarchist movement, which
Speaker 6: had a significant foreign born labor base, with the introduction
Speaker 6: of the fifty percent law, which forced owners to reserve
Speaker 6: at least half their jobs for Cubans. That law prompted
Speaker 6: many of the Spanish anarchists, remember they were a very
Speaker 6: prominent part of the anarchist movement in Cuba. That prompted
Speaker 6: them to return to Spain, where as you may know,
Speaker 6: a civil war would kick off rather soon, so the
Speaker 6: leader of the revolt against one hundred Days Government was
Speaker 6: Sergeant Fulgencio Battista, who became the head of the armed
Speaker 6: Forces and began a long period of influence on Cuban politics.
Speaker 6: The summer of nineteen thirty three obviously marked the end
Speaker 6: of the cooperative relationship between Cuban anarchists and communists, you know,
Speaker 6: because of the whole PCC sicond matalist dogs and the
Speaker 6: anarchists and all that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I could see that being non conducive to a
Speaker 4: working part.
Speaker 6: It's a toxic, toxic situation, you know. They had. They'll
Speaker 6: have to copearents they labor movement separately. Anyway, say a
Speaker 6: violence when you rere up between the two groups. The
Speaker 6: Federacion de Groupos and Akista's de Cuba or FGEC published
Speaker 6: a manifesto denouncing the traitor's actions of the PCC in
Speaker 6: collaboration with Minchado. In nineteen thirty five, the PCC exposed
Speaker 6: its alignment for all to see see after Bautista basically
Speaker 6: told the PCC, yeah, don't call a general strike. After
Speaker 6: the PCs he tried to call a general strike, the
Speaker 6: PCC was like, Okay, we won't call a general strike,
Speaker 6: and then the PCC adopted Moscow's popular front line and
Speaker 6: basically aligned themselves with Batista. And what's interesting is, you see,
Speaker 6: but what Bosistera desperately needed to secure his legitimacy was
Speaker 6: an electoral base. Basically, he needed a large group of
Speaker 6: people to say we back his leadership.
Speaker 4: Sure, he needed some form of like legitimacy exactly.
Speaker 6: And so the PCC, in aligning themselves with Batista, they
Speaker 6: created that electoral base for his growing secretorial ambitions. You see,
Speaker 6: he started off as a president before he became like
Speaker 6: a full on dictator. Many such cases, many such cases.
Speaker 6: And the one of the historians I was telling you about,
Speaker 6: Fernando Fernandez, he wrote that the PCC actually offered Batista
Speaker 6: a deal, put in all of the machinery of Cuban
Speaker 6: and international communism at his service, and it promised to
Speaker 6: deliver votes in the coming elections, which Batista badly needed.
Speaker 6: In exchange, the PCC was to be given the recently
Speaker 6: government created Confederaci Tahadoris to Cuba, the CTC, the Cuban
Speaker 6: Confederation of Workers, and the CTC was basically meant to
Speaker 6: be the largest, most centralized Levo organization in Cuba. One
Speaker 6: they would combine all of the existing factions.
Speaker 4: Okay that yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: And unlike the previous umbrella organization, which as you may remember,
Speaker 6: was the SCENOC, the CTC was meant to be ideological.
Speaker 6: It was meant to marry unionism to the state. It
Speaker 6: was meant to be under the control of Batista through
Speaker 6: the PCC from the very beginning. You know, the Seaknocks
Speaker 6: started off being led by anarchos syndicalists, but it was
Speaker 6: big ten so it was like, you know, bringing all
Speaker 6: the ideologies, but no, the CTC is like, yeah, we.
Speaker 4: Are explicitly stayed aligned.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Meanwhile, you know, in nineteen thirty six, the Spanish
Speaker 6: Civil War would erupt, and you know, the Cuban anarchists
Speaker 6: who when solidarity with the Spanish anarchists, would establish the
Speaker 6: Solidary Dad Internacional Anti anti Fascista to aid them, and
Speaker 6: some of them even went to Spain to participate. But
Speaker 6: by nineteen thirty nine, with the defeat of the Spanish Republic,
Speaker 6: surviving Cuban anarchists returned to the island.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen forties, It's interesting because when they returned,
Speaker 4: they also returned with a lot more like experience as well. Indeed,
Speaker 4: I wonder if that will lead to anything.
Speaker 6: We'll see.
Speaker 12: Curious.
Speaker 6: So, in the nineteen forties, over one hundred delegates met
Speaker 6: at the Mortazo ranch to establish the Associacion Libertaria the
Speaker 6: Cuba or ALC. Since the Stalinist dominated CTC had purged
Speaker 6: anarchists and other militant labor activists, the ALC was formed
Speaker 6: to challenge state control and Stalinists influence within the labor movement.
Speaker 6: The ALC held a congress attended by one hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty five delegates in nineteen forty eight, and in that
Speaker 6: congress it discussed the creation of a libertarian society in Cuba,
Speaker 6: and they established the Solidary Dad Gastronomica, which was a
Speaker 6: publication meant to serve as their official organ. Carlos Prio
Speaker 6: Socaras assumed the QAN presidency in nineteen forty eight following
Speaker 6: the presidency of Ramon Grau San Martin, because he actually
Speaker 6: got another chance to be president after one hundred day's government,
Speaker 6: and then you had a few filler presidents after that,
Speaker 6: and then you had Batista's run as president. But anyway,
Speaker 6: so Prio becomes president and the anarchists try and fail
Speaker 6: to create a new labor confederation. The Confederaci in general
Speaker 6: the Tagories was CGT and it was meant to be
Speaker 6: independent of the CTC. Unfortunately, thanks to reformist elements, the
Speaker 6: Stalinists and the government, it suffered under an extensive propaganda
Speaker 6: campaign against the initiative in both the Cuban communications media
Speaker 6: and then the officially approved unions. But despite everything, the
Speaker 6: anarchists were enduring on the grassroots level, and they were
Speaker 6: anarchist militants scattered everywhere and anarchist propagandists in every provincial capital.
Speaker 6: By the way, it is interesting that the Stalinists would
Speaker 6: gleefully purge the anarchists to appease their own phase for
Speaker 6: power earlier in the decade, considering that they themselves would
Speaker 6: be expelled from their posts in the CTC by the
Speaker 6: government Under US pressure, PreO declared the PSP illegal, motivating
Speaker 6: the Stylists to eye themselves yet again with their old body,
Speaker 6: old pal Fulgencio Batista. In nineteen fifty, the ALC would
Speaker 6: hold another congress, a meant to reorganize the Cuban union
Speaker 6: movements against its control by bureaucrats, politicians, cults, and religionists.
Speaker 6: The Congress repudiated the CTC and dedicated itself to maintain
Speaker 6: the CGT's struggle in spite of President Prio's repression. In
Speaker 6: nineteen fifty two, Batista took power in a coup, and
Speaker 6: the LC joined other revolutionary groups in armed resistance to
Speaker 6: the dictatorship in the cities and the countryside. Despite facing imprisonment, torture,
Speaker 6: and kidnapping, they challenged Batista's rule through propaganda, distribution, Klandestine activity,
Speaker 6: and coordinated sabotage efforts. They even worked with groups like
Speaker 6: the Directorial Revoluse Scenario, the Federation of University Students, and
Speaker 6: elements within castorerst Group, the M twenty sixth G the
Speaker 6: Antony sixth J. By the way, despite taking credit for everything,
Speaker 6: had little to no involvement in many of the uprisings
Speaker 6: that took place in this period. They tried at one
Speaker 6: point to call a general strike, but it was badly
Speaker 6: organized and uncoordinated with other revolutionary groups, so you know,
Speaker 6: of course it failed. Meanwhile, the ALC's meeting hole not
Speaker 6: only distributed information and coordinated sabotage efforts, but even taught
Speaker 6: some of Castro's fighters how to shoot firearms.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: By December thirty first, nineteen fifty eight. Also, it's very
Speaker 6: sad that they would teach some of Castro's fighters how
Speaker 6: to shoot firearms, considering you know, the direction those firearms
Speaker 6: we shoot. It end very soon.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is tragically ironic.
Speaker 6: So December their first, nineteen fifty eight, Batista flees Cuba,
Speaker 6: marking the end of his regime and the beginning of
Speaker 6: a new era. As Castro's revolutionary government gain power, tensions
Speaker 6: would rise as he consolidated control and marginalized dissent in voices.
Speaker 6: Any hope anarchists had for social change following nineteen fifty
Speaker 6: nine would be crushed by the increase in centralization, bureaucraticization
Speaker 6: of the government, further purges of anarchists from the CTC, which,
Speaker 6: by the way, they renamed the CTC R as in
Speaker 6: CTC Revolutionary, and they also militarized. And they also militarized it.
