Speaker 1: All the media, Hello and welcomed. It could happen here,
Speaker 1: and it could. My name is antress Age. I'm also
Speaker 1: ANTWRESSM on YouTube, and I'm here once again.
Speaker 2: With James James Stout. People said I'd never say my
Speaker 2: last name.
Speaker 3: And they can't work out who I am, so I
Speaker 3: guess I'll do that more.
Speaker 1: Welcome James Stout. Thank you so ically. And I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an unfortunately common pattern of thought for me,
Speaker 1: but I've been thinking about just how totalizing this system feels.
Speaker 1: And it's like everywhere you turn, you know, walking down
Speaker 1: the street, look at the city, a pollution that every
Speaker 1: inch of land there's been claimed by the system, every
Speaker 1: bit of you know, the way you live and operate
Speaker 1: just feels like it's been manipulated and controlled in some way.
Speaker 1: And so that's really what I want to highlight in
Speaker 1: today's episode, the infrastructure of this system and how it's
Speaker 1: used to control, you know, both in terms of the
Speaker 1: physical infrastructure and the digital infrastructure of our lives. So
Speaker 1: I suppose to start off, I'd ask, when was the
Speaker 1: last time that you noticed infrastructure shape in your choices?
Speaker 2: That's interesting, I mean a lot in certain ways, right,
Speaker 2: like like the infrastructure of labor shapes a lot of
Speaker 2: my choices, Like I have to work a lot to
Speaker 2: make ends meet, right like, which means I can't do
Speaker 2: sometimes things I want to do, Like there are mutual
Speaker 2: aid efforts I'd like to participate in more that I'm
Speaker 2: not able to because I have this obligation to capital.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, I guess that's one of them.
Speaker 2: Or just like the physical infrastructure limiting the people I
Speaker 2: get to see, right, Like, there are places I love
Speaker 2: to go out there with some really nice vegan places
Speaker 2: in Tijuana that I don't go to as much as
Speaker 2: i'd like because someone has built a giant wall and
Speaker 2: then another giant war next to it, and then stationed
Speaker 2: a bunch of people with guns to check if I
Speaker 2: have the right piece of paper to go back and
Speaker 2: forth to somewhere that otherwise I could ride my bike to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, borders are very unfortunate and big one. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really frustrating, And I think that's one of the most
Speaker 1: obviously detrimental aspects of physical infrastructure that to de manipulate
Speaker 1: our lives today. I think on the digital level, there's
Speaker 1: things like just the way that social media is laid out.
Speaker 1: I think it really controls like how much time you
Speaker 1: spend on it, how much energy you invest in it.
Speaker 1: And of course even just our neighborhoods, our environments, our cities.
Speaker 1: They laid out, it tends to affect, you know, just
Speaker 1: how often we go out, where we go, what needs
Speaker 1: a transportation we use, and I mean with physical infrastructures concerned,
Speaker 1: and how it's been used to control people. That goes
Speaker 1: way back into history. You know, coloneal powers often built
Speaker 1: transport infrastructure, you know, like roads and railways and ports
Speaker 1: with the very explicit purpose of extracting raw materials from
Speaker 1: the colonized territories to get to the imperial core. You know,
Speaker 1: the systems were not designed to say over the mobility
Speaker 1: needs of the local populations. They usually create a direct
Speaker 1: line from the mines and the plantations and the resource
Speaker 1: rich areas to the coastal ports where they could be exported.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so for the British and perialists and lovers
Speaker 1: of empire, they often brag that, you know, we built ports,
Speaker 1: and we built bridges, and we built roads, and we
Speaker 1: built railway as well. It's the same pattern everywhere. You know,
Speaker 1: in India it was used to move cotton, tea and
Speaker 1: other resources from the interior to the ship. In ports
Speaker 1: in Ghana, it was used to move gold and coco.
Speaker 1: In any case, it wasn't to interconnect within the city,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual economic subtermination of the people in
Speaker 1: that area. It didn't matter.
Speaker 2: I think about this, like, I cycled around Rwanda in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, which is an interesting time to be traveling,
Speaker 2: but I remember riding around them. The kny Rwanda word
Speaker 2: for dirt road is iqitaka, right, and so that's what
Speaker 2: mostly So we cycled on these dirt roads.
Speaker 3: It was lovely, you know.
