Speaker 1: Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast about cool people who did cool stuff.
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Speaker 1: Listen to the first episode. Also, this is this is
Speaker 1: I've been having more tech issues than I should considering.
Speaker 1: This is not that hard, so we're at maximum efficiency.
Speaker 1: We've already rehearsed this like a time, I know, like
Speaker 1: the dress rehearsal went.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we have a really hard job podcasting. I mean,
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Speaker 1: You put quite a lot into this. Yeah, there are
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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, that's fair. But one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: this job is doable at all is because of my
Speaker 2: amazing producer, Sophie Hey. Sophie Hey, And another reason is
Speaker 2: the audio engineer Daniel Hi. Daniel good job, danel Hi,
Speaker 2: sweet sweet?
Speaker 1: Does he ever splice himself in responding to any of
Speaker 1: these highs? Well, think about it should out there just
Speaker 1: turn out there.
Speaker 2: Ian did that I think once. Yeah, Ian and Anmial
Speaker 2: switch switch shows, so they both still were Yeah, so
Speaker 2: so Vide and you said it the show and he
Speaker 2: did that once and it was funny. It was good. Daniel.
Speaker 2: You have to if you do it, you should do
Speaker 2: it as like the voice of God. You know, I
Speaker 2: had a lot of effects on your voice.
Speaker 4: Hello friends, it is I DJ Daniel. Your gratitude falls
Speaker 4: on my ears like a lullaby, soothing and sweet. May
Speaker 4: your episode be informative, researched and full of context. Goodbye now,
Speaker 4: but no I am with you always. Goodbye.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was written for us by unwoman. And
Speaker 2: this is part two and a two parter on the
Speaker 2: common Ground Collective in New Orleans, and we spent the
Speaker 2: whole We didn't even introduce the collective yet. The collective
Speaker 2: hasn't even started yet, although some people are doing collective types.
Speaker 2: A lot of mutual aid has already happened, and you
Speaker 2: should go listen to part one.
Speaker 3: By necessity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Now we're going to talk about one of
Speaker 2: the other people that we've already mentioned who also chose
Speaker 2: to write out the storm, Robert King. Robert King, I
Speaker 2: decided to write out the storm. He'd written out the
Speaker 2: storms as a kid, and he figured it would be fine.
Speaker 2: He told his friends as much. Also, I have a
Speaker 2: feeling that once you spend twenty nine years in a box,
Speaker 2: shit doesn't phase you. That's just my assumption, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: like literally, what could a storm do? Some storm? It's
Speaker 2: not worse, right, you know, there's very few things that
Speaker 2: are worse. An awful lot of people have declared solitary
Speaker 2: confinement to be torture, and those people.
Speaker 3: Are right, yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 2: But then the storm hit and the levees broke and
Speaker 2: the phones went dark, and his friends weren't so sure
Speaker 2: that he was safe. But he spent that time sitting
Speaker 2: on his front porch, hanging out with his dog, and basically,
Speaker 2: rescuers would come by on boats every now and then
Speaker 2: and be like, hey, you want to get out of here,
Speaker 2: and he'd say, can I bring my dog? And they'd say, oh, right, no,
Speaker 2: and so he'd say then no, I'm good. And because
Speaker 2: he's a prepper, King, oh, his last name is King,
Speaker 2: he had filled his bathtub with water, which is what
Speaker 2: you should do if you don't have stored water, or
Speaker 2: even if you do have stored water, and you know
Speaker 2: that there's a good chance your water supply is going
Speaker 2: to be disrupted. He had already filled his bathtub up
Speaker 2: with water, and he had a little bit of food,
Speaker 2: and basically he made sure that his dog ate better
Speaker 2: than him and he just hung out and waited for
Speaker 2: a week awn. His friends were worried about him. They
Speaker 2: couldn't reach him. There's no phones working. You know. He'd
Speaker 2: been a political prisoner for a long time, so he
Speaker 2: had friends all over who had helped him get out
Speaker 2: and then helped him after he got out. Right. He
Speaker 2: A big part of doing political prisoner or any prisoner
Speaker 2: support work is that you also take care of people
Speaker 2: as they transition out into the world. Three of his
Speaker 2: friends were these white anarchists living in Austin, Texas. Anne Harkness,
Speaker 2: her partner, Scott Crow, and this other guy, Brandon Darby.
Speaker 2: Don't get too attached to Brandon Darby. He's going to
Speaker 2: turn out to be a real piece of shit. I
Speaker 2: don't say that lightly, but it's a cutt and dry here. Basically,
Speaker 2: Anne had made connections with Robert King, so she's an
Speaker 2: important part of it in that sense, but she's not
Speaker 2: a big part of the rest of the story. Wrote
Speaker 2: an awful lot about common Ground and is one of
Speaker 2: the founders of common Ground, so we're gonna include him
Speaker 2: a lot in this story. And he is definitely cool.
Speaker 2: People did cool stuff like Malik and Robert and Sharon.
Speaker 2: Who will you know the other organizer who was there,
Speaker 2: Brandon Darby starts off the story a misogynist and then
Speaker 2: at the end of the story is an FBI and
Speaker 2: informant who put several people in prison.
Speaker 1: Right, it's probably that's the typical arc for those fuckers.
Speaker 2: It kind of is. Yeah, Scott, he's the only person
Speaker 2: in the story that I've met just from being in
Speaker 2: the movement together. And then also his record label put
Speaker 2: out a single of mine a few years back. Ironically,
Speaker 2: the single was called the Flood Came Over Me. I
Speaker 2: don't I don't know whether he picked the song because
Speaker 2: of that or not. Anyway, we'll talk about Scott. Scott
Speaker 2: was raised poor by a single mother, living literally on
Speaker 2: the wrong side of the tracks in Dallas, and he
Speaker 2: was one of the white kids in a neighborhood that
Speaker 2: was mostly black and Chicano. But it was the seventies
Speaker 2: and so we got to go to a free preschool
Speaker 2: that was run by former members of the Black Panther Party,
Speaker 2: the Brown Berets, and the Young Patriots, which is to say,
Speaker 2: militant leftists representing black, brown, and poor white social movements.
Speaker 2: He didn't know that at the time because it wasn't
Speaker 2: like he didn't go and there weren't just like pictures
Speaker 2: of AK forty seven's and like now's little Red Book
Speaker 2: on the wall or whatever. It was the free preschool
Speaker 2: that activists ran. He had what you might call a
Speaker 2: troubled youth. He got arrested and did drugs and shit
Speaker 2: like that throughout the eighties, and then music turned in political.