Speaker 6: You know, if they forced a bunch of the workers
Speaker 6: to create militias, and you know, with Castro's public alignment
Speaker 6: with Marxism Leninism, the suppression the revolutionary tribunals and the
Speaker 6: exile of anarchists and other dissidents. In January nineteen sixty,
Speaker 6: the ALC held an assembly and expressed support for the
Speaker 6: Cuban Revolution while rejecting dictatorship everywhere. By the end of
Speaker 6: the year, stud published the final issue of their publication,
Speaker 6: So darry Dad Gatunomica. The LC fell under government pressure,
Speaker 6: and unlike previous Cuban governments, Castro's regime was extra blood
Speaker 6: thirsty with the working class and peasant dissenters. That same year,
Speaker 6: the Grupo the Sindecalistas Libertarios is suited document criticizing the
Speaker 6: Cuban government's direction. Fearing the increase in totalitarianism, they had
Speaker 6: to change their name to avoid reprisals. As a pecc's organ,
Speaker 6: OI responded to the group O the Snekalistas Libertarios document
Speaker 6: with insults and accusations. That same year, the movie Miento
Speaker 6: Deaccion Syndical began circulating a bulletin critical of the PCC
Speaker 6: and Castro. They too would be suppressed. After the failed
Speaker 6: Bay of Pigs invasion in nineteen sixty one, Castro's government
Speaker 6: intensified its suppression of opposition, including anarchists. The anarchist movement
Speaker 6: also bore a terrible betrayal as Manuel Guiona Susa, a
Speaker 6: prominent anarchist, betrayed his comrades by endorsing the cashier regime
Speaker 6: and denouncing the anarchists who opposed it. Some anarists would
Speaker 6: end up in prison somewhat fled to Florida, where they
Speaker 6: would unfortunately be grouped to the Batista supporters who would
Speaker 6: also fled to Florida at that time, and an international
Speaker 6: solidarity effort emerged with donations from various anarchist groups worldwide
Speaker 6: to aid the Cuban anarchists escape. The anarchists that fled
Speaker 6: to Cure formed the Movimiento Libertario Cubano in Exilio the
Speaker 6: mcl or Cuban anarchist movement in exile, and continued to
Speaker 6: advocate for anarchist principles to publications like Guangara Libertaria. The
Speaker 6: New York based Libertarian League, led by figures like Sam Dogoff,
Speaker 6: provided critical support to these exiles. But what really sucks
Speaker 6: the Cuban anarchists had to struggle to garner support from
Speaker 6: their fellow anarchists around the world. Thanks to the propaganda
Speaker 6: efforts to the Castro regime. The Cuman anarchists was made
Speaker 6: as CIA agents, which is umi recoll still a favorite
Speaker 6: tactic of campus authoritarians.
Speaker 4: Interesting and yeah, interesting to see how it's literally the same.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 6: In fact, one anarchist group in South America, the Federacion
Speaker 6: Anarchista Uruguaya, even split between pro and anti Castro factions.
Speaker 6: The procast Room majority went on to join the Marxist
Speaker 6: Lendinis Supermaros in Yuguay. Eventually the Federrazion Anachika Italiana. The
Speaker 6: FAIT organized a conference in Bologna in nineteen sixty five
Speaker 6: to address the confusion among anarchists globally regarded in Cuba.
Speaker 6: They came out of that conference condemning casteurism and express
Speaker 6: in support for Cuban anarchists. But despite the efforts of
Speaker 6: Abelardo I Glasias to present the Cuban anarchists viewpoint, many
Speaker 6: anarchist groups in Europe and Latin Americas still aligned with
Speaker 6: casteurism view and criticism of the regime as opposition to
Speaker 6: the broader socialist revolution. But despite the skepticism of their
Speaker 6: payers and the refusal of some anarchist publications to even
Speaker 6: hear them out. The Cuban anarchists continued the activism in exile.
Speaker 6: They published works to denounce in the Castier regime and
Speaker 6: sought to clarify their position within the global anarchist movement.
Speaker 6: Back in Cuba, the remaining anarchists dwindled in size, as
Speaker 6: most had either left or rotten in prison. In the
Speaker 6: seventies and beyond, the Cuban anarchists faced isolation and defamation.
Speaker 6: They still accused this day of being in service of reaction.
Speaker 6: It's only with Sam Dolkov's book The Cuban Revolution Critical
Speaker 6: Perspective in nineteen seventy six that attitudes began to shift
Speaker 6: reade into a gradual reassessment of the MLCE within the
Speaker 6: anarchist community. In nineteen seventy nine, the MLSE renewed ties
Speaker 6: with the Anarchist Confederacio National Debajo, SASH Association International Rosador
Speaker 6: the CNTIT during to congress in Madrid. Subsequent publications and
Speaker 6: articles further clarified the mlce's position and cashtroism, marking the
Speaker 6: end of a long and damaging chapter of derision against them.
Speaker 6: In nineteen eighty, Guangara Libertaria emerged as a new platform
Speaker 6: for Cuban anarchists in exile. Initially cautious in its advocacy
Speaker 6: due to the hostile political climate in Miami, Guangara gradually
Speaker 6: became more explicitly anarchist and critical of both Castros regime
Speaker 6: and the reactionary exile community. It played a significant role
Speaker 6: in challenging Procastro narratives and fostering international solidarity among anarchists.
Speaker 6: As of recently as in the twenty first century, the
Speaker 6: Taire Libertario Alfreedro Lopez or Alfero Lopez Libertarian Workshop has
Speaker 6: published a few pieces on anarchism in the Cuban context.
Speaker 6: They even took part in the creation of the Central
Speaker 6: American and Caribbean Anarchist Federation, And before anyone asks, I
Speaker 6: haven't found a way to get in contact with them yet.
Speaker 6: The recent decentralized protests in Cuba sparked a deluge of
Speaker 6: conflicting narratives from various sources. We're on one side, Cuban
Speaker 6: authorities and leftist supporters defended the regime, blaming the economic
Speaker 6: crisis and health challenges on the US blockade, while treating
Speaker 6: Cuban critics with one broad reactionary brush. On the other, hand,
Speaker 6: we had the right wing media criticizing the lack of
Speaker 6: freedoms under the communist government. While amidst this, anarchists sought
Speaker 6: a deeper understanding, seeking neither alignment with the US nor
Speaker 6: the Cuban government, but seeking understanding of the needs of
Speaker 6: the people frustrated by the poser pandemic and the failures
Speaker 6: of the government. The condition that Cuba is in now
Speaker 6: obviously is due to the impact of the US's blockade,
Speaker 6: which should be lifted immediately, but it shouldn't be missed
Speaker 6: that the government uses the blockade to divert attention from
Speaker 6: other matters where it does deserve significant critique. Emergency measures
Speaker 6: were eventually implemented appease the protesters, but it remains to
Speaker 6: be seen what the outcome of that frustration of the
Speaker 6: people will be in the long term. As Francisco Finandez
Speaker 6: wrote in Cuban Anarchism, The History of a Movement, hopefully
Speaker 6: there are those in this generation who will take up
Speaker 6: the legacy of their forebearers so that the roots of
Speaker 6: anarchism that are now buried in the fertile Cuban soil
Speaker 6: will once again spring to life. Anyway, this has been
Speaker 6: the forgotten history of anarchism in Cuba. This has been
Speaker 6: it could happen here, and this has been Andrew's age.
Speaker 6: All power to all the people. Peace.
Speaker 5: Welcome to it could happen here. A podcast where my
Speaker 5: old bookstore from college is unionized and I'm very excited
Speaker 5: about it. I'm your host, Bio Wong, and with me
Speaker 5: to talk about this this tremendous event are Caleb Theo
Speaker 5: and Finn from the Seminary co Op Booksellers Union. Yeah,
Speaker 5: welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank so much for having us. This is
Speaker 1: so excited you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm excited to you both because I think somehow
Speaker 5: in the molt that I got almost three years I've
Speaker 5: been doing this show now, Jesus Christ, that is terrifying. Somehow,
Speaker 5: I think this is the first bookstore union we've talked to,
Speaker 5: which is remarkable. I don't know how it's taken this long,
Speaker 5: but I'm so excited that y'all that y'all the first.
Speaker 13: I mean, as far as we know, we're the first
Speaker 13: in the city of Chicago.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, we're.
Speaker 12: The only in the city. There are like past bookstores
Speaker 12: that have since closed which were unionized. But yeah, as
Speaker 12: best we know we're now we're currently the only union
Speaker 12: bookstore in the city of Chicago, proper.
Speaker 5: God, maybe there's one up in Evanston or something, but
Speaker 5: seems unlikely. This is, this is I don't know. I've been,
Speaker 5: I've been. I've been drilling. I've been drilling the Evanston
Speaker 5: knowledge into my listeners' heads. Now, so now all of
Speaker 5: you people in Rhode Island or whatever know about my
Speaker 5: hatred of Evanston.
Speaker 12: An extremely fair grudge.
Speaker 5: Okay, So speaking of grudges, all right, sobody, co op
Speaker 5: is it's it's it's an interesting bookstore in the sense
Speaker 5: that like it's it's it is on the campus of
Speaker 5: the University of Chicago, like it's just it's just sort
Speaker 5: of there. And there's been a lot of things happening
Speaker 5: on that campus in the past month or so. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I guess what I wanted to I guess the place
Speaker 5: I wanted to start was sort of Okay, so you,
Speaker 5: Chicago is a campus that has a lot of union
Speaker 5: organizing happening on it in a bunch of across a
Speaker 5: bunch of different kind of they're mostly university unions, but
Speaker 5: a lot of different all different kinds of workers and
Speaker 5: the university have unions. How did that sort of impact
Speaker 5: the way this campaign started.
Speaker 11: That's a really good question. I I feel like there's
Speaker 11: a few things I want to talk about. I think
Speaker 11: there's the the fact that a lot of us booksellers
Speaker 11: who come to the sem co op were coming from
Speaker 11: Many of us came from New Chicago or had been
Speaker 11: there at some point and had been around that kind
Speaker 11: of organizing. So I think that that definitely has an impact.
Speaker 11: I also think that many of us know people because
Speaker 11: so many of us are in the community. We all
Speaker 11: know a lot of people who are organizers, a lot
Speaker 11: of people in the grad student union, and having them
Speaker 11: to talk to and kind of like bounce ideas off
Speaker 11: of and commiserate all of that has been really great.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And like I think it's been very emboldening to
Speaker 12: know that we have that support, you know that because
Speaker 12: we have friends and comrades and roommates in GSU, in
Speaker 12: faculty unions, you know, the kind of the whole time,
Speaker 12: we've known that, like if we ever need to draw
Speaker 12: on that external support for any kind of you know,
Speaker 12: public campaign, that we have like a connection to like
Speaker 12: a broader labor of movement in the area that'll be
Speaker 12: there for us.