Speaker 2: We'd go through the village and everyone would come out
Speaker 2: and wave at you, and like the little kids would
Speaker 2: come out and be like, what the fuck is this bicycle?
Speaker 2: And it was kind of fun, you know. And then
Speaker 2: we'd find someone. It's not really set up for like restaurants,
Speaker 2: so you just find someone and pay them an amount
Speaker 2: upon which you agreed and they would give you some
Speaker 2: food and that was a beautiful experience. And then there
Speaker 2: are these roads that they call Chinese roads that just
Speaker 2: go directly from the mind to the place where the
Speaker 2: raw material can be extracted. Because between the China was
Speaker 2: doing a lot of what you could generously call foreign
Speaker 2: direct investment or like neo colonialism in lots of places
Speaker 2: in Africa, right, And it was the contrast between those
Speaker 2: two traveling experiences was so profound, Like we obviously you
Speaker 2: travel faster on the smooth roads, but like you don't
Speaker 2: immerse yourself in the human experience of meeting and sharing
Speaker 2: that travel with people, which is why I do these
Speaker 2: things in the first place. With just like such a
Speaker 2: profound contrast. I remember it really striking me at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this is what empires and rulers
Speaker 1: in general have been doing, right. They they wield their
Speaker 1: control over labor to set things up in a way
Speaker 1: that fulfills their interests. Yeah. And then you know, even
Speaker 1: when people key in some sort of nominal independence and
Speaker 1: they inherit these clonial infrastructure grids or you know, they
Speaker 1: have investments coming in and they have set up they
Speaker 1: have these companies, it's a multinational companies setting up infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It still continues, you know, this sort of extractivist and
Speaker 1: top down nature of the way the infrastructure is set up.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't remain all of them. Don't reimagine
Speaker 1: the logic of what came before. You're in part for
Speaker 1: lack of funding and in part for lack of imagination,
Speaker 1: and so in a lot of places, the peripheral regions
Speaker 1: in these countries are still lacking in connectivity, They're still
Speaker 1: lacking behind the rest of the country. They still don't
Speaker 1: have access to some of the basic social services and
Speaker 1: resources that the urban core has. Because you know, the
Speaker 1: urban rural divide in many ways mimics the corporate free
Speaker 1: divide on the international stage. And then you have these
Speaker 1: neo colonial development aid programs coming in with the IMF
Speaker 1: for the World Bank, and you have even more infrastructure projects.
Speaker 1: So just repeat this extractive pattern under the ban of development.
Speaker 1: Of course, real development would be connecting people, encouraging people
Speaker 1: to participate in society and distribute opportunity. But the infrastructure
Speaker 1: tends to be set up as more so for consolidating
Speaker 1: state power and channeling the movement of people in predictable,
Speaker 1: survailable ways, and prioritizing access for certain populations while excluding
Speaker 1: or marginalizing others. So, of course, infrastructure development has the
Speaker 1: capacity to help people. You know, it can increase accessibility,
Speaker 1: can make people's lives easier, and it can also just
Speaker 1: manage and contain them and varied sources, and we see
Speaker 1: a lot more examples of this sort of infrastructure control.
Speaker 1: When you look at the class and racial dynamic within societies,
Speaker 1: those sorts of divisions and separations and stratifications, they of
Speaker 1: course manifest physically. You know, in the US you had
Speaker 1: literal segregation areas that were designated for black people listening
Speaker 1: for white people, water fountains and neighborhoods and all these
Speaker 1: different things. You also had redline in policy years, and
Speaker 1: nowadays you have spaces that were redlined and thus lacked investment,
Speaker 1: and thus when neglected infrastructurally due to that racial and
Speaker 1: economic inequality, those spaces are now right for development in
Speaker 1: the form of gentrification because the property is so cheap,
Speaker 1: so undervalued, and so the people who made something out
Speaker 1: of that lack are are being pushed out. And in
Speaker 1: South Africa, I mean up until recently, these are partid
Speaker 1: era policies created townships that were deliberately located far from
Speaker 1: white urban centers. There were lacking and services and transit
Speaker 1: options that physically reinforced the racial division of that society.