Speaker 2: But I'm really excited about this part. It wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 2: these other ways are great. Usually when someone gets political
Speaker 2: through music, it's hip hop or punk, right right, this
Speaker 2: was industrial and goth. Scott Crowe read an essay by
Speaker 2: al Jorgensen, the guy from Ministry, talking about the working class,
Speaker 2: and he was in. He was drawn originally towards socialism
Speaker 2: and communis, but he was wary of replicating problems with
Speaker 2: the USSR. Soon as a teenager, he's marching in anti
Speaker 2: apartheid marches and he's like playing in industrial bands that
Speaker 2: tour with Skinny Puppy and nine inch nails and all
Speaker 2: that shit, and he's helping raise his partner's kid and
Speaker 2: starting a co op antiques business. Once from now into
Speaker 2: the nineties, right, he's an adult at this point. Eventually
Speaker 2: he gets into anarchism in the nineties through just to
Speaker 2: check it off on your Free Space on cool Zone
Speaker 2: and sure an IWW organizer from the Industrial Workers of
Speaker 2: the World who had gotten out of prison, and an
Speaker 2: awful lot of this anarchist stuff clicks with Scott. Then
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one, Robert H. King gets out
Speaker 2: of prison Scott's partner and was soon friends with him,
Speaker 2: and they're all close as hell, and they refer to
Speaker 2: each other as family. So they're like not going to
Speaker 2: fucking let bad things happen to each other, right, because
Speaker 2: the Texas Anarchists, we're doing support work for this released panther.
Speaker 2: It's four years later, it's Katrina, and no one has
Speaker 2: heard from Robert is the night of the twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: about twelve hours after the storm it hit, So Brandon
Speaker 2: Darby calls Scott Crow and it's like, hey, we should
Speaker 2: get a boat and go find our friend, and so
Speaker 2: they called the Red Cross, and the Red Cross is like, yes,
Speaker 2: please come with a boat. We need people helping. And
Speaker 2: the two of them pack up supplies and a handgun
Speaker 2: and take off towards the unknown. As soon as they
Speaker 2: got into Baton Rouge, they realized the government operation was
Speaker 2: in shambles. It was arguing about who had jurisdiction. It
Speaker 2: was turning away hundreds of boat owners ready to do
Speaker 2: search and rescue, and so the pair were like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: we're not allowed to do it. So they went home
Speaker 2: just kidding. The pair were like, all right, well fuck
Speaker 2: you too, and they drove around to approach the city
Speaker 2: from another angle. What they saw was a fucking apocalypse.
Speaker 2: There is thirty foot tall mud drifts, there's cars smashed
Speaker 2: into buildings, there's trash everywhere. There's natural gas leaking everywhere
Speaker 2: right next to like down power lines that are sparking.
Speaker 2: So everyone's just waiting for everything to explode. You know,
Speaker 2: they're not even inside the city yet when they see
Speaker 2: this stuff. They're not inside the flooded parts yet, right.
Speaker 2: They helped where they could, and eventually they found a
Speaker 2: father with his adult son who had their own boat
Speaker 2: who were about to like go around into the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Mexico and then up into the city in order
Speaker 2: to get to their warehouse because they weren't you know,
Speaker 2: there's the only way they could figure out to get
Speaker 2: in there. And so they were like, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: you all have a boat, you can follow us. We'll
Speaker 2: guide you through the city. And so they take off
Speaker 2: into a stormy nightmare and a flat bottomed motor boat
Speaker 2: designed for like lakes and shit. Oh god, yeah, that's so,
Speaker 2: that's like a video game.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's like, I know, terrifying.
Speaker 2: I know, everywhere they went as they went into the
Speaker 2: city there was dead people and animals in the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Some of those people were dead with bullet holes in them.
Speaker 2: It's an apocalypse.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They passed rescue boat after rescue boat leaving the city
Speaker 2: and heard stories about gun battles. The media narrative around like, oh,
Speaker 2: everyone's just running around shooting each other is absolutely overblown, right,
Speaker 2: and that is a dangerous thing that is overblown. But
Speaker 2: in this first person memoir, Scott talks about, for example,
Speaker 2: how one would be rescuer with a boat would show
Speaker 2: up and there'd be a bunch of people who need rescue,
Speaker 2: and the rescue boat would be like, oh, we're doing
Speaker 2: women and children first, and young men with guns would say,
Speaker 2: fuck you, I'm going to shoot you unless you let
Speaker 2: me into the boat. And so the rescuers were like
Speaker 2: shooting the people that they're supposed to be rescuing. And
Speaker 2: eventually a lot of these rescuers were fleeing empty handed
Speaker 2: away from the violence that they were facing Jesus or
Speaker 2: empty boated. Maybe, Yeah, law enforcement isn't helping. They're shooting
Speaker 2: to kill anyone suspected of looting. Is this whole thing
Speaker 2: I read about a while ago when I was like
Speaker 2: first time I was researching all this stuff I was
Speaker 2: getting into like disaster studies that now I'm off script.
Speaker 2: Sophie loves when they go off script. There's this thing
Speaker 2: thinking that the government talks about its priority is COG
Speaker 2: continuance of governance, and this is more important than law
Speaker 2: and order. It is more important that the cops are
Speaker 2: in charge.
Speaker 1: Right, whoever it was in charge, stays in charge, as
Speaker 1: opposed to like people be safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Oh, and I fundamentally disagree with that approach. Yeah,
Speaker 2: helicopters full of guns are whizzing overhead quite noticeably, there
Speaker 2: to shoot people and not rescue people. But they made
Speaker 2: their way through the city and eventually they made it
Speaker 2: to this warehouse, the Guide's warehouse. They spend the night there,
Speaker 2: like taking turns, keeping watch with the one gun that
Speaker 2: they have between the two of them, and the next
Speaker 2: day they realize that they can't do this. As two
Speaker 2: white people with a gun and a boat. They are
Speaker 2: not going to make the situation any better. They are
Speaker 2: not going to rescue their friend. They are going to
Speaker 2: make some problems worse. Yeah, which has got to be
Speaker 2: an interesting decision to have to reach, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well it's also like a shadow of doubt is always there,
Speaker 1: and you're like, but maybe we're different, but maybe we're
Speaker 1: not different.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah totally, and will people perceive us as different? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh, like, don't worry, I'm an anti racist white person
Speaker 2: in the middle of something that is starting to look
Speaker 2: like a race war caused by white people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I've had to deal with like really
Speaker 2: minor versions of that tension, but I've never had to
Speaker 2: deal with anything like this that they can't even really
Speaker 2: wrap my head around, you know. So they spent hours
Speaker 2: boating their way back out of the city, like clinging
Speaker 2: to their gun as they pass under bridges, waiting for
Speaker 2: people to like ambush them to take their boat. They
Speaker 2: make it back to their truck and they drive back
Speaker 2: to Austin in Texas, which I'm sure takes a long
Speaker 2: fucking time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ok.