Speaker 5: This is something I guess you've already touched on a bit,
Speaker 5: but I think this leads into another question that I had,
Speaker 5: which was, Yeah, I wanted to talk about the sort
Speaker 5: of the influence of campus and how how how the
Speaker 5: dynamics of that kind of change, what these what these
Speaker 5: campaigns look like.
Speaker 13: It's really interesting because our relationship to campus is a
Speaker 13: little bit unclear to us in terms of the way
Speaker 13: that the bookstore functions in relation to its university partners,
Speaker 13: because we work with them very closely. There are landlord
Speaker 13: among many other things, but we are not directly affiliated
Speaker 13: with them, and we carry course books, but that's by
Speaker 13: professor request and we can't always do it, and so
Speaker 13: it's a really close, really opaque relationship.
Speaker 1: I think the university.
Speaker 11: Really likes to have a bookstore that isn't like university
Speaker 11: affiliated on paper, but still very much is a part
Speaker 11: of the culture of the university, and so we see
Speaker 11: a lot of that kind of inform things like our
Speaker 11: stock and the events that the UH professors that we
Speaker 11: work with, and of course like the students who come
Speaker 11: in and use the space and are physically in the
Speaker 11: space every day doing work buying their books.
Speaker 5: It's it's always weird kind of doing organizing in these
Speaker 5: spaces because like I don't know, you you're you're dealing
Speaker 5: with this mixture. Well U Chicago especially is like this
Speaker 5: where there's it's this really kind of weird and volatile
Speaker 5: mixture of like a bunch of on the one hand,
Speaker 5: like a bunch of very brave, very committed like people
Speaker 5: who are doing organizing, a bunch of people who were
Speaker 5: just completely checked out, and then a bunch of people
Speaker 5: who are going to go lead cups in South America.
Speaker 5: And I don't know, it's it's it's a that was
Speaker 5: my experience back doing Actually god I was, I was
Speaker 5: on the GS. You pick it line, like, how God
Speaker 5: that was? That was half decade ago. Jesus Christ. Sorry,
Speaker 5: this is trying to geto the MIA thinks about our
Speaker 5: time that you should which it shouldn't.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 13: But that's something that is notable too, is that, like
Speaker 13: we have a lot of community support when it comes
Speaker 13: to people who are theoretically in favor of unionizing and
Speaker 13: theoretically in favor of labor power, and that extends all
Speaker 13: the way through our management team, Like they are very
Speaker 13: very in favor of the concept of labor rights, and
Speaker 13: so it's really interesting trying to parse that dynamics sometimes
Speaker 13: of like, Okay, these are people who are supposedly our
Speaker 13: biggest supporters, but at the same time their actions do
Speaker 13: not very well line up with those ideals.
Speaker 11: I think having a section at our store that is
Speaker 11: devoted to critical theory and Marxism while not paying us
Speaker 11: a living wage is a real funny situation.
Speaker 14: The irony stings real hard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's this real Read the theory, do not act
Speaker 5: on it, but read the theory.
Speaker 12: It's been real fun. Like we during like your course
Speaker 12: book rush seasons, we have like sem co op trading
Speaker 12: cards with pictures of like different authors. It's always really
Speaker 12: fun handing out the ones that are like Carl Marx
Speaker 12: sem co ops number one best selling author.
Speaker 13: And no, it's definitely not because every freshman at University
Speaker 13: of Chicago has to buy him from us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's another that's like kind of unrelated, really
Speaker 5: funny thing. But yeah, like all of the Chicago econ
Speaker 5: dipshits at least nominally red marks. Did they open it
Speaker 5: low odds? But yeah, I don't know that that seems
Speaker 5: like a psychologically destabilizing contradiction that you're dealing with them all
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 12: That same kind of like contradiction between like spirit and practice.
Speaker 12: Just like it's also right there in our name where
Speaker 12: we're the Seminary co Op bookstore, and like two thirds
Speaker 12: of that is not true. We haven't been affiliated with
Speaker 12: the seminary in decades. We were for a time a
Speaker 12: member co op like RII, but we've never been a
Speaker 12: worker's co op. We haven't even been a member co
Speaker 12: op since twenty fourteen. We are a bookstore, So there's
Speaker 12: like that.
Speaker 5: But the old one in three eight bad being simply
Speaker 5: does not apply here. That is in fact very bad well.
Speaker 11: And I think that that is like a very big
Speaker 11: part of how the larger community sees our stores as well,
Speaker 11: and the like mismatch there because yeah, of course we're
Speaker 11: like on the Chicago campus. We are very much connected
Speaker 11: to the student body and the faculty there, but we're
Speaker 11: also like in the middle of like our neighborhood where
Speaker 11: there are plenty of other people who are not affiliated
Speaker 11: with the college who are like coming in buying their books.
Speaker 11: There's the fact that like our our second location down
Speaker 11: the street fifty seventh Street Books, which has like our
Speaker 11: kids sections and like a bunch of other less academic
Speaker 11: stuff like that's very heavily trafficked as well. And the
Speaker 11: communities understanding of us as a like worker owned not
Speaker 11: not for profit, which is a very confusing term because
Speaker 11: it's not a nonprofit, it's a not for profit. That
Speaker 11: that disconnect between what the community needs and wants in
Speaker 11: its bookstores and what the management has decided our bookstores
Speaker 11: mean to the community is it's felt.
Speaker 1: That's like a very felt mismatch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm assuming that that that's sort of the
Speaker 5: kinds of things that I mean, obviously the standard not
Speaker 5: getting paid off, et cetera, et cetera. Are those those
Speaker 5: are sort of things that led into how the organizing started.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think it's a lot the way that like
Speaker 13: the mismatch is so apparent to us, and it really
Speaker 13: brought us together, Like we have such a unique sense
Speaker 13: of solidarity as a working cohort. I feel like there's
Speaker 13: a lot of commiseration because we walk a very weird
Speaker 13: line throughout our community, and so I think it's a
Speaker 13: little bit just trying to assess what's going on in
Speaker 13: our stores and like how does that compare to what
Speaker 13: management tells us on a regular basis, and shouldn't we
Speaker 13: be doing something about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that. I know that.
Speaker 11: Our first like big pre union meeting where we all
Speaker 11: got together in the basement of one of our houses
Speaker 11: and commiserated, was like after a pretty rough, like all
Speaker 11: store meeting that we had had in which we had
Speaker 11: continued to get really no response regarding questions about a
Speaker 11: living wage, or how we choose stock for our store,
Speaker 11: how communication between management and hourly booksellers was just so lacking,
Speaker 11: and we just got the same kind of messaging that
Speaker 11: was being given to customers, which is we're working on it.
Speaker 11: You're all of these things that you're saying are so valid,
Speaker 11: and we'll address them at a later date.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we were getting this great response of like, you know,
Speaker 12: we want to get you to not just a living wage,
Speaker 12: but a professional wage, and we have a five year plan,
Speaker 12: but we were halfway through that five year plan. The
Speaker 12: five year plan started right before the pandemic and had
Speaker 12: not been adjusted since, and there was no information on
Speaker 12: how we were going to in the last half of
Speaker 12: this five year plan, you know, suddenly increase wages to
Speaker 12: whatever a professional wage is let alone a living wage.
Speaker 12: So that was just a very a very frustrating, like
Speaker 12: completely empty answer.
Speaker 11: I think we were all very we were all hurt,
Speaker 11: and we got like the very first message in our
Speaker 11: group chat, which was just like so we're we're gonna
Speaker 11: we're gonna unionize, right, incredible, And that was like the
Speaker 11: start of it. And that was like last I want
Speaker 11: to say that was January of twenty twenty three was
Speaker 11: when that started.
Speaker 12: Yeah, they'reabouts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a that's I guess it's a pretty vast
Speaker 5: campaign by the looks of it. It's yeah, about it
Speaker 5: about it a bit over a year. Yeah, Yeah, congratulations
Speaker 5: to you all, by the way, thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 13: It's really thanks to the team that started in January though,
Speaker 13: because they have been really really proactive about reaching out
Speaker 13: to people when there are new booksellers. Because I have
Speaker 13: kind of a weird tenure at the store. I've worked
Speaker 13: there two separate times, but I wasn't part of the
Speaker 13: January meeting. But when I rejoined the co op in August,
Speaker 13: I think within the first week that I was there,
Speaker 13: one of my kokers came up to me while I
Speaker 13: was at the register and like in the standard getting
Speaker 13: to know you kind of speech, was like, how do
Speaker 13: you feel about labor organizing? And I was like, very
Speaker 13: in favor. Why do you ask?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that, by the way, dear listener, if you're at
Speaker 5: a union, that is that is what is known as
Speaker 5: good practice. It is, in fact a thing that you
Speaker 5: need to do. Whenever someone new joins your workplace and
Speaker 5: you have a union, bring them in. And if you
Speaker 5: don't do this, your unions will stagnate die. And there
Speaker 5: are there are like there are actually there are unions
Speaker 5: out there who will get mad at you for doing
Speaker 5: this because it takes resources or whatever, and don't listen
Speaker 5: to them. Please stop. Simply do not do this.
Speaker 13: This is the only defense against turnover, which is huge
Speaker 13: industries that most need to unionize.
Speaker 1: Yep, we have really crazy turnover.