Speaker 1: And even today around the world you have urban zoning
Speaker 1: laws and transit access limitations and public housing policies that
Speaker 1: recreate historical class divisions and racial divisions, ethnic divisions. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure you and your oh, with all of the
Speaker 1: I mean, every time I talked to you have like
Speaker 1: a new travel story to tell. I'm sure you've witnessed
Speaker 1: something like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just thinking of how like I was
Speaker 2: thinking of, like if we think about the Syrian state
Speaker 2: as a contiguous colony, right, Like it's called the Syrian
Speaker 2: Arab Republic, but not all the people who are contained
Speaker 2: within the territory in which it once claimed the monopoly
Speaker 2: on violence are Arab people. So we think of the
Speaker 2: parts of North and East Syria, majority Kurdish areas, as colonized.
Speaker 2: We can see that reflected in the infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Part of that is, as you say, this sort of
Speaker 2: lack of investment, But then also part of it is
Speaker 2: every government funded building, right, schools, hospitals, the buildings you
Speaker 2: go in to do the paperwork you have to do
Speaker 2: to exist under the state. They're set up like strong points,
Speaker 2: like they're designed with a big kind of war and
Speaker 2: then a big courtyard and then thickias like they're designed
Speaker 2: to be militarily defensible against the people they're supposed to serve, right,
Speaker 2: Like the school is designed to be used as a
Speaker 2: fucking machine gun position, and once you see it, you
Speaker 2: see it everywhere, and you think about the nature of
Speaker 2: the state that designs infrastructure with that explicitly in mind, Right,
Speaker 2: it's fascinating. The other example I think of is like
Speaker 2: Chris Elam's done some fantastic writing on the development of Barcelona,
Speaker 2: and you have like the unregulated working class of Raval,
Speaker 2: like this area just next to the Rambler, where the
Speaker 2: streets are just fucking small and winding and crazy and
Speaker 2: there's never not laundry kind of over you know, over
Speaker 2: your head, and it's a very I like to go there.
Speaker 3: It's a place that I enjoy.
Speaker 2: And then you have the ijumpler, which means extension, where
Speaker 2: the infrastructure is extremely like it's probably one of the
Speaker 2: earlier grid cities that you would see, right. And the
Speaker 2: idea was that like these these over crowd they'd kind
Speaker 2: of what were in the nineteen twenties and thirty slums
Speaker 2: would be like where the working class would be kept
Speaker 2: and the working class, to be clear, were seen as
Speaker 2: there was a colonial relationship between the boys who are
Speaker 2: and the working class in Barcelona, because most of the
Speaker 2: working class were not Catalan, they would actually put signs
Speaker 2: at the top of these working class areas saying like
Speaker 2: Mutia begins here, right, these are the mutianos and people
Speaker 2: from Mussia, the people from outside of Catalonia. Catalonia stops
Speaker 2: here where the working class exist. That later reflected in
Speaker 2: the working class self identity, like it came to refer
Speaker 2: to the raval as Chinatown, not specifically because of a
Speaker 2: high concentration of people from the Chinese diaspora, but because
Speaker 2: they'd seen Chicago gangster movies where Chinatown was like the
Speaker 2: area where the gangsters were, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're fucking gangster, Like we're going to call it Chinatown.
Speaker 3: That you want to come in here, will fucking shoot you.
Speaker 2: Like I thought that was really fascinating, like response to
Speaker 2: the way that have been alienated by infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's why when you when you
Speaker 1: look at the sort of claims that oh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just roads, it's just the zoning, it's
Speaker 1: just a city grid, it's just an embassy, it's just
Speaker 1: a government office, it's like, no, these sorts of spaces,
Speaker 1: these buildings, this infrastructure could never be neutral. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when you see that, you can't unsee it because you
Speaker 1: look at the amount of decisions it would have had
Speaker 1: to have gone into, you know, some of the examples
Speaker 1: you mentioned or the examples I mentioned, you know, the
Speaker 1: design decisions. It's like, Okay, we're going to put this
Speaker 1: road here instead of here. Yeah, we're going to use
Speaker 1: this material instead of this material. Who you employ to
Speaker 1: build those structures, that infrastructure or also has an impact in
Speaker 1: this surrounding area? Are you employing people within the community,
Speaker 1: employing people outside? What's happening there? Who's funding this infrastructure,
Speaker 1: who's maintaining the infrastructure?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What level of Seville LUNs has been implemented? Where are
Speaker 1: the public transportation routes and why they're here and not there?
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, exactly, Like there's people whose opinions and
Speaker 2: views matter in that process, and there are people who
Speaker 2: are excluded from it.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the authors I tend to go back too
Speaker 1: often is he vandalist because he critics a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff, so particularly infrastructure's control and tools. Look in viviality.