Speaker 2: And they're fucking dejected, you know. They're like, oh, we
Speaker 2: went to go do this noble thing and we can't
Speaker 2: didn't work, you know. And meanwhile, during all this, King
Speaker 2: is hanging out on his front porch and you know,
Speaker 2: feeding his dog. But his friends didn't know how he
Speaker 2: was doing. He's doing okay, He's not I'm sure he's
Speaker 2: not great, right, He's doing okay. And then on September fifth,
Speaker 2: less than a week after the storm, the Texas Anarchists
Speaker 2: get a call from New Orleans from Malik. This time
Speaker 2: his phone line still works kind of it's kind of staticky, right,
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey, I heard you tried to reach King.
Speaker 2: We could really use outside support. We need supplies and
Speaker 2: we need volunteers over in Algiers, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so Scott goes and he's in Austin. He gives a
Speaker 2: talk to like you know, sixty anarchists or radicals or whatever,
Speaker 2: and he's like, hey, everyone, we gotta go do this
Speaker 2: dangerous shit in New Orleans. Who's with us? And the
Speaker 2: answer is a resounding nobody.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I think at the time too, it's like
Speaker 1: heading into New Orleans would have sounded like the most
Speaker 1: like crazy thing you could do, basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean Scott Crow actually compares go up into the
Speaker 2: city and the boat to feeling like reliving The Heart
Speaker 2: of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, you know, which is like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's complicated, Yeah, because that is a lot. I don't
Speaker 2: have really positive race feelings about Joseph Conrad in the
Speaker 2: book Heart of Darkness, you know.
Speaker 3: I yeah, I think it's just become a different thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, like when you say it like that,
Speaker 1: there's so many things that you can need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people it's just like
Speaker 1: that book just means took a boat to a violent place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I used to feel very strongly that Joseph
Speaker 2: Conrad is piece of shit racist because he like has
Speaker 2: this quote from when he's younger about seeing a black
Speaker 2: person for the first time and being like terrified, and
Speaker 2: like that image stayed in his mind as like an
Speaker 2: object of terror for years or whatever. I've like since
Speaker 2: I don't even remember the details. I've since complicated that
Speaker 2: view of just corn red, but not in a way
Speaker 2: where I'm like, what a good guy, but that is
Speaker 2: not yeah, yeah, but is a really scary place. And
Speaker 2: I understand why a bunch of people didn't want to
Speaker 2: go show up with guns, you know. Yeah, Scott and
Speaker 2: Brandon load up with supplies, including some rifles. This time
Speaker 2: they forge a bunch of documents they forged. I think
Speaker 2: it must be like press passes or something that they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, in order to get through checkpoints. And they
Speaker 2: drive to Algiers and along the way they stopped to
Speaker 2: take advantage of sweet deals, just amazing products and services interwoven.
Speaker 1: Rat It's all unpleasant every time. It just not unpleasant.
Speaker 1: But it gets me every time. I'm like, oh, never,
Speaker 1: never once have I not been like, God, damn it,
Speaker 1: you got me again.
Speaker 2: This is my one joy in life is cynically introducing
Speaker 2: the interjections of capitalism into my anti capitalist podcast. Gotcha,
Speaker 2: here they are and we're back. And so they've made
Speaker 2: their way through the gauntlet of government checkpoints and advertisers
Speaker 2: and which weren't there, but the government checkpoints were. And
Speaker 2: they made it to Malik's house, which was the center
Speaker 2: of local organizing, right, And this is a shotgun house
Speaker 2: built in the nineteen thirties in the New Orleans style,
Speaker 2: And there's food and supplies being distributed and plans were
Speaker 2: being made. But the most pressing concern as soon as
Speaker 2: they get there, after you know, handing out the supplies
Speaker 2: they brought, is above food water first aid is the
Speaker 2: fact that a white militia threatening to kill Malik, right, right,
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 1: A problem pretty serious.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Brandon Scott and three locals set armed on
Speaker 2: Malik's front porch Jesus and the militia came by in
Speaker 2: a pickup truck, you know, like a couple guys in
Speaker 2: the back with rifles or whatever.
Speaker 3: Fuck. This is like so real.
Speaker 1: I also just like, I don't know why my YouTube
Speaker 1: algorithm has been suggesting clips from gameplay of the Last
Speaker 1: of Us, So.
Speaker 3: It's very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, yeah, that's that shit. Yeah, well, and that's
Speaker 2: like this is how we counterpoint that, you know, like
Speaker 2: I do a whole podcast with preparedness and this is
Speaker 2: how we counter it is we present organizing models that,
Speaker 2: instead of rely on get guns and shoot everyone who's different, say,
Speaker 2: distribute things and probably get guns to defend yourself from
Speaker 2: the people trying to shoot everyone who's different, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the militia showed up and they were like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I thought I was playing the video game one easy.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not anymore because the other side is suddenly armed.
Speaker 2: They realized they were outnumbered, they realized they were out gunned,
Speaker 2: and they realized that the people facing them down were
Speaker 2: both white and black. And the folks on the porch said, basically,
Speaker 2: you won't be harassing people in this neighborhood anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And this last part, the fact that they're white and
Speaker 2: black winds up mattering quite a lot in what happens
Speaker 2: in New Orleans and Algiers in particular, in the near future,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of racial tension in the city.
Speaker 2: Scott writes about it very explicitly that it it felt
Speaker 2: like it could have fallen into race war, right, or
Speaker 2: I mean, in some ways it is race war, right,
Speaker 2: the whole American project is race war.
Speaker 1: But however you want to describe, yeah, escalating that yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's like like race cold war into race hot.
Speaker 2: War totally, or like race war war the other side
Speaker 2: shooting too. Yeah, well right, yeah, so whatever that is.
Speaker 2: The usual goal is to not have it turn into
Speaker 2: race war.
Speaker 1: That's the yeah for now.
Speaker 2: Yeah is that Tony Hawk meme? Anyway, So it mattered
Speaker 2: a lot that some white folks from Texas had shown
Speaker 2: up with guns to protect black residents, and that helped
Speaker 2: defuse certain tensions that were happening. So they started patrols
Speaker 2: to keep militias out of the neighborhood. Armed patrols, And
Speaker 2: this is one of the first instances of community defense
Speaker 2: from the left in the twenty first century in the
Speaker 2: US that I'm I'm aware of because community defense. Armed
Speaker 2: community defense had largely gone out of style for decades,
Speaker 2: with moments of there's exceptions, right, but it had largely
Speaker 2: gone out of style for decades because we had a
Speaker 2: lot of like non violence and stuff in the eighties
Speaker 2: and nineties in terms of activism in the United States,
Speaker 2: was not in style when this happened in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, I barely knew anyone who owned a gun.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty four and for very similar reasons. White
Speaker 2: militias directly and personally threatening my life. I'm armed, and
Speaker 2: many people I know are Yeah, but yeah, not the style.