Speaker 11: Like I think that of the original people who started talking,
Speaker 11: I mean and this was like there was a previous
Speaker 11: unionization effort too before our time that we know very
Speaker 11: little about. But of the original like January folks, very
Speaker 11: few of us are left just because of the turnover
Speaker 11: rate which is immense, and we get like groups of
Speaker 11: like three to four people hired at once every six
Speaker 11: months or so. And it's like, Okay, how quickly can
Speaker 11: we scope folks out, How quickly can we like do
Speaker 11: like a one on one and talk to them about
Speaker 11: how they feel about labor organizing. How can we get
Speaker 11: a sense of like what their main concerns are with
Speaker 11: the job and what they want from unionizing.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Well, and the turnover is also one of the things
Speaker 12: that sparked this because we had a wave of folks
Speaker 12: who were fired asked to leave or quit on their
Speaker 12: own terms. And we had another coworker who knew that
Speaker 12: she was kind of reaching the end of when she
Speaker 12: could you know, stay at the bookstore and was just
Speaker 12: very committed to like getting some momentum going in her
Speaker 12: last handful of months here and created, like you oside
Speaker 12: the group chat and was just very quit like all right,
Speaker 12: everyone were in the group chat like this message if
Speaker 12: you agree with the following statement, and then it was like,
Speaker 12: you know, the statements about like how much you care
Speaker 12: about the job, and then statements about like how much
Speaker 12: you agree that like a union would improve things, and
Speaker 12: just about everybody agreed a union would be a huge improvement.
Speaker 12: And that was I mean, that was also a really
Speaker 12: incredible resource because like before someone just created the group chat.
Speaker 12: We're in this really awkward phase of like three or
Speaker 12: four different groups of people trying to get a ball
Speaker 12: rolling and very like cautiously approaching folks. I had approached
Speaker 12: one or two people and been like that same exact question,
Speaker 12: like how do you feel about unions? And then there
Speaker 12: was someone else who was going around asking the exact
Speaker 12: same question. And you know, I was also at rege
Speaker 12: one day when she came up and asked ask me that,
Speaker 12: and I was like, Jesus, do I not have enough
Speaker 12: patches on my jacket? This is a question I need
Speaker 12: to fix something.
Speaker 11: It was a lot of like ships passing until the
Speaker 11: group chat got created, and then it was really quick.
Speaker 1: We had We started.
Speaker 11: Having like meetings, I want to say we had one
Speaker 11: like every three weeks to a month. In that first
Speaker 11: six months, we got together a letter of demands that
Speaker 11: we all read and signed. It was I think at
Speaker 11: the time of the how many were working there. It
Speaker 11: was like all but one maybe wow person signed it,
Speaker 11: and we all went to deliver it and read it
Speaker 11: to management and got a bunch of stuff right away.
Speaker 11: This was like well before yeah, well before we had
Speaker 11: signed with an or decided who we wanted to ununize with,
Speaker 11: and we still just threw that direct action got so
Speaker 11: much done.
Speaker 13: And I think that's part of the success that we've
Speaker 13: had so far too, is we do just have kind
Speaker 13: of a large number in our cohort of impatient people,
Speaker 13: which means that like, once we figure out what we want,
Speaker 13: we're just like, Okay, what's the fastest way we can
Speaker 13: ask for this and get it recognized.
Speaker 12: That first march that we did, that first letter was
Speaker 12: also just I mean, it really like fueled all of
Speaker 12: the rest of this, I think because the stuff that
Speaker 12: we won was so I think so immediately felt for
Speaker 12: everyone working there.
Speaker 5: There wasn't things, Uh what kinds of things did you win?
Speaker 6: In that one?
Speaker 12: We won expanded health insurance. Previously very few people qualified
Speaker 12: for health insurance. We got that pretty tremendously broadened. I mean,
Speaker 12: that's I think how THEO and I ended up getting
Speaker 12: health insurance. We got things like, you know, improved maternity leave,
Speaker 12: improved bereavement leave. The definition of who you could take
Speaker 12: berievement leave for was broadened. It was like previously a
Speaker 12: grid of like nine types of relation, and then it
Speaker 12: got just fully expanded to like include chosen family and
Speaker 12: just whoever you know you felt the need to claim
Speaker 12: berievement leave for as well as just how many days,
Speaker 12: which was tremendous. I mean, it was like a week
Speaker 12: after the change you know, got actually implemented into our
Speaker 12: leave system, that I found out a relative was dying,
Speaker 12: And because we had gotten that expansion, I didn't have
Speaker 12: to choose between driving my grandmother to be by her bedside,
Speaker 12: be by this other relative's bedside, or going to the funeral.
Speaker 12: I was able to take time off for both of those,
Speaker 12: which you know, meant everything to me, meant everything to
Speaker 12: my grandma.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 12: You know, when we talk when we're looking at issues,
Speaker 12: when we're organizing, and we talk about things that are
Speaker 12: widely felt, that are deeply felt, that are actionable, and
Speaker 12: like those kinds of changes are very deeply felt. And
Speaker 12: so there wasn't you know, there really hasn't been a
Speaker 12: point since then when anyone could remotely make the argument
Speaker 12: that organizing doesn't create positive, impactful change.
Speaker 13: Yeah, the handbook that I was onboarded with the second
Speaker 13: time that I came to the stores was significantly different
Speaker 13: than the handbook that I was onboarded with the first time,
Speaker 13: and it was because this list of demands had gone
Speaker 13: out in the interim, because the policies about like just
Speaker 13: our character as a store and the way that we
Speaker 13: want to interact with our community were completely different, and
Speaker 13: it was very much that like booksellers who interact with
Speaker 13: the community on a daily basis, had had a say
Speaker 13: in the meantime.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, okay, So unfortunately we have to go to
Speaker 5: an ad break. But oh we returned. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 5: go back to what we were doing before, question work.
Speaker 5: I don't know, not not. My fight is to ad pivot.
Speaker 5: But you know, look if they if they, if they
Speaker 5: paid me more, they'd get more good AD pivots. But
Speaker 5: they don't fear get in the media. Once you gotta
Speaker 5: work your wage.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and we're back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you know, the organizing students have come together
Speaker 5: pretty quickly. I guess, do you want to talk about
Speaker 5: how you ended up being an AWW shop?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean I'm happy to talk on that a
Speaker 12: little bit. You know, when we got to the point
Speaker 12: where were deciding who we wanted to affiliate with, I
Speaker 12: sent out feelers to just a bunch of different unions.
Speaker 12: Two got back to me a larger trade union that
Speaker 12: I'm totally spacing on the name of, or a commercial
Speaker 12: union the term for like the really big one, the
Speaker 12: really big types of unions, and the IWW and I
Speaker 12: had meetings or phone calls with representatives from both of them.
Speaker 12: The you and I put together kind of a graphic
Speaker 12: sort of comparing like the pros and cons of two
Speaker 12: very different options, right like a big international union or
Speaker 12: I mean IWW obviously international, it's right in there in
Speaker 12: the name, but obviously a smaller, much more autonomous union.
Speaker 12: And I wanted to go IWW. I did my absolute
Speaker 12: best to not let that bias inform the pros and
Speaker 12: cons lists and whatnot, and we, you know, we sat
Speaker 12: around in this room here and just chatted it out,
Speaker 12: talked about our preferences, what mattered to all of us,
Speaker 12: and you know, what we decided was that, amongst other things,
Speaker 12: one of like the really big sort of organizing principles
Speaker 12: of this has been increasing our own agency and autonomy
Speaker 12: in the workplace, and the IWW's model just felt like
Speaker 12: it would give us the most control over our own campaign.
Speaker 12: And so that's that's how we ended up voting to
Speaker 12: become an IWW. You know lead, then campaign, and now
Speaker 12: finally shop branch.
Speaker 11: I think that the IWW really fit how our store
Speaker 11: and our organizing had worked thus far.
Speaker 6: Too.
Speaker 11: It felt like it matched the character of our organizing.
Speaker 11: It's definitely much scrappier it, you know, the IWW having
Speaker 11: a history in Chicago definitely was a factor in my
Speaker 11: personal desire to be affiliated with them. I thought it
Speaker 11: was really cool to be joining that like long tradition
Speaker 11: of IWW shops in Chicago. I think that direct the
Speaker 11: emphasis on direct employee action versus like contract bargaining fit
Speaker 11: very well for us as well. I think, especially considering
Speaker 11: things like the turnover and how we wanted to make
Speaker 11: sure that you know, if we argue to contract, if
Speaker 11: we bargain for a contract now, that it would be
Speaker 11: difficult to know, you know, even a year or two
Speaker 11: down the line, if those points and those things that
Speaker 11: we bargained for would be what.
Speaker 1: Folks would want then.
Speaker 11: And so getting to use more direct action and response
Speaker 11: to make gains in the workplace has been.
Speaker 1: I think a.
Speaker 11: Really helpful strategy and one that the IWW facilitates really
Speaker 11: well with how it trains organizing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. And I
Speaker 5: guess you know, the question for there is how did
Speaker 5: management sort of react and what's been the kind of
Speaker 5: what's what's what's what's been the kind of relationship vibe
Speaker 5: since then?
Speaker 13: I mean management volunte taily recognized us immediately, but they
Speaker 13: also had very clear notice ahead of time that we
Speaker 13: had been organizing, Like we had been presenting them with
Speaker 13: demands on a regular basis. We had been emailing them
Speaker 13: from an anonymous account requesting that they closed the stores
Speaker 13: when the cold was too intense for most of us
Speaker 13: to safely get to work, Like they would be very
Speaker 13: very deeply buried under the rocks if they didn't know
Speaker 13: that we were like talking to each other. So I
Speaker 13: think that they had a plan, And they also know
Speaker 13: the character of our community, which is very theoretically leftist,
Speaker 13: and so they knew that they really didn't have another
Speaker 13: option because like we were at critical mass, and they
Speaker 13: would look really bad in the eyes of everyone.
Speaker 14: That they respect if they said nothing.
Speaker 12: By the time that we announced to management that we'd unionized,
Speaker 12: something like twenty one twenty two out of two twenty
Speaker 12: three hourly workers were members of the IWW.