Speaker 1: He spoke about how modern transport and urban design have
Speaker 1: been used to alienate people from their own bodies and communities.
Speaker 1: So you call all the usual suspects suburbanization and car
Speaker 1: centric infrastructure, how it isolates people and increases dependence on vehicles.
Speaker 1: And he called this dependence a radical monopoly because all
Speaker 1: the other choices have effectively been eliminated. Technically, you could
Speaker 1: walk along the highway, but you're not going to You're
Speaker 1: going to get a cut, right, you can't choose to
Speaker 1: walk a cycle, and that sort of scenario of.
Speaker 3: Film's going to call the cops that you try that
Speaker 3: in America, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So as a lich sor it, it's really a
Speaker 1: cultural imposition that shapes how we end up living, interacting, moving,
Speaker 1: and it's frustrating. On the global stage, you also see
Speaker 1: how infrastructure has the capacity to control the whole geopolitical board.
Speaker 1: You know, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Red Sea,
Speaker 1: the Straight orfor moves, all these places have a lot
Speaker 1: of power militarily, trade wise, dlematically because they control the
Speaker 1: flow of oil or of goods or of data. Yeah,
Speaker 1: particularly in the areas where the undersea internet cables run
Speaker 1: and so speaking of data. Actually, the realm of digital
Speaker 1: infrastructure is also very insiguous when it comes to control.
Speaker 1: We tend to think of the Internet as that sort
Speaker 1: of ephemeral cloud, right, But the cloud is hosted physically.
Speaker 1: You know, there are sofas, there are fiber optic cables,
Speaker 1: the air data centers, all these things. They're not as
Speaker 1: obvious as roads and railways and you know, neighborhoods, but
Speaker 1: they are just as if not in some ways even
Speaker 1: more powerful in terms of controlling what people access, how
Speaker 1: fast they access it, under what terms they access it,
Speaker 1: or because it's so intangible it's so hard to pin down,
Speaker 1: it can often escape scrutiny. But there are companies that
Speaker 1: own these things. There's a small group of very powerful
Speaker 1: corporations that pretty much dictate how things are in it.
Speaker 1: You know, most people they know about China's Grade Firal
Speaker 1: and how it's used to coordin off China from the
Speaker 1: rest of the Internet in some ways. You know, its sensors,
Speaker 1: websites and sweet results. It monitors people's activity, and it
Speaker 1: usually has these state monitored alternatives to some of the
Speaker 1: popular global platforms like Google and Base. Right, But Google
Speaker 1: and Amazon and Meta and Microsoft it's not like they're
Speaker 1: any better. You know, the dot run and things Republic
Speaker 1: could so if you will call out what China's doing
Speaker 1: with the with the Great Firewall, and I agree, I
Speaker 1: don't think that any government should have any control over
Speaker 1: what people access. But you know, it's not like censorship,
Speaker 1: data harvested and surveillance are unique to China. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of other governments, in collaboration with these companies,
Speaker 1: deploy soft censorship. You know, they de rank things in
Speaker 1: the algorithm, they filter certain keywords, they selectively block certain things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things are maybe automatically flagged or moderated, and that often
Speaker 1: affects people from the LGBTQ community in countries where you
Speaker 1: know that's that's a big no no. Or you have
Speaker 1: even the manipulation of language they will people use as
Speaker 1: people try to get around censors. Hence the proliferation of
Speaker 1: terms like great and essay and self delete and unlive
Speaker 1: and all these other euphemisms, which I mean, honest, I
Speaker 1: don't use any of them, and I despise them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: The thing is a lot of people assume that these
Speaker 1: words are censored and all platforms, but they're not. You know,
Speaker 1: they may be censored on one platform, usually it's TikTok
Speaker 1: or limited in one platform. And then if people take
Speaker 1: that sort of TikTok sort of way of speaking and
Speaker 1: spread it across the rest of the Internet, or worse yet,
Speaker 1: bring it into real life and end up saying things
Speaker 1: like un alive in real life. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything you have allowed fucking TikTok's algorithm to determine
Speaker 2: the way you can express yourself.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, And I mean TikTok has a lot of
Speaker 1: heat these days because you know, rightfully, so it's very popular,
Speaker 1: it has a lot of influence, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: very bleatantly interventionist with its content in some damage and Wiz.