Speaker 2: They're doing it anyway, because it needs doing so the
Speaker 2: most pressing issue was being addressed, right. They had started
Speaker 2: to stand up to the militias. And so then three
Speaker 2: of them, Scott, Sharon, and Malik, sat around Malik's kitchen
Speaker 2: table and hashed out how they would build a revolutionary
Speaker 2: aid organization. They prioritize security, first aid, and food distribution,
Speaker 2: and they built what would soon become the common Ground
Speaker 2: collective all around them. The state was failing, the Red
Speaker 2: Cross was raising billions of dollars but not helping. So
Speaker 2: they were going to do something different. To quote Scott Crow,
Speaker 2: we would begin relief work without reliance on or interference
Speaker 2: from the state or professional aid agencies. We would prefigure
Speaker 2: the civil society we would like to see in the future.
Speaker 2: And they decided to build this organization. They would build
Speaker 2: on what everyone knew. Malik, of course, had done direct
Speaker 2: community aid and organizing with the Panthers and beyond, and
Speaker 2: Scott was a veteran of the alter globalization movement. The
Speaker 2: turn of the Millennium Right, which was the big protest
Speaker 2: movement in the late nineties and early odds, Right, which
Speaker 2: had taught how to build grassroots infrastructure everywhere. It went
Speaker 2: a very like dynamic and responsive thing. At all these
Speaker 2: street medics, you had all of these you know, direct
Speaker 2: action participants, you had all these organizers who were good
Speaker 2: at going places. Brandon Darby wasn't part of this initial
Speaker 2: thing because and he's still i mean, he's doing good
Speaker 2: things during this stage of it, right, But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he had gone off into the floodwaters to find Robert
Speaker 2: King because they still hadn't found him, right, right, And
Speaker 2: so he like drives as far as he can, and
Speaker 2: then he parks his truck and he gets out and
Speaker 2: he's just like fuck it, and he starts wading into
Speaker 2: the dark flood waters. FEMA surrounds him while he's wading
Speaker 2: waists deep through storm water, and eventually he persuades them.
Speaker 2: He's like, look, let me go check on the following person,
Speaker 2: the following address, and it was nearby, and so they
Speaker 2: found King and his dog Kenya on the front porch
Speaker 2: and basically, through sheer force of will or whatever, they
Speaker 2: were like, King is coming and the dog is coming.
Speaker 1: Right, that's fucking good at least Jesus and that one
Speaker 1: silver well, no, it's it is silver linings. I get that.
Speaker 2: But yea, it's funny. It's like this whole this episode
Speaker 2: is about the silver lining to this storm cloud. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: we have to get through the cloud. And King said simply,
Speaker 2: I knew y'all would come, which is fucking cool.
Speaker 1: That's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gotta have a line ready.
Speaker 1: When they came here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, day four he's like, fuck, he's a going back
Speaker 2: and forth between took y'all long enough?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like okay, okay, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: just trying it out on the dog totally.
Speaker 2: And it was King who named the organization, or it
Speaker 2: was someone paraphrasing King. I've sort of read both. The
Speaker 2: whole point of this organization was to come together to
Speaker 2: help each other. So King said, the only thing we
Speaker 2: need to find is common ground, and you know right,
Speaker 2: they were like, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's good, nafe good knife yeah.
Speaker 2: No notes. And then I think it was Malik who
Speaker 2: added a collective because wanted to indicate what that meant.
Speaker 2: And it was interesting because it was actually a class,
Speaker 2: not a clash, emerging of two ideological positions, where Malik
Speaker 2: is coming more out of a hierarchical organizing model and
Speaker 2: Scott Crow's coming out of a much more decentralized and
Speaker 2: horizontal organizing model. But they started the way that all
Speaker 2: smart organizations like this do. They don't decide what needs
Speaker 2: doing and go around and like just do it for people.
Speaker 2: They go around and they fucking canvas. They ask. They're like, right, hey,
Speaker 2: but what yeah, what do you need? One woman was like,
Speaker 2: the trash on the street, that is the problem. And
Speaker 2: this is exactly how the Young Lords started. We did
Speaker 2: a four parter about them. They were amazing Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: radicals in New York City and Chicago. The Young Lord
Speaker 2: started with a trash pickup, So they started doing trash
Speaker 2: pickup and they're soon joined by a deacon named Reverend Powell.
Speaker 2: Not the Young Lords the common Ground. Pretty soon thereafter
Speaker 2: they evacuate King from the city because the state is
Speaker 2: just like, the state does not like this man, you know,
Speaker 2: right right right, and he's like this, this is not
Speaker 2: the place for me. And Brandon Darby, the later informant,
Speaker 2: he also leaves at this point. He's not around for
Speaker 2: the setting up of the organization. Besides, this initial moment
Speaker 2: basically says I don't like organizing anyhow.
Speaker 3: Which I guess is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough, Yeah, yeah, it's much more destroying these organizations.
Speaker 2: And so then they just organized their asses off. They
Speaker 2: relied on decades of experience in networking. Someone from Greenpeace
Speaker 2: sent the first two way radios, not green Peace, the organization.
Speaker 2: Someone from Greenpeace sent their first two way radios, and
Speaker 2: then a whole ass food not Bombs chapter made its
Speaker 2: way down from Hartford, Connecticut, just like they're like, all right, oh,
Speaker 2: well more than Hartford does, right now. You know, I
Speaker 2: actually almost went down during this, but then I got
Speaker 2: into an argument with the person I was going to
Speaker 2: go with, and so they went and then I didn't.
Speaker 1: Pretty classic.
Speaker 2: Also, I know, exactly, like God, the.
Speaker 3: Thing that happens, it's understandable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the powers that be were trying hard to
Speaker 2: keep AID out of the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it wasn't, I mean, good, it's such like
Speaker 1: a common tale. But I was just like, I just
Speaker 1: I'm sort of curious, not I guess that curious, like
Speaker 1: what these people actually tell themselves at night, Like the
Speaker 1: fuck is wrong with you?
Speaker 2: I know, I think that they're like, well, what's interesting
Speaker 2: later in this story, a lot of the powers that
Speaker 2: be who work for all these organizations are just going
Speaker 2: to start giving stuff to common Ground against their own
Speaker 2: like guidelines.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was actually the story that like I kind of
Speaker 2: heard first about Common Ground was like, oh, the National
Speaker 2: Guard is like, hey, y'all are better distributing this stuff
Speaker 2: than us. Here you go, yeah, you know, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: at the start of it, they're like, oh, we got
Speaker 2: to keep everyone safe by making sure these people don't
Speaker 2: go into the city, and so people had to smuggle
Speaker 2: supplies in with like media and then also official aid
Speaker 2: personnel would help them smuggle through the official aid boundary.
Speaker 1: Right, you can at least like write, even if your
Speaker 1: fucking organization is to whatever, we can at least like
Speaker 1: slap a badge on something.