Speaker 14: We showed up in T shirts. It was a lot.
Speaker 11: Yeah, incredible when you walk in, when you walk in
Speaker 11: in your IWW shirt to sit down at like an
Speaker 11: all store meeting, and then the next person walks in
Speaker 11: and they're also wearing that shirt, and then the next
Speaker 11: person it's like, yeah, we've.
Speaker 1: Got the numbers. Something's about to happen. And they knew.
Speaker 11: They knew because we'd heard them I think, like not
Speaker 11: two days before being like, yeah, we think that they're
Speaker 11: on the precipice of unionizing.
Speaker 14: If we were like, boy, you have no idea.
Speaker 11: Yeah, they took it as well as we expected them
Speaker 11: to take it.
Speaker 1: As Finn said.
Speaker 12: We had been in a organized meeting the night before
Speaker 12: and had been in our group chet you know, that morning,
Speaker 12: preparing for all manner of different scenarios. If they didn't
Speaker 12: take it well and then and then they did.
Speaker 5: How have they been acting after, Because there's there's definitely
Speaker 5: it can be a huge gap between vaulty recognition and
Speaker 5: then them actually doing anything.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So the structure of management is real interesting. At
Speaker 11: our store, Like I said, we had we have twenty
Speaker 11: three currently hourly booksellers, and then that to how many managers.
Speaker 14: Six at least eight eight count.
Speaker 11: Yes, this is a fun quirk about our store. The
Speaker 11: manager to bookseller ratio is insane. And then we've got
Speaker 11: like our directors who are not counted in the manager number,
Speaker 11: which is okay.
Speaker 13: So we've got five managers and three directors.
Speaker 11: Five managers and three directors for twenty three hourly employees.
Speaker 1: And I think that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 14: And have to use that ratio in meetings.
Speaker 1: They talk about that a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that.
Speaker 11: No, no, no, no, we talk about it a lot
Speaker 11: like as and I think that, well, it's interesting because
Speaker 11: in these store meetings it is usually only the director
Speaker 11: that talks. I don't think we've ever heard managers talk
Speaker 11: in an all storm meeting. So when the director voluntarily
Speaker 11: or recognizes our union, we also have to really look
Speaker 11: at the faces of every manager to see what they're
Speaker 11: actually feeling.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of managers are.
Speaker 14: Have.
Speaker 11: My suspicion is that a lot of managers share equal
Speaker 11: frustration with a lot of the ways that the store is.
Speaker 1: Managed, even above them.
Speaker 11: And I think, obviously they can't say anything to us
Speaker 11: about how they feel about our.
Speaker 13: Union, but but anecdotally, they were so excited to take
Speaker 13: our picture after we announced that we had unilized.
Speaker 5: That's really funny.
Speaker 1: We did get management to take our photo, which we.
Speaker 13: Hadn't joked about in the group chat in the morning, Like, Lol,
Speaker 13: wouldn't it be hilarious if we made the managers take
Speaker 13: our picture and then they shor.
Speaker 5: Did That's so funny.
Speaker 11: Yeah, On a day to day level, I think things
Speaker 11: have been generally.
Speaker 1: No more or less awkward than usual. The vibe can be, yeah,
Speaker 1: bizarre on them.
Speaker 7: The vibe is.
Speaker 13: Also very highly colored right now by a lot of
Speaker 13: other big changes that are happening at the stores that
Speaker 13: have nothing to do with our union, and so like
Speaker 13: it's very difficult to sort of suss out which weirdness
Speaker 13: is which. But definitely I think the union weirdness is
Speaker 13: on the lesser end.
Speaker 12: Actually, yeah, I mean, I think the only real indication
Speaker 12: we have in the last in this kind of just
Speaker 12: little stretch since we announced is that we've been emailing
Speaker 12: with our director for like to schedule a announcement from
Speaker 12: the store side, and you know, we sent basically copy
Speaker 12: that we would like them to use and listed out
Speaker 12: what venues we would like it posted, and they've been
Speaker 12: just very accommodating to all of that. We haven't been
Speaker 12: getting any pushback like how the store how or when
Speaker 12: the store announces to the you know, mailing list and
Speaker 12: the community social media following and so on, so you
Speaker 12: know there's that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it hasn't really been talked about that publicly yet.
Speaker 1: It's about to be. I do know that.
Speaker 11: When at the at the event that I was running
Speaker 11: or working at yesterday the unionization, we got congratulated on
Speaker 11: our unionization and one of my managers was just that
Speaker 11: was to my manager's face, and I think her reaction
Speaker 11: was like, oh, so you know they're taking it. They'd
Speaker 11: being very polite about it. I don't think they know
Speaker 11: that other people know yet, but yeah, if they when
Speaker 11: it happens, I'm sure they're not going to be weird
Speaker 11: about it, at least I hope not.
Speaker 13: I think the main thing management wants to do everything
Speaker 13: in writing, and I think that's correct in some ways
Speaker 13: and like that's about to happen, But in terms of
Speaker 13: how they will interact with us once it is fully
Speaker 13: public and fully announced and fully in writing, I'm not sure.
Speaker 11: I also think that the reactions that we're getting now
Speaker 11: are the ways that they interact with us now that
Speaker 11: we have announced versus the ways that they may interact
Speaker 11: with us once we start really pushing for our demands.
Speaker 11: That is that that could change pretty quickly, especially when
Speaker 11: it comes to the living wage demand, that is very
Speaker 11: at the forefront of what we're fighting for. That's also
Speaker 11: been the one that has like the most tension behind
Speaker 11: it when we've brought it up in the past. And
Speaker 11: I think that once they realized that we're not just
Speaker 11: unionizing for fun, things might change pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And so we're just going to have to be on
Speaker 1: We'll be on our.
Speaker 13: Toes because a big reason that we unionized was because
Speaker 13: we needed to have more weight behind that demand, because
Speaker 13: that was one of the core demands that has been
Speaker 13: made for the longest amount of time, with the least
Speaker 13: amount of movement and the most empty promises, and so
Speaker 13: we wanted to prove to them, hey, you have to
Speaker 13: listen to us about this. And I think that they
Speaker 13: might not have fully cottoned on to that yet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I guess I guess we'll just sort of
Speaker 5: have to see how how they react to the sort
Speaker 5: of hammer coming down on them now that day spent
Speaker 5: all this time not actually doing anything. Yeah, I think
Speaker 5: I think That's a pretty good place to wrap up.
Speaker 5: Is there anyth unless there's anything else that you want
Speaker 5: to make sure that gets mentioned.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean I think one thing I would like
Speaker 12: to say towards the end here is that a big
Speaker 12: part of what's been motivating us through all of this
Speaker 12: is seeing the sort of rise of labor power nationally
Speaker 12: with you know, the strikes in LA with like the writers,
Speaker 12: the actress strikes, seeing you know, teacher strikes going on
Speaker 12: with you know, the union stories that you all have
Speaker 12: been covering on this podcast, with folks like Frida Egg
Speaker 12: and I just yeah, I just want to say, like
Speaker 12: if for other folks who are working in a small space,
Speaker 12: in a retail space and thinking about unionizing, I mean,
Speaker 12: it's hard work, but it's deeply rewarding work, and if
Speaker 12: you put the time and dedication into it, it is
Speaker 12: absolutely possible to organize your workplace, especially if you're somewhere
Speaker 12: with twenty thirty co workers where you can get everyone
Speaker 12: into a group chat, where you can get everyone together
Speaker 12: in you know, someone's basement, someone's living room. You know,
Speaker 12: we're really at an incredible moment in labor as a movement,
Speaker 12: and just if you're thinking about organizing your workplace, Start
Speaker 12: talking to your coworkers, start talking to your friends. It's doable.
Speaker 12: It's hard, but there's power in a union and we
Speaker 12: can win.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, I.
Speaker 13: Think there was something to be said too, just for
Speaker 13: the like sheer morale boost that comes from organizing with
Speaker 13: your co workers, because it makes everything better even as
Speaker 13: like your material reality doesn't change immediately, your outlook and
Speaker 13: ability to manage it, and to just feel like someone
Speaker 13: is in the same boat as you unparalleled really worth it.
Speaker 11: It feels yeah, it feels good. It feels good to
Speaker 11: have something to be proud of, something that you've put
Speaker 11: a lot of time into, Like coming to Fruition and
Speaker 11: seeing all of these people that you've worked together with
Speaker 11: to help make like tangible gains for your community.
Speaker 1: It feels like I think that.
Speaker 11: When you have a job, that is, when you're working
Speaker 11: a job that sometimes makes it difficult to feel proud
Speaker 11: of yourself and what you're doing a day to day basis.
Speaker 11: For whatever reason, having organizing and having.
Speaker 1: Your coworkers.
Speaker 11: There to make something really really good, not just for
Speaker 11: each other, but for future workers and for workers at
Speaker 11: other stores who may see our efforts and go.
Speaker 1: I can do that too. That makes you.
Speaker 11: That makes me proud, and it feels really good to
Speaker 11: have something to be proud of.
Speaker 5: Yeah, getting getting to fight for your class is a
Speaker 5: great feelings.
Speaker 6: It rules.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So I guess where where can people find the
Speaker 5: union if they want to help support stuff?
Speaker 13: Got it?
Speaker 14: Pull up our newly minted social media.
Speaker 5: That's nice.
Speaker 12: I had this ready to go earlier today and then
Speaker 12: I forgot to keep it open.
Speaker 5: No worries, We'll put the links in the description.
Speaker 14: These are some fresh, fresh handles.
Speaker 12: Here we go. Yeah, so, folks can find us on
Speaker 12: Instagram at sem co Op Booksellers Union sem c P
Speaker 12: Booksellers Union, or on Twitter at sem co Op Union.