Speaker 1: But again, the other big cooperations are not immune either.
Speaker 1: I mean, Facebook was famously found culpable for genocide, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: They've played a major role in the sort of attitudes
Speaker 1: that were developing and the marginalization that was sort of
Speaker 1: Targetinghinger community and the subsequent genocide.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I was on a panel with some Hinder people
Speaker 2: the other day and they are still by physical and
Speaker 2: technical infrastructure, being marginalized. So something myself and my union
Speaker 2: friends are trying to do is help the Hinder Podcast
Speaker 2: Initiative start podcasting right such that they can share their
Speaker 2: own voices with the world and their positions and their opinions.
Speaker 2: It's very important at a time when they're facing marginalization,
Speaker 2: even from revolutionary forces within me and Mark, and we
Speaker 2: cannot sustain an Internet connection to allow them to do that.
Speaker 2: Like we tried to do a liveanel and it was
Speaker 2: very hard for you know, these guys who are running
Speaker 2: around cox is bizarre where tens of thousands of bringing
Speaker 2: of people live in refugee camps trying to find connectivity,
Speaker 2: and like just another example of how they continue to
Speaker 2: be marginalized by the systems that first allowed them to
Speaker 2: be genocided exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the private cooperations are low and not response.
Speaker 1: But for this is the governments too. You know, when
Speaker 1: the corporations still tell the government to do something, the
Speaker 1: governments comply. And then when the governments tell the corporations
Speaker 1: to do stuff a lot of the time, it's also
Speaker 1: like they comply. It's collaboration, you know, especially since the
Speaker 1: government has the power in a lot of cases to
Speaker 1: shut down the Internet when things are not going their way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they used it and all of it. Recently,
Speaker 1: you have the suppression of the centering protests, you know,
Speaker 1: to influence elections or to restrict information, substructionalism and communication
Speaker 1: during crises. When you look at all over the world, Iran, India,
Speaker 1: than Myanmar, Uganda, even in Gaza. In all these cases,
Speaker 1: these governments step in and they limit or they shut
Speaker 1: down the Internet entirely to prevent the news from getting out.
Speaker 1: You know, they could target either the entire Internet or
Speaker 1: they target it in platforms. They target WhatsApp, they target Twitter.
Speaker 1: They justify by saying, oh they're going after take news
Speaker 1: or there's a security threat. Yeah it's bullshit, but you
Speaker 1: know we could see through that. Yeah, and it's tough
Speaker 1: because I mean, this is where these are. These are
Speaker 1: the places where people have gathered. These are the online
Speaker 1: town squares, you know, and these these this infrastructure is
Speaker 1: very much centralized. Google controls most of the search on
Speaker 1: the internet. Amazon dominates e commerce and cloud, computer and logistics,
Speaker 1: and Matter controls a lot of people's social interactions. You know,
Speaker 1: I could brag and say, oh, well I'm not on Facebook,
Speaker 1: but you know, as the use what'sapp, because everybody else
Speaker 1: uses WhatsApp. Yeah, and it's so easy for them because
Speaker 1: we're so concentrated on these platforms. It's so easy for
Speaker 1: them to popet us, to flex their their muscles and
Speaker 1: control the direction of public discourse. And I mean it's
Speaker 1: amplifying things, suppressing other things, maximizing our engagements, exploiting our
Speaker 1: cognitive and vulnerabilities, polarizing discourse, distorted reality. It's like, what
Speaker 1: the hell do we do? Yeah, And so for the
Speaker 1: Opium segment of the podcast, I just want to point
Speaker 1: out that, you know, infrastructure can be used to consolidate
Speaker 1: power and control people, but it can also be used
Speaker 1: to resist and to re clim a collective agency. You know,
Speaker 1: even infrastructure there was originally designed to control can be
Speaker 1: taken under our control. You know, around the world, communities
Speaker 1: have been able to challenge these extractive logics to build
Speaker 1: their own infrastructures on their own terms. You know, in
Speaker 1: digital spaces, this might take the form of community build
Speaker 1: mesh networks or alternative Internet local servers. You know, you
Speaker 1: have projects like Guifi dot net in Catalonia, or you
Speaker 1: have the NYC Mesh in New York, and these are
Speaker 1: efforts to engage in you know, pay to pay and
Speaker 1: decentralized communications without the reliance and the telecom giants. And
Speaker 1: then you also of course physically have examples of infrastructure
Speaker 1: resistant central control, participatory urban planet movements. You have gorilla urbanism,
Speaker 1: you have you know, of course, the long and storied
Speaker 1: history of squatting otherwise known as informal settlement, and these
Speaker 1: informal set of months hubs of innovation, and a lot
Speaker 1: of cases in tastes like Nai Ruby or in Rio Gario.