Speaker 2: Totally. But the first doctor they tried to get through
Speaker 2: was black and he got denied at every checkpoint, and
Speaker 2: white volunteers were just like slipping through, no problem. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is probably a coincidence. Right, Racism has been gone
Speaker 2: for decades at this point, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Oh man, it really yeah, it's so fucking it's
Speaker 1: so like depressing, how like frequently it just that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no situation where that shit doesn't just crop up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally fuck.
Speaker 2: An anarchist collective of street medics from DC called may
Speaker 2: Day d C showed up in an old van and
Speaker 2: then they worked to set up the first first aid station,
Speaker 2: which was at Malik's mosque, and it was first staff
Speaker 2: by these street medics, and soon doctors coming from as
Speaker 2: far away as California. A bike shop in Austin donated
Speaker 2: two hundred bicycles, and once the bikes get in, medics
Speaker 2: go door to door by bike to check in on everyone. Right,
Speaker 2: they're just like, oh, damn, yeah, how's everyone in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood doing? You know which I mean considering the number
Speaker 2: of like dead bodies that they're finding, right that, yeah,
Speaker 2: must have been an interesting job. Yeah, Jesus Malik's house
Speaker 2: is soon a distro center and a tent city of
Speaker 2: people sleeping in the yards sets up. I think this
Speaker 2: is mostly the volunteers. It takes neighbors a minute to
Speaker 2: trust all the white folks are suddenly in their neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Most of the volunteers who are now pouring in from
Speaker 2: outside or white but not all right. But once they
Speaker 2: realize that they've been invited and that a lot of
Speaker 2: the core organizing is coming from black people who live
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood and grew up there, you know. And
Speaker 2: they're also like, okay, and you're not the Red Cross
Speaker 2: and you're not vigilantes. Yeah, and so they start building trust.
Speaker 2: Veterans for Peace started coordinating supply drops. And there's this
Speaker 2: French organization Secur Popular Francis that starts helping out too.
Speaker 2: Because the Red Cross and FEMA told them to kick rocks.
Speaker 2: They're like, right, oh, you don't pronounce enough of the
Speaker 2: letters in your words, you can't help, or like we
Speaker 2: remember the yeah French Indians, but no, yeah, I know, right,
Speaker 2: And so they had fiftyvolunteers like pretty soon then goes
Speaker 2: up to like seventy and a couple hundred and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, And they have fifty volunteers of patrolling to
Speaker 2: keep out militias. They're running a medical clinic and a distro,
Speaker 2: and they're heading out in a rescue boat and they're
Speaker 2: heading out just to check on everyone and pass out
Speaker 2: what needs passing out. They get generators and extension cords
Speaker 2: that are snaking through the neighborhood. This is the only
Speaker 2: power in this neighborhood for months, or gas power generators
Speaker 2: that they're bringing in, right, tech and media collectives. This
Speaker 2: is like the same era that like there's this whole
Speaker 2: weird one day, I'll probably cover this. Do you know
Speaker 2: that there's like a weird anarchist connection to social media
Speaker 2: and Twitter and all that shit.
Speaker 1: I mean, just I mean, I guess I think of
Speaker 1: it more of just the general Internet, like the you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of like hippies, no no tech hippies, like
Speaker 1: no no borders, no boundaries kind of hacker people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have a lot of it, a lot
Speaker 2: of the infrastructure that they learned how to build during
Speaker 2: these anti globalization ault globalization protests. Oh sure, we're like,
Speaker 2: and they would set up these like indie media nodes
Speaker 2: where like it's like everyone's a journalist, which prefigures both
Speaker 2: the good things and the bad things about the monitoring that.
Speaker 2: And so it's like all of those people start coming
Speaker 2: to right, these tech and media collectives show up and
Speaker 2: they do weird tech stuff involving vans and radios to
Speaker 2: get phone and internet service going through all the Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they set up a pirate radio station just fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Like pirate radio is like always cool, but especially in
Speaker 2: this situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well it's also like more useful than usual.
Speaker 2: Too, Yeah exactly, Like usually, yeah it's cool because it's
Speaker 2: pirate radio. In this case, it's like, yeah, we need this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to like yeah, coordinate and inform people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Malik starts leaving for you weeks at a
Speaker 2: time to go across the country to raise awareness and
Speaker 2: funds and bring in volunteers to bring people to help
Speaker 2: rebuild New Orleans from the bottom up. Common Ground starts
Speaker 2: crossing the river in order to help it out in
Speaker 2: the flooded seventh and ninth wards. They start with hot
Speaker 2: food served by food not bombs. There's other groups doing this, right.
Speaker 2: They hook up with a group called Soul Patrol, which
Speaker 2: is a mutual aid group started by a woman named
Speaker 2: Mama Dee who is fighting Homeland security that was trying
Speaker 2: to force everyone out of their homes because the whole time,
Speaker 2: it's like no one's really supposed to be in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: but you like kind of can't round everyone up and
Speaker 2: kick them out, but you can kind of.
Speaker 3: Try, right, or you just harassed people who are there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And so the Soul Patrol is fighting
Speaker 2: against Homeland Security all the while trying to you know,
Speaker 2: get generators going and stuff like that. Common ground gets
Speaker 2: them to generators and other supplies. Eventually, the National Guard
Speaker 2: shows up in Algiers, and they kind of didn't do much.
Speaker 2: They around in hum v's and they were like, Hey,
Speaker 2: we're gonna like and they would like announce from loud speakers,
Speaker 2: be like two days from now we're going to tarp houses.
Speaker 2: Everyone tell us if we need your house tarped, like
Speaker 2: they'd go put tarps over roofs in order to you know,
Speaker 2: keep the rain water from In the end, they spent
Speaker 2: after like announcing this for days, they spent a couple
Speaker 2: hours putting tarps on about five houses out of one
Speaker 2: hundred plus people who requested it.
Speaker 3: That feels about right.
Speaker 2: But so the organization itself, the National Guard, noth looking great, right,
Speaker 2: But individuals kind of shine even, you know, people do
Speaker 2: what needs doing a lot of times, so units that
Speaker 2: were like leaving, they were like, oh, we're cycling out
Speaker 2: or whatever. We'd be like, whoops, we're totally just going
Speaker 2: to leave these supplies here right with you. And so
Speaker 2: with the people are supposed to get them, you know.
Speaker 3: To the extent that there is much help on any
Speaker 3: of this stuff.