Speaker 12: Hopefully we will, you know, start posting on soon and
Speaker 12: that's going to be the best way to sort of
Speaker 12: keep up with our store, our situation from specifically the
Speaker 12: perspective of the laborers.
Speaker 11: Also, if you're in Chicago, come and say hi, Come
Speaker 11: to our stores, Come talk to uhur like, come talk
Speaker 11: to the workers.
Speaker 1: We have a lot to say. We'd love to talk
Speaker 1: to you about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's a great place and it's gotten significantly
Speaker 5: better now that this now now that it's unionized and
Speaker 5: hopefully one day I don't know, fuck it, don't all.
Speaker 5: I'll say this hope hopefully one day it is a
Speaker 5: fucking actual co op.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, that's the dream, that's all we want.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so thank you all for coming on and good
Speaker 5: luck and yeah, hope hope management folds like a fucking
Speaker 5: wet paper towel.
Speaker 12: Hell yeah, thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This was amazing.
Speaker 5: Excited to have talked to you all. And yeah, this
Speaker 5: has been. It could happen here. You can do this too,
Speaker 5: and yeah, well we'll have we'll have exciting stuff coming
Speaker 5: tomorrow too. Yeah. Go go organize your workplace and make
Speaker 5: your bosses miserable and make your lives better. Welcome to
Speaker 5: it could happen here? Podcast about things falling apart how
Speaker 5: to put it back together again? Made by iHeartMedia. I
Speaker 5: am your host Nia Wong. So we have been you know,
Speaker 5: this is our This is going to be our first
Speaker 5: Union doubleheader. We have two Union episodes in a row.
Speaker 5: And part of why we're doing this is that we've
Speaker 5: we've been covering a lot of very sort of very
Speaker 5: fast drives, very low to the ground drives in small
Speaker 5: shops recently, and today we are going to be covering
Speaker 5: a shop that is not like that. It is very large,
Speaker 5: it is quite geographically diverse, and it has been organizing
Speaker 5: for a very long time. And that union is the
Speaker 5: iHeart Podcast Union. And with me to talk about this
Speaker 5: is Tracy Wilson from Suffie Missing History Class and Nomes Griffin,
Speaker 5: who is a producer on many staggeringly too many shows.
Speaker 5: And yeah, they are both on the bargaining committee of
Speaker 5: the Aheart Podcast Union. So yeah, Tracy Nomes, welcome to
Speaker 5: the show.
Speaker 8: No, thank you, We're glad to be here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to talk to you too.
Speaker 5: So all right, first thing, first thing about this iHeart
Speaker 5: Podcast Union. We haven't covered many media unions on this podcast.
Speaker 5: We probably should do more, but it's been a sort
Speaker 5: of product of of what kind I don't know that
Speaker 5: there's certain there are certain kinds of stuff that we've
Speaker 5: been focusing on. But now now we're doing media unions.
Speaker 5: So the place I wanted to start talking about the
Speaker 5: iHeart Podcast Union is the sort of scale of it.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's people everywhere like there are there are
Speaker 5: there are people who are where, there's one union member
Speaker 5: in the entire city, so you know, can we And
Speaker 5: it's also been going on for a very very long time,
Speaker 5: so I wanted to sort of ask, can you talk
Speaker 5: about how this whole process started and kind of how
Speaker 5: long it's been going on.
Speaker 8: So long, so long. I was scrolling through my phone
Speaker 8: today trying to remember when when was the first time
Speaker 8: that I was contacted about unionizing, because the first thing
Speaker 8: that happened for me was being organ into the union
Speaker 8: before I Heart recognized us, and that was in the
Speaker 8: fall of twenty twenty. The fall of twenty twenty, I
Speaker 8: got a text from my friend Lauren that was like,
Speaker 8: can I talk to you about a kind of a
Speaker 8: work thing. It's a kind of work and I said sure.
Speaker 8: And the question that Lauren had to ask me was
Speaker 8: some of us are talking about unionizing. How would you
Speaker 8: feel about that? And I said, Okay, I need to
Speaker 8: check my agreement that I already have with iHeart because
Speaker 8: a lot of us that I have individual agreements with
Speaker 8: the company. I have worked in the job that I
Speaker 8: have now in some capacity for almost nineteen years, so
Speaker 8: I've been here forever and I already had this. I
Speaker 8: was like, I need to find out does this agreement
Speaker 8: prohibit me from doing this? It did not, and so
Speaker 8: I said, all right, if I'm eligible to be in
Speaker 8: the union, I'm on board. If I'm not eligible to
Speaker 8: be in the union, you have my full support. And
Speaker 8: that was in like November of twenty twenty, which is
Speaker 8: eons ago at this point.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's been I came on to the company and
Speaker 10: the union was already in negotiations, Like, yeah.
Speaker 14: It had been a union already.
Speaker 10: I started in January of twenty twenty three, and I
Speaker 10: came like straight into the we're in bargaining sessions process.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So the organizing process took definitely more than a year.
Speaker 8: And that was more than a year of people talking
Speaker 8: to all of their colleagues about whether they wanted to
Speaker 8: form a union, what would be the benefits of forming
Speaker 8: a union, all of that stuff. And so we have
Speaker 8: three main offices at iHeart, there's New York, LA and Atlanta.
Speaker 8: So there were people who were doing things on the
Speaker 8: ground with people locally to them. But then also I
Speaker 8: think it's something like a third of our unit is
Speaker 8: not actually local to one of these offices. I'm not
Speaker 8: local to an office. I live north of Boston, we
Speaker 8: have like three unit members and the entire Commonwealth the message.
Speaker 8: So this is like a really long process of getting
Speaker 8: everybody on board and getting everybody to commit to saying
Speaker 8: they wanted to be in the union, and then eventually
Speaker 8: to sign union cards after all of that, that took
Speaker 8: more than a year. We informed management of our intent
Speaker 8: to unionize in December of twenty twenty one, and they
Speaker 8: recognized us about six weeks later, in February of twenty
Speaker 8: twenty two. That took longer than we would have wanted.
Speaker 8: There was some back and forth about exactly what roles
Speaker 8: would be included in the union, and then also the
Speaker 8: winter holidays happened in the middle of that, which, like
Speaker 8: those weeks don't exist for business purposes in a lot
Speaker 8: of ways. We still got to do podcasts for them,
Speaker 8: but nobody's at work, and so, you know, we were
Speaker 8: recognized without having to go through an election with the NLRB,
Speaker 8: which was great, but it did sort of feel like
Speaker 8: it took a little bit to finally get the recognition.
Speaker 8: And then we started bargaining in May, so a couple
Speaker 8: of months after that, and that was two years ago
Speaker 8: that we started bargaining.
Speaker 13: Oh, my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's May now, it may.
Speaker 8: It is almost June today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It has been a really quite long bargaining process, which
Speaker 5: I think, I mean, this is something we've talked about
Speaker 5: on the show before that this is a pretty This
Speaker 5: is a thing that happens a lot for especially for
Speaker 5: first contracts, is that companies will try to sort of
Speaker 5: just weight the union out and try to because you know,
Speaker 5: the if if you look at like the places where
Speaker 5: unions fail, it's they either fail in sort of like
Speaker 5: they okay, there's there's there's the failures where like nothing
Speaker 5: ever gets started. There's the failures where they lose they
Speaker 5: lose an election, or they don't have enough people to
Speaker 5: sign cards. And then the third place that they fail
Speaker 5: is contract, is the first contract. And so this is
Speaker 5: you know, a situation that I guess is not unexpected,
Speaker 5: but is also negotiating a contract for two years just
Speaker 5: is not very fun.
Speaker 14: Yeah, no, it's not.
Speaker 8: Our colleagues at WGAE, when we got ready to start bargaining,
Speaker 8: tried to prepare us for the fact that eighteen months
Speaker 8: to two years is fairly normal in the world of
Speaker 8: media to bargain a first contract. I will readily acknowledge
Speaker 8: that I was overly optimistic when we started. I would
Speaker 8: not go so far as to say naive, but like
Speaker 8: I thought it was a really good sign that the
Speaker 8: company had voluntarily recognized US. I thought it was a
Speaker 8: really good sign that WGAE had successfully negotiated other contracts
Speaker 8: and that we were sort of drawing from a lot
Speaker 8: of that. Contract language is our starting point, and I
Speaker 8: feel like when you have all of the unionized podcast
Speaker 8: shops having similar language to me, that language is now
Speaker 8: becoming industry standard. So I expected less of a fight
Speaker 8: over a lot of that than what we actually got.
Speaker 8: And then also management hired an attorney that has negotiated
Speaker 8: a lot of other contracts with WGA. Was just all
Speaker 8: stuff that I thought was seemed favorable. And then when
Speaker 8: we actually got into the bargaining process, it has gone
Speaker 8: on for so long and there have been so many
Speaker 8: things that it has felt like we're just going around
Speaker 8: in circles at the table.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So before we get into kind of what issues
Speaker 5: are being circled around and what management has been doing,
Speaker 5: I wanted to talk about what bargaining a contract is
Speaker 5: actually like, because I think most of the people listening
Speaker 5: to this have never done it and only kind of
Speaker 5: have a vague idea of what that means. So can
Speaker 5: you sort of walk us through the I don't know.
Speaker 5: So there's a week that has a bargaining session, can
Speaker 5: you walk through the process of what goes into that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 10: So in a week where we might have a bargaining session,
Speaker 10: say we have a bargaining session on Wednesday and Thursday,
Speaker 10: as a committee will meet probably the Monday the tuesday
Speaker 10: to prepare whatever our counter proposals will be. So whether
Speaker 10: or not that's on economics. So we're getting back and
Speaker 10: we're adjusting our salary proposals that are going to go
Speaker 10: across the table, or we're adjusting what we're asking for
Speaker 10: in severance, how many weeks of severance we're asking for.