Speaker 1: You know, these these slums and favelas, they're hooking up
Speaker 1: their own electricity, hooking up their own internet, hooking up
Speaker 1: their own what is supply because they recognize that this
Speaker 1: is within their hands, this is within their capacity. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to have everything, you know, passed on
Speaker 1: to us from one high you know, we can you know,
Speaker 1: sort of reclaim our own voices and design our own spaces.
Speaker 1: If you're really interested in how infrastructure has the capacity
Speaker 1: to control and really just how states sort of see things,
Speaker 1: I have to of course recommend the classic James Scott
Speaker 1: seeing like a state. Yeah, I mean, it's such a
Speaker 1: foundational framework to understand and how infrastructure is used for
Speaker 1: social engineering it's really readable as well, so definitely give
Speaker 1: that a read. And you know, think about we is
Speaker 1: that you can contribute to shape in the infrastructure around you.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, James, if you have any stories
Speaker 1: along this vay and you could leave us off with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think of a ton right, like
Speaker 2: even I think about Like when I was a lot younger,
Speaker 2: I lived in a I guess what you could call
Speaker 2: a slum of favela, like a pretty economically disadvantage part
Speaker 2: of Karakas for a little while, and like at the time,
Speaker 2: and I've seen this when I lived in Barcelona too,
Speaker 2: Like I guess the English word would be info shop
Speaker 2: they normally call them. Social centers would be the Spanish
Speaker 2: word or social spaces, and like it was cool to see.
Speaker 2: Is this is a city which is established through colonialism, right,
Speaker 2: And there was a brief time before things were terrible
Speaker 2: in Venezuela where people were trying to make it and
Speaker 2: largely it was people trying to make things better. The
Speaker 2: state for a time allowed a space for that to
Speaker 2: exist before it stopped allowing a space for that to exist,
Speaker 2: which is where we're at right now, right and very
Speaker 2: clearly the state right now is very repressive in Venezuela,
Speaker 2: to be clear, Like I didn't want to give put
Speaker 2: fuel on the tanky fire or whatever, but it was
Speaker 2: actually a really beautiful thing and it facilitated right, I
Speaker 2: was like nineteen, My Spanish was dog shit.
Speaker 3: I was hungry all the time.
Speaker 2: It didn't have any food, you know, But it facilitated
Speaker 2: that community taking care of me because the spaces were
Speaker 2: public and people could see if people were falling through
Speaker 2: the cracks, right, And like, I think a lot about
Speaker 2: refugee camps, so obviously that somewhere has spent a decent
Speaker 2: amount of time right both within the US and outside
Speaker 2: of the US. And one thing I've been thinking about
Speaker 2: a lot recently is how so many of the people
Speaker 2: I met on the way to the United States and
Speaker 2: the Dadienne had horrific experiences in the Dadianne and afterwards,
Speaker 2: but they also miss the community that they had, Like
Speaker 2: they also miss the profound solidarity of just talking to
Speaker 2: people the other day who were telling me, like when
Speaker 2: they were hungry in the jungle, strangers who didn't speak
Speaker 2: their language would try and give them food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see that in a lot of disasters too,
Speaker 1: This sort of explosion and mutually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like refugee camp is a place where you
Speaker 2: do not have privacy for the most part, and that's
Speaker 2: not always great, but it facilitates caring for one another.
Speaker 3: And like, I don't know, I.
Speaker 2: Have this recollection from seven or eight years ago now
Speaker 2: and while I'm walking through a refugee camp in Mexico
Speaker 2: and just a very little girl from six seven something
Speaker 2: like that, and I have long hair. People can't see me,
Speaker 2: but she likes to mess with my hand braid and shit.
Speaker 2: And I'm carrying this little girl and like I've been
Speaker 2: coming for some time, and like the sense of community
Speaker 2: that you felt there amongst like a really terrible situation,
Speaker 2: but like because everyone can see you walking down as
Speaker 2: a little walkway, everyone's like, oh hi, how are you?