Speaker 1: It is like, ultimately it's still human beings, you know,
Speaker 1: running these organized you know, like National Guard units and whatever,
Speaker 1: and like we'll see, but hopefully some of them sometimes
Speaker 1: can do good.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Pastors for Peace soon starts donating, and soon
Speaker 2: there's also a common Ground clinic at a church as
Speaker 2: well as the one at the mosque. It's a church
Speaker 2: called Saint Mary's. Rather, what happened was that the National
Speaker 2: Guard was running one there for two hours a day,
Speaker 2: two days a week, and then basically was like y'all
Speaker 2: want to do this, you'll do it better and common
Speaker 2: Grounds yeah we do and we will, you know. And
Speaker 2: so at this point that means you have Marxist anarchists, Muslims,
Speaker 2: and Christians all working together with the help from sympathetic
Speaker 2: National guardsmen who are sneaking them supplies. At one point
Speaker 2: you have a truck from Islamic Relief showing up with
Speaker 2: supplies from Mormon and Catholic charities. Like fuck yeah, common Ground,
Speaker 2: you know, like literally the name fine common guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was all organized horizontally, and it was organized on
Speaker 2: anarchist principles. It wasn't an anarchist organization, but anarchist principles
Speaker 2: work really well for different groups of different ideologies working
Speaker 2: together because the principles say that everyone is equal, so
Speaker 2: one position can't dominate the group. You know, it can't
Speaker 2: become a Christian organization or a Muslim organization or even
Speaker 2: an anarchist organization. They had a big meeting every morning
Speaker 2: at seven am. They they just worked their asses off
Speaker 2: and burned themselves out. But we'll get to that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: every morning seven am they did check ins and help
Speaker 2: people figure out what needed doing on that day. And
Speaker 2: they use a spokes council model, so like someone would
Speaker 2: speak up for like one of the clinics, and someone
Speaker 2: would be like, oh, trash Duty says this, and you know,
Speaker 2: food nott bums, and then seventh Ward says they need
Speaker 2: this and stuff like that. Then they would work all
Speaker 2: fucking day and then they would meet again in the
Speaker 2: evening and then they would sleep for like three hours
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, God.
Speaker 2: Totally sustainable, but Jesus, sometimes sometimes people should try not
Speaker 2: to burn themselves out and find ways to be sustainable.
Speaker 2: But like you know what, sometimes there's a crisis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes the energy or the necessity and the
Speaker 1: energy just have to find themselves.
Speaker 2: Like yeah. At one point, the ISO, the International Socialist Organization,
Speaker 2: they tried their usual tactic called entryism, which is where
Speaker 2: they join a group that is not ideologically committed to
Speaker 2: their Marxist whatever and then take it over. Right, it's
Speaker 2: enough of a tactic that they have a name for it. Right,
Speaker 2: this didn't work. People were like, you know, you can
Speaker 2: stay and participate in the democratic process, or you can go.
Speaker 2: And they were like where we don't want to go.
Speaker 2: And then they're like, we have these guns, you gotta lead,
Speaker 2: and you know, fuck yeah. The cops we're not excited
Speaker 2: about common Ground. You know, the National Guard and all
Speaker 2: these places are so treating them like kind of neutral.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll talk about that in a second. But
Speaker 2: the cops they treat it like there's an insurgency in
Speaker 2: their neighborhood called common Ground. Cops are pulling guns on volunteers. Soon,
Speaker 2: no one is traveling alone or at night, because cops
Speaker 2: kept saying shit like well, we could drop you right now,
Speaker 2: or I'm gonna throw your body in the river, right
Speaker 2: and you'll be absolutely shocked. Andrew to know that this
Speaker 2: happened more often and more intensely to black volunteers than
Speaker 2: white ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's obviously, like the tricky bit of this whole
Speaker 1: thing is like it's just like sometimes the white folks
Speaker 1: like have a real purpose in those situations.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally, you know. And so white organizers still end
Speaker 2: up with guns in their faces often enough, but it's
Speaker 2: like not as often. Eventually the cops raid the place
Speaker 2: with hum v's and rifles and they show up, and
Speaker 2: the volunteers form a human chain and like tell them
Speaker 2: that they have no right to be there, and like
Speaker 2: the cops kind of pushed through, and there's all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and slowly the police end up retreating. It easily could
Speaker 2: have turned into a gunfight both sides. Like common Ground
Speaker 2: was armed and ready in case if the cops started
Speaker 2: shooting it. I'm glad they didn't. Yeah, But the military
Speaker 2: once they arrived, was more neutral and generally had kind
Speaker 2: of a sort of a truce with Common Ground and
Speaker 2: actually prevented the police from doing the worst of their
Speaker 2: racism because there was like dads around, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, And so once again it's also like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes like the fucking National Guard. I guess it's like
Speaker 1: the lesser of several evils.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, which is not a natural transition into advertising.
Speaker 2: But yet here we are, there's still a transition to ads.
Speaker 2: That's happening. It's happening, right, No, and we're back. Yes,
Speaker 2: we survived, We did, Sophie, did you survive? Mm hmm, excellent.
Speaker 3: Fair.
Speaker 2: So a second fucking hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Rita.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that asshole the like Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, completely forgot the double tap.
Speaker 2: It didn't hit New Orleans as directly as Katrina had,
Speaker 2: but it was bad and the place is a hit.
Speaker 2: It's bad for those places too, you know. Yeah, most
Speaker 2: of Common Ground evacuated. A skeleton crew stayed on and
Speaker 2: kept the clinics open and shit. One of the first
Speaker 2: rules of disaster relief, and this is okay, you asked
Speaker 2: how earlier, how like the people could sleep at night?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: One of the primary rules of disaster relief is that
Speaker 2: you can't make yourself another person who needs help. Yes,
Speaker 2: so you should not go into a disaster zone if
Speaker 2: you yourself are going to need rescuing, right, that makes
Speaker 2: everything worse, and so one it made sense for common
Speaker 2: Ground to evacuate. And two that's probably how those people,
Speaker 2: the gatekeepers in this case, sleep at night. Now, the
Speaker 2: ones who only let in white doctors not black doctors,
Speaker 2: should walk into the pick up a really large rock
Speaker 2: and walk into the Gulf of Mexico. Hold on, prove
Speaker 2: your tenacity, right.
Speaker 3: You can do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, believe this. Yeah yeah. Anyone who doesn't, As cooked
Speaker 2: Biden tells you not to pick up a big rock
Speaker 2: and walk into the ocean, you're wrong, yeah, yeah, buster.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The trans agenda is that I want all the conservatives
Speaker 2: to stay on the land and not pick up large
Speaker 2: rocks and walk into the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, keep the rocks. No, no rock walking. That's what
Speaker 1: we think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right. Yeah, you're not strong enough too.
Speaker 3: We don't want you to hurt yourself. Yeah yeah, we're.
Speaker 2: Just worried about you anyway. So they come back, and
Speaker 2: then common Ground stretches itself even further because they started
Speaker 2: working with the areas that were hit by RITA, and
Speaker 2: in particular, they start working with indigenous groups and churches
Speaker 2: in the areas outside the city that were affected. But
Speaker 2: since they weren't there to like save the day or
Speaker 2: take charge they were there to coordinate with people on
Speaker 2: the ground and figure out what help should be offered.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So soon the Four Directions Network split off from common
Speaker 2: Ground to make sure that the regional autonomy like stayed
Speaker 2: real regional autonomy. Yes autonomys yeah yeah that big Yeah.