Speaker 10: So we'll spend some time as a committee going through
Speaker 10: those proposals and basing our decisions off of like, this
Speaker 10: is where we have an intention of landing, this is
Speaker 10: where management is right now, this is what in our
Speaker 10: conversations with the other unit members we've figured out is
Speaker 10: most important to people, So we'll.
Speaker 14: Make counters based on that.
Speaker 10: Lately, our sessions have those sessions have looked like preparing
Speaker 10: to who in the committee is going to be presenting
Speaker 10: that contract language across the table, so we'll divvy up
Speaker 10: those presentations and Tracy might present on diversity, I might
Speaker 10: present about the salary minimums. We might have another committee
Speaker 10: member present on severance and things like that, so well
Speaker 10: sort out who is going to say what, and we'll
Speaker 10: also plan out any other sort of editorializing that we're
Speaker 10: going to do across the table, like this is why
Speaker 10: we're making a move here, because it's important to our unit.
Speaker 10: For this reason, we've also planned out actions that we're
Speaker 10: going to do across the table and having unit members
Speaker 10: read testimonials about certain contract items.
Speaker 14: So those are all of the.
Speaker 10: Things that we might prepare for ahead of the bargaining session.
Speaker 10: And then on the actual day of bargaining session, we'll
Speaker 10: go in and we'll meet as a committee in the morning.
Speaker 10: We're either presenting first our proposals or management is presenting
Speaker 10: to us. As a bargaining committee will be there to
Speaker 10: hear the proposals. There may be some sessions that are
Speaker 10: more important than others, so we'll invite the whole unit
Speaker 10: to hear those proposals, and we will over those two
Speaker 10: days sort of go back and forth, presenting across the
Speaker 10: table what our proposals are and the counter propose and
Speaker 10: with the idea of like getting closer to a contract
Speaker 10: that is fair and like Tracy said earlier, industry standard.
Speaker 8: That sums it up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I guess this leads us to the second
Speaker 5: part of contract negotiations, which is management's counterproposals. So, you
Speaker 5: know something, something I think is kind of surprising when
Speaker 5: when when you do this for the first time, is
Speaker 5: the extent to which management simply will not show up
Speaker 5: on time?
Speaker 14: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So how has it actually been sitting across the
Speaker 5: table from management and you know, hearing their counter proposals
Speaker 5: and dealing with whenever they show up.
Speaker 8: Uh, all of my bargaining so far has been happening
Speaker 8: on the other side of a zoom or a team's screen.
Speaker 8: Since I'm remote to everybody else, which is a blessing curse, right,
Speaker 8: I have kind of a buffer. I'm not having to
Speaker 8: directly look at the faces of the people who are
Speaker 8: coming in with salary proposals that are dramatically less than
Speaker 8: what we proposed and what we feel as industry standard
Speaker 8: at this point. But it also means that like I'm
Speaker 8: by myself. I don't have somebody near me to when
Speaker 8: like management leaves the room personally react with we got
Speaker 8: to go around the circle in the whoever's in the
Speaker 8: room and on the screen to sort of say our reactions.
Speaker 8: But like it's it's lonely sometimes to do it from afar.
Speaker 8: I do definitely have to practice keeping my expression neutral
Speaker 8: because sometimes what we are hearing is not neutral expression territory.
Speaker 8: And I also really was not totally prepared to hear
Speaker 8: management justify their positions on things like I will feel
Speaker 8: strongly that the correct and most ethical thing to do
Speaker 8: is a particular thing, and then management will explain their
Speaker 8: position on something and I'll sort of be like, that's
Speaker 8: that's not the decision I would like you to be
Speaker 8: making at all. And I'm a little upset that I
Speaker 8: just heard you say that just now.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, And I'm in Atlanta, So most of our
Speaker 10: bargaining sessions have happened in Atlanta. We have also have
Speaker 10: them in New york Er or le but so I
Speaker 10: have been in person for most of the sitting down
Speaker 10: across for management and like waiting a few hours after
Speaker 10: when they said they would be ready to present their proposals,
Speaker 10: and it is like tense and frustrating to sit in that,
Speaker 10: and to Tracy's point, like, it is nice that we
Speaker 10: have the rest of the committee with us to or
Speaker 10: whoever's in Atlanta with us to sort of share in
Speaker 10: that together. But the energy does get really tense at times,
Speaker 10: especially in those situations where we've presented, hey, we would like,
Speaker 10: however many days of bereavement leave so we can grieve
Speaker 10: our family members, and then management comes back with an
Speaker 10: offer that's.
Speaker 14: Like, well, what about just a couple of days to.
Speaker 10: Grieve your dead family member? And so in those situations
Speaker 10: where it's like, do you think of me as a
Speaker 10: fellow human being deserving of these like very basic things
Speaker 10: to make my life livable.
Speaker 14: And then their answer sort of feels like a no.
Speaker 10: And you kind of just have to like sit in
Speaker 10: that in person while they say it to your face.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I mean, especially when it's something that personal
Speaker 5: or it's that or if it's something that parental leave
Speaker 5: where you know this is your child, right, and yeah,
Speaker 5: you're sitting across a table from someone being like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 5: you actually you should get like two days to deal
Speaker 5: with this. It's just really brutal we had.
Speaker 8: It was a few months ago. We had a session
Speaker 8: where we had a lot of testimonials that were accompanying
Speaker 8: our actual contract proposals, and some of them were read
Speaker 8: by the person who had written the testimonial, and some
Speaker 8: of them were read by a different bargaining committee member
Speaker 8: because somebody was just more comfortable remaining anonymous and having
Speaker 8: somebody do that for them. And we had testimonials that
Speaker 8: were all over the map in terms of things that
Speaker 8: we were still in the process of bargaining, So we
Speaker 8: had diversity testimonials, we had testimonials about parental leave, all
Speaker 8: of this stuff. And one of the things that wound
Speaker 8: up being just enormously frustrating was that it felt like
Speaker 8: we went through all that and we presented so many
Speaker 8: things about why this matters so much to all of us,
Speaker 8: and the next round of counter proposals that we got
Speaker 8: were like the same negligible movements as from before we
Speaker 8: had all read all of the testimonials. And that was
Speaker 8: not my favorite day of bargaining by far.
Speaker 14: No, Yeah, that one was not not fun to be
Speaker 14: in on.
Speaker 5: And we are back, so, I mean, we've talked a
Speaker 5: little bit about kind of belief stuff, and you know,
Speaker 5: something like we've talked a little bit about some of
Speaker 5: the issues that have been stuck in negotiations for two years,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I wanted to sort of see, you know,
Speaker 5: talk talk about sort of the specifics of where of
Speaker 5: where the contract negotiations are right now, and how far
Speaker 5: apart the company and the union is and also just
Speaker 5: and this is something that I think has been a
Speaker 5: theme of these negotiations is the extent to which management
Speaker 5: is below industry standard. So yeah, I guess we could
Speaker 5: start with sort of wages there because of one of
Speaker 5: the places where they're very much below standard.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think we only have a TA on one
Speaker 10: a TA being a tentative agreement on one title and
Speaker 10: only for the rate that they're proposing in New York
Speaker 10: City in LA. Another big thing with our minimums is
Speaker 10: that they're different for producers and other titles living in
Speaker 10: New York City in LA than they are for people
Speaker 10: in those roles in other cities. So yeah, we are
Speaker 10: very far apart still on our salary minimums.
Speaker 8: Yeah, when we put together our proposals on salary minimums, like,
Speaker 8: we didn't make them up out of nowhere. We did
Speaker 8: a lot of research on pay rates at other unionized
Speaker 8: podcast shops and other podcast businesses. We came up with
Speaker 8: numbers that felt fair and industry standard based on all
Speaker 8: of that research, and then management just came in so
Speaker 8: much lower than all that. And then as Noomes just said,
Speaker 8: there's this differential they're proposing between New York and LA
Speaker 8: and everywhere else. Most of our unit is not in
Speaker 8: New York or LA. A big chunk of the unit
Speaker 8: is in Atlanta specifically, and the cost of living in
Speaker 8: Atlanta is just not that much lower than New York
Speaker 8: or LA. At this point. We've also been way apart
Speaker 8: on annual increases. Originally management was proposing not to have
Speaker 8: annual increases in the contract at all, and they've moved
Speaker 8: past that, but the current proposals are still way way
Speaker 8: less than the rate of inflation.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's about half, like half of what inflation is. Yeah,
Speaker 10: like it does, it's not even inflation amount. And I
Speaker 10: will say that like for many of the job titles,
Speaker 10: they're so far below what industry standard is. With the
Speaker 10: like very little incremental movement that they make every bargaining session,
Speaker 10: it's clear that they the company doesn't have any interest
Speaker 10: in getting the industry standard despite the fact that it
Speaker 10: is like a large and well ranked podcasting company.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, we just got the Webby Award as Podcast
Speaker 8: Company of the Year, and we continue to be like
Speaker 8: when rankings come out of the biggest podcast networks, like
Speaker 8: we're always at or right near the top of the rankings.
Speaker 8: All of that, we have a lot of shows that
Speaker 8: are really well respected in you know, whatever subject matter
Speaker 8: they are discussing, whatever broadly speaking genre of podcasts, and
Speaker 8: so it sucks to then look at pay scales that
Speaker 8: just don't line up with that in terms of like
Speaker 8: the minimum of what the company will commit to offering people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think the person to increased thing is
Speaker 5: really frustrating too, because again, the way this works out
Speaker 5: with inflation. And remember that, so you know, if we
Speaker 5: started bargaining in twenty twenty two, right, inflation in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two was like three like twice what it is now.