Speaker 2: Like you know, the kind of I'm trying to work
Speaker 2: out what they what they need and how we can
Speaker 2: best help. Like I just remember thinking like what the
Speaker 2: fuck is wrong with and then going back to the
Speaker 2: United States right in and sitting in my little house and like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, like like I'm fortunate to know
Speaker 2: my neighbors and to be close to them, but not
Speaker 2: many people are. And like for most people, you know
Speaker 2: that they get out their house to go to their car,
Speaker 2: they drive to their work, they don't say hi to anyone.
Speaker 2: Like it's so strange that, like, in a sense, in
Speaker 2: those refugee camps were closer to the beautiful life that
Speaker 2: we want than we are in these million dollar homes
Speaker 2: in a My house does not cost a million dollars.
Speaker 3: I don't own a house.
Speaker 2: But this the profound alien nation that we feel in
Speaker 2: part because of the physical infrastructure, the ability of humanity
Speaker 2: to fall back into caring for one another, to like
Speaker 2: that's what we do when we are not like physically
Speaker 2: and like intellectually restrained from doing it by structures both
Speaker 2: both physical and digital and even emotional that divide us
Speaker 2: from one another. And I've kind of thought about that
Speaker 2: ever since, Like, how do I build a place where
Speaker 2: people have more stability, but if I have privacy, people
Speaker 2: have their material needs.
Speaker 1: Men, Yeah, does you want to strike a balance infrastructure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want. There's some cohoes and sort of plans
Speaker 1: that I've seen, for example, but don't even really factor
Speaker 1: any much privacy, which I'm not for it all. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't want to have to recreate their their dorm
Speaker 1: room experience or in my case, they're sharing a bedroom
Speaker 1: the entire childhood experience.
Speaker 2: So yeah, says we need to have space for people
Speaker 2: to have privacy, but at the same time space for
Speaker 2: people to have community, and like cities can exist like that.
Speaker 3: Communities can exist like that.
Speaker 2: They're the theory of the mediterrane in public sphere that
Speaker 2: sometimes comes up where like again in working class Barcelona, right,
Speaker 2: people don't generally have air conditioning and it can't get
Speaker 2: very hot, so you just spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: outside balcony whatever, you know, front port, if you got one,
Speaker 2: that creates community, right, that creates a public sphere like
Speaker 2: a place, and it's not quite our home, but it's
Speaker 2: not controlled by someone else either.
Speaker 3: It's like a community space.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't exist in like suburb I don't live
Speaker 2: in the suburbs, but like suburban America, you know, where
Speaker 2: everyone has these like literal fences around all the shit
Speaker 2: that they own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that exists a very an extent in Trinidad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, some areas are very much a communal and
Speaker 1: other areas like trying desperately to be America. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's kind of a mix of both wheels there,
Speaker 1: at the very least from what I'm aware of, what
Speaker 1: I can tell people at least say height to their neighbors. Though, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still like a horrify and you.
Speaker 3: Know, respecter of not knowing your neighbors.
Speaker 1: Thing that I've heard of American life that you don't
Speaker 1: even say hi. Yeah, you know, you don't even wave
Speaker 1: at people like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I'm always at my neighbor's houses and they're always
Speaker 2: at my house.
Speaker 3: And like, I'm a.
Speaker 2: Person who owns a lot of tools, you know, like
Speaker 2: different spanners and stuff, so like I'm like I will
Speaker 2: go out of my way to make sure that my
Speaker 2: neighbors know they can borrow my shit. And and like
Speaker 2: that does seem to be quite a new experience for
Speaker 2: people who are like new in the neighborhood or whatever,
Speaker 2: but we should all do that. It's such an easy
Speaker 2: way to fight that alienation and that infrastructure that you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a wall between where I live and where the
Speaker 2: person next door lives, but I can I can knock
Speaker 2: on the door and say, hey, it looks like you're
Speaker 2: having some trouble with your truck.
Speaker 3: Do you need a hand or what have you?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm yeah, So I mean what you're saying is
Speaker 1: it could happen here?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta make the good things happen here. Tagus
Speaker 2: enough of the fucking bad shays.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Laza for me guys, All power to all the people.
Speaker 3: Please, It could.
Speaker 4: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 4: more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonmedia
Speaker 4: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 4: now find sources for it could Happen Here listed directly
Speaker 4: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.