Speaker 2: Common Ground keeps going in Algiers. When the Red Cross
Speaker 2: finally shows up in Algiers like a month after Katrina,
Speaker 2: because they were like, oh, whatever, I don't care about
Speaker 2: those starving people because they're currently underwater or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Red Cross shows up with three huge box
Speaker 2: trucks full of supplies and they're like, everyone's like, yeah, finally,
Speaker 2: like some get some fucking good food and shit. And
Speaker 2: they gather around, you know, and the volunteers open up
Speaker 2: one box truck. It is entirely full of plastic utensils.
Speaker 2: So they open up the next box truck, all napkins,
Speaker 2: third box truck handy wipes.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I guess that's at least they're not.
Speaker 1: I mean they are, but they're not actively doing anything
Speaker 1: I do. Like.
Speaker 2: It's funny. Is then there's all this whole I didn't
Speaker 2: end up concluding it, but there's this whole thing where
Speaker 2: the handy wipes. They're like, fine, we'll take the fucking
Speaker 2: handy wipes and will distribute them. But then the cops
Speaker 2: later are like, you stole those from the Red Cross.
Speaker 2: You stole the handy wipes and you're selling them. And
Speaker 2: they're like and they're like holding people at gunpoint accusing
Speaker 2: them of selling handy wipes from the Red Cross.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So and FEMA shows up. They basically just end up
Speaker 2: a referral service for common Ground because the people show
Speaker 2: up and are like, what do we do and they're like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I go to common Ground. They know
Speaker 2: what they're doing, right, And the regional head of FEMA,
Speaker 2: at some point she needs medical attention and she doesn't
Speaker 2: go to like the official government clinics. She goes to
Speaker 2: one of the common Ground clinics. She shows up and
Speaker 2: there's a sign on the door that says basically like
Speaker 2: no firearms allowed, no exceptions, and her guards have to
Speaker 2: stay outside, and like are really confused by the whole thing,
Speaker 2: but yeah, So common Ground just does amazing and hard
Speaker 2: work for months. As the floodwaters received In the weeks
Speaker 2: and months after the storm, New Orleans was transformed by
Speaker 2: gentrification right, and we don't. We're not going to go
Speaker 2: into all of the many ills that face New Orleans
Speaker 2: still presently because of this, all the displacement that happened.
Speaker 2: But Landlord check to b Rens speculation ruled the day
Speaker 2: landlard Search just illegally evicting people. Will talk more in
Speaker 2: a second, and then one of the things that we
Speaker 2: have to address is that Common Ground did some of
Speaker 2: that gentrification, right because Common Ground brought a fucking lot
Speaker 2: of white people to New Orleans, right, right, right. I
Speaker 2: want to quote Scott Crow again. Our missives were bringing
Speaker 2: masses of volunteers into New Orleans with words spreading like
Speaker 2: wildfire across white radical subcultures. From train hopping hoboes, street
Speaker 2: and circus performers, DIY punks to squatters, burners and forest hippies.
Speaker 2: Most joined the efforts to relieve and rebuild the city,
Speaker 2: offering music and other creative endeavors as well as labor.
Speaker 2: But disconcertingly, some within these subcultures came to live out
Speaker 2: a fantasy of living in a burned out, post apocalyptic city.
Speaker 2: They gave little credence to the tragedies of the people
Speaker 2: who lived there or to the ongoing relief work. Some
Speaker 2: of them were self described anarchists, but they acted like assholes,
Speaker 2: giving an anarchism and radical subculture a bad name. They
Speaker 2: were narcissists whose personal liberty meant more to them than
Speaker 2: being respectful or alleviating the suffering around them.
Speaker 3: Right, it's sort of a common byproduct.
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, totally, uh one day. Yeah, one
Speaker 2: of the hardest conversations that it would have. We would
Speaker 2: have a lot, right, Like I remember like squatting a
Speaker 2: building in the South Bronx, like being like, yeah, is
Speaker 2: this gentrification and like not not.
Speaker 3: I mean it's something I.
Speaker 2: Think landlords raising the rents or the you know, it's
Speaker 2: not uncomplicated. Yeah, Soon there was a broader network that
Speaker 2: common Ground became part of, which is cool, like a
Speaker 2: citywide network called the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, and they
Speaker 2: started working on these long term issues like the right
Speaker 2: to return. The government was keeping residents out of the city,
Speaker 2: which is like, of course helps all the real estate
Speaker 2: speculators and all the like, right fuckers, The most gentrifying
Speaker 2: thing was to red things out and fuck over whatever
Speaker 2: it evict everyone and shit, you know, right, and the
Speaker 2: immediate crisis is waning. At this point, the white militias
Speaker 2: were no longer out in force, a few stores are reopening,
Speaker 2: water has begun to recede, but the larger problems remain.
Speaker 2: Common Ground did a lot of behind the scenes work
Speaker 2: for PHRF rather than taking any kind of directing role.
Speaker 2: But overall PHRF and Common Ground kept on. They started
Speaker 2: work remediating houses and doing like mold clean up as
Speaker 2: well as soil remediation. So they would like come up
Speaker 2: with all of these kind of new and interesting ideas
Speaker 2: that were starting to come up in disaster relief around
Speaker 2: this time, of like using weird microbes to fight mold
Speaker 2: and houses, and like growing certain plants in order to
Speaker 2: pull the toxins from the floodwater out of the soil
Speaker 2: and all this stuff, you know, right, oh cool, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They also, alongside PHRF started fighting the legal evictions that
Speaker 2: are happening throughout the city, and sometimes they would unevict people,
Speaker 2: like people would get evicted illegally, and so then like
Speaker 2: PHRF and Common Ground would just like show up and
Speaker 2: put everyone's furniture back into their houses. And then like
Speaker 2: and the landlords don't live in the fucking city, so
Speaker 2: they don't like notice for a long ass time, so
Speaker 2: people get like months extra. You know, they did what
Speaker 2: needed to be done. Slowly, they became less necessary, or
Speaker 2: rather it was less about direct intervention and crisis that
Speaker 2: became lessness. That is what became less necessary, right common ground.
Speaker 2: It continued for years. It morphed into and split off
Speaker 2: into a lot of different groups who did an awful
Speaker 2: lot of good. By two thousand and eight it was
Speaker 2: a traditional nonprofit which with all of the upsides and
Speaker 2: downsides that that has to offer. And I want to
Speaker 2: quote Scott Crow one more time about what they accomplished.