Speaker 5: And if if you're getting, if you're not getting this
Speaker 5: is something I think that's important for everyone to understand,
Speaker 5: is that if you're not getting so for inflation right
Speaker 5: now is about three point four percent, If you're not
Speaker 5: getting a three point four percent pay increase this year.
Speaker 5: That means you you you are taking a pay cut
Speaker 5: every single year, right, And the fact that you know
Speaker 5: this is this is what my management's proposal is, you
Speaker 5: take a pay cut every single year and you're supposed
Speaker 5: to be fine with this is incredibly frustrating. And I
Speaker 5: don't I don't think it's it's it's it's not really
Speaker 5: understood in in terms of you're literally taking a pay
Speaker 5: cut very much. It's just talked of like it's it's, it's,
Speaker 5: it's it's something that's talked about. Is just like another benefit.
Speaker 5: But like, no, we're trying not to take a pay cut.
Speaker 10: But yeah, yeah, I like to if my salary is
Speaker 10: going to not take me any further at least not
Speaker 10: take me any farther back.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I don't need to.
Speaker 10: Lose money every year like I've done this year in
Speaker 10: starting my second year at the company.
Speaker 8: Right, there's been a lot of people who have not
Speaker 8: had a raise since like before the pandemic started, and like,
Speaker 8: I'm incredibly lucky. I have been at my job forever.
Speaker 8: I'm on one of the biggest shows that we have
Speaker 8: in the network. Like I'm doing okay, right, but a
Speaker 8: lot of my colleagues who work on shows that don't
Speaker 8: have as much power, don't have as big of an audience, like,
Speaker 8: don't have as much much of an ad budget of
Speaker 8: people who have been with the company less time, people
Speaker 8: who are like earlier on in their careers, especially like
Speaker 8: I've watched these folks go through the last four years
Speaker 8: with no increase in their pay, and like, I can
Speaker 8: see people struggling now financially in a way that they
Speaker 8: weren't struggling financially in twenty nineteen because their pay has
Speaker 8: not changed at all, but the how much it costs
Speaker 8: to exist in the world is so much more expensive.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we have some members right now who like would
Speaker 10: receive a pay increase with what's being proposed currently, but
Speaker 10: it is nowhere near the majority. Most people are going
Speaker 10: to lose money with the numbers as they are right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's one of the things that just you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, and even the sort of industry standards in
Speaker 5: podcasting isn't great, but that's one of these things that's
Speaker 5: you know, very much below industry standard. And there's been
Speaker 5: another one of these things that I wanted to talk
Speaker 5: about that's kind of baffling that I think everyone involved
Speaker 5: thought that this would be something that there wouldn't be
Speaker 5: a huge fight over. But that's at will employment.
Speaker 4: You talk about that, Yeah, Yeah, I love too.
Speaker 8: So just cause employment means your employer has to have
Speaker 8: just cause to terminate your employment. Your employer cannot just
Speaker 8: do it willy nilly. And it's a core part of
Speaker 8: like the rights that unions bargain for is to have
Speaker 8: a process for somebody to be disciplined and lose their job.
Speaker 8: It's a very basic thing, basic union protection. And the
Speaker 8: management has held firm that they basically want to not
Speaker 8: only have at will employment standards, but like enshrine that
Speaker 8: in the contract.
Speaker 10: Yeah, meaning that they want to be able to fire
Speaker 10: us for any reason and at any time, regardless of
Speaker 10: whether or not we've done something actually warrant that loss
Speaker 10: of our income.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's something I think is really important that
Speaker 5: I don't think people think about it this way. But
Speaker 5: you know, both for if you're doing work that's politically
Speaker 5: sensitive or also if you are marginalized, that is a
Speaker 5: you know, not not having your boss not be able
Speaker 5: to fire you for literally any reason is it's a
Speaker 5: necessary piece of protection. And if you don't have that.
Speaker 5: You can have a situation where I don't know, you
Speaker 5: have one boss who's racist, one boss who's transphobic, and
Speaker 5: you know, you and everyone like you's careers are just gone.
Speaker 5: And without that kind of protection, you know, it's it's
Speaker 5: incredibly it's incredibly dangerous for like, for marginalized people to
Speaker 5: you know, I mean even just like to be able
Speaker 5: to speak up about things that are happening to you. Right, like, yes,
Speaker 5: like tech technically speaking, retaliation is illegal. However, come up
Speaker 5: see the entire history of labor in America and tell
Speaker 5: me whether it tell me, explain to me whether or
Speaker 5: not it act, it still actually happens, especially when you
Speaker 5: can just fire someone for some other reason or again,
Speaker 5: in this case, you can fire them for no reason.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, And it's it's a thing that is so
Speaker 10: baffling because there's no union contract.
Speaker 14: Without just cause.
Speaker 10: Like there's a number of reasons why people unionize. Obviously
Speaker 10: we want better salaries, Obviously we want better healthcare. But
Speaker 10: there's you don't form a union and then still allow
Speaker 10: a contract that says yeah, and also though we can
Speaker 10: fire you at any reason, because that is sort of
Speaker 10: the antithesis of like what we're about here, which is
Speaker 10: that there's like due process and structures in place that like,
Speaker 10: people who provide the labor for.
Speaker 14: This company can't just like.
Speaker 10: At a moment's notice, be out out of healthcare and
Speaker 10: in common all of that comes with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean politically like it's it. And you know,
Speaker 5: if you look at this as a political system, it's
Speaker 5: a difference between pure dictatorial rule where everything is just
Speaker 5: done purely by fiat right, where you know, like the
Speaker 5: person who rules you can do whatever they want to you,
Speaker 5: and there being something like a functional legal process which
Speaker 5: constrains the power of rulers to just sort of enact
Speaker 5: their will on you. And that's you know, an incredibly
Speaker 5: fundamental basic part of what a union is is the
Speaker 5: democratization of the workplace.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that's That's one of the things that I
Speaker 8: think is so important about just the right to unionize
Speaker 8: in general that I think a lot of people who
Speaker 8: have never been part of a union don't fully understand.
Speaker 8: I'm basing some of this based on comments I continually
Speaker 8: see on ARII ads, which I am served all the
Speaker 8: time as a person who hikes a lot, because currently
Speaker 8: their comments on their ads are a whole lot of
Speaker 8: people saying, stop union investing ARII. And then there are
Speaker 8: always people who are like, it's retail. If you don't
Speaker 8: like it, get a better job, or they're saying something
Speaker 8: like ARII has always voted one of the greatest employers,
Speaker 8: Like you should just be thankful for what you have,
Speaker 8: And I'm like, the thing is, though, an employer has
Speaker 8: so much more power than an individual employee. Your employer
Speaker 8: has a whole HR structure and lawyers and way more
Speaker 8: money than any individual person working for them. And that's
Speaker 8: why employees have the right to come together collectively to
Speaker 8: just balance that out a little bit. Like a union
Speaker 8: is still going to have a power differential between themselves
Speaker 8: and the company. We have a whole lot more equity
Speaker 8: and a whole lot more access to that power together
Speaker 8: than as one individual person going to their manager asking
Speaker 8: nicely to have a couple extra days off because their
Speaker 8: parent died or whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, as the old is these, the old song goes,
Speaker 5: what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength
Speaker 5: of one, but the union makes us strong. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think I think that's a good sort of place to
Speaker 5: end on. The negotiations are still ongoing, flying next week.
Speaker 8: To be there in person next week already. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: a little scary. I don't know what to wear to
Speaker 8: an office anymore.
Speaker 10: Oh see, and me either. I actually just show up
Speaker 10: how I am always in my normal life.
Speaker 14: So I encourage you to do the same.
Speaker 8: Can I get a Union shirt from you when I
Speaker 8: get there?
Speaker 14: Oh please?
Speaker 10: They're literally clogging my home and I would love to
Speaker 10: give you one. So I have one of us.
Speaker 11: All right.
Speaker 5: So where can people go to find the Union and
Speaker 5: to support us.
Speaker 10: We are on Twitter at Iheartpod Union. We're on Instagram
Speaker 10: also at Iheartpod Union.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that's where you can find us. On social media.
Speaker 8: We're on Blue Sky at iHeart Podcast Union. I have
Speaker 8: the keys to that one right now, and I have
Speaker 8: not been really active with it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 10: Yeah, many an update goes out on the Twitter so
Speaker 10: you can stay in touch there.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And in the in the meantime between now and bargaining,
Speaker 5: this has been naked appen here. Thank you to so
Speaker 5: much for coming on and yeah, let's let's get let's
Speaker 5: let's let's get ourselves a good contract.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Yeah, we're gonna get a good contract. And it is
Speaker 14: such a pleasure to work with the both of you.
Speaker 8: Oh, yes, you too. Thank you so much Mia for
Speaker 8: having us on.
Speaker 5: Yeah for sure, always happy to all right, And this
Speaker 5: is also your daily union episode reminder that you too
Speaker 5: can do this. You too can spend an enormous amount
Speaker 5: of time going through a spreadsheet.
Speaker 8: Then finally spreadsheets.
Speaker 5: Turn it look. Unionization is the process of turning a
Speaker 5: spreadsheet into into a fighting organization.
Speaker 10: You two can get lost in a sea of Google docs.
Speaker 5: But I promise you all, as as much as this
Speaker 5: episode has been about, you know, the sort of stubbornness
Speaker 5: of management and how you know and how kind of
Speaker 5: demoralizing that process can be, it is worth it, I
Speaker 5: promise you all. It is and you can You can
Speaker 5: do it too.
Speaker 7: Hey.
Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday, with more episodes every week from
Speaker 2: now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 9: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 9: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 9: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 9: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 9: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 9: monthly at cool zonemedia, dot com, slash sources, thanks for listening.