Speaker 2: We had established the largest functioning organization based on anarchist
Speaker 2: ideals in the United States since the IWT. We were
Speaker 2: participating in direct democracy at every turn with local residents,
Speaker 2: community leaders, and volunteers. Everyone was in the streets. Community
Speaker 2: organized revolution was in the air, not a seizure of
Speaker 2: state power, but a revolution of a different kind, the
Speaker 2: revolution of exercising grassroots power to make changes we all
Speaker 2: wanted to see. Our revolution challenged the standard pessimism about
Speaker 2: people's limited agency in their own lives. He also said
Speaker 2: we had created a crack in history. We had revealed
Speaker 2: the lies, corruption and failures of the state, and without hesitating,
Speaker 2: we had done something about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's as someone who approaches the small amount of things
Speaker 1: that I do from almost like a fear defensive standpoint,
Speaker 1: I do appreciate being able to call on the show
Speaker 1: and just be like, right, yeah, you can also do
Speaker 1: this optimistically, yeah, totally, yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like, I mean, do they win, like no, Like,
Speaker 2: New Orleans is not run by the people of New
Speaker 2: Orleans in a direct democratic way, right, Mutual aid is
Speaker 2: not the primary economic method by which people meet their needs.
Speaker 2: They showed the failure of the state, and they showed
Speaker 2: that people can have agency and they did amazing fucking work.
Speaker 2: And then also just like literally directly saved lots of
Speaker 2: people's lives, you know, and like. And so Scott goes
Speaker 2: back to Austin. He starts a co op thrift historical
Speaker 2: treasure city thrift where a few years later, my boyfriend
Speaker 2: pressured me into buying some leather pants for five dollars.
Speaker 2: I did look good in them, Okay, hell yeah. Brandon
Speaker 2: Darby went on to go do some stuff while he
Speaker 2: was in New Orleans. He became friends with the cops
Speaker 2: who introduced him to the FBI, and by two thousand
Speaker 2: and six he was a paid informant. He was kicked
Speaker 2: out of common Ground around that time for his misogyny
Speaker 2: and overall flakiness he had, Like he left during the
Speaker 2: origin of it, but then he came back later at
Speaker 2: the end of the year, once everything was all set up,
Speaker 2: you know, and then he just used it to be
Speaker 2: a sexual predator and a piece of shit. So he
Speaker 2: was kicked out. He came back a year later and
Speaker 2: he became interim director. He basically was able to like
Speaker 2: leverage the social capital of having been there at the
Speaker 2: beginning and all that shit, you know, right, and then
Speaker 2: he fucked the thing up. He like fucked up common Ground.
Speaker 2: He probably on purpose that is not provable, but it
Speaker 2: sure meet was provable. He was working for the FBI
Speaker 2: at this point, and it sure meets what they do.
Speaker 2: He like, let funds get on accounted for. He started
Speaker 2: introducing a lot more authoritarians into the organization. He started
Speaker 2: firing everyone, like kicking everyone out who disagreed with him
Speaker 2: and shit, you know. And then eventually he lasts like
Speaker 2: three months before finally like the common Ground like shakes
Speaker 2: him off right, kicks him.
Speaker 3: Out for good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He then spent years trying to talk people into arson
Speaker 2: and violence, finally succeeding at setting two young anarchists to
Speaker 2: go to prison for Molotov cocktails in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: There's an essay worth reading about him. You actually you
Speaker 2: hinted at the title of this earlier. The essay is
Speaker 2: called why Misogynists make Great Informants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: After putting some people in prison, his cover was blown
Speaker 2: and he kind of just became a right wing grifter.
Speaker 2: He was like very like, we all miss Bush. This
Speaker 2: is you know, it's a while ago now, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of information available about him currently.
Speaker 2: I hope it's because he's dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a depressing I will say, it's not the culture,
Speaker 1: but it is the like, I don't know what it
Speaker 1: is about these like white dudes, mostly in this area
Speaker 1: where it's just I guess it's just like punk can
Speaker 1: really go either way totally, and I guess that is
Speaker 1: basically the heart of the vibe. It's just like absolutely
Speaker 1: your anti authority and what you view as authority is
Speaker 1: very very malleable. Totally.
Speaker 2: All my friends telling me what to do, like, don't
Speaker 2: work with the FBI. Yeah, bluck Man, Yeah, no, absolutely, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Paul Ryan tells himself he's a punk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh god yeah. Watching the Republican Party rebrand itself
Speaker 2: as anti anti establishment has just been it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pathetic, but it is probably more effective than
Speaker 1: we want to want to think about.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so of the other founders. Sharon worked with
Speaker 2: Common Ground until twenty ten. Malik does environmental work now
Speaker 2: around coastal land cleanup. Robert King moved to Austin and
Speaker 2: does organizing work around political prisoners. Common Ground Collective has
Speaker 2: direct successors like common Ground Relief, which works to restore
Speaker 2: the coastal wetlands as well as provide free food to
Speaker 2: about two hundred families in New Orleans. And Common Ground
Speaker 2: also led to the proliferation of mutual aid organizations around
Speaker 2: the mid twenty tens, culminating in the truly amazing number
Speaker 2: of groups as the government failed to addequately respond to
Speaker 2: the COVID crisis in twenty twenty. That is the legacy
Speaker 2: of Common Ground, not just these organizations with specific names
Speaker 2: that are in New Orleans that but the like if
Speaker 2: there's a problem we can come together. I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: it's a natural human instinct, but like the way in
Speaker 2: which people do it and talk about it is is there.
Speaker 1: Like a framework and you just got to like and
Speaker 1: that's so it's like, fuck, all right, well someone's got.
Speaker 3: To do it. Just do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally.
Speaker 1: It's also like, at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: there are obviously significant logistics and you know, cooperation and
Speaker 1: teamwork and all that, but it also the other way
Speaker 1: to think about it is it's just getting stuff that
Speaker 1: people have or the stuff that exists, to the people
Speaker 1: who need it. And like there's like complicated ways to
Speaker 1: do that and simple ways to do that, and like.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, yeah, I really like that. At the
Speaker 2: end of the day, that's what it is. You find
Speaker 2: the people who have the stuff and the people who
Speaker 2: need the stuff, and you're like, all right, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: move the stuff from one person or another.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, but it's not like
Speaker 1: a difficult concept totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so if there's a spiritual successor to common Ground,
Speaker 2: I would guess it's a group called Mutual Aid Disaster
Speaker 2: relief who work to coordinate is going to shock you
Speaker 2: disaster relief in in a mutual aid format. Yeah, they're
Speaker 2: pretty literal namers. And I just like that. The modern
Speaker 2: mutual aid movement in the US got its start because
Speaker 2: panthers and anarchists, Muslims and Christians, black and white people
Speaker 2: just got together to just fucking make it happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because all here's my catchy ending, because all we need
Speaker 2: to do is find our common ground.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you got there? Hell yeah?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah thanks now that Yeah, that's that's the story.
Speaker 2: You got anything that you want to plug here at
Speaker 2: the end, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Just yoss racist. That's my podcast.
Speaker 2: Who's your co host? And would we recognize her from
Speaker 2: Margaret's current favorite show, Lower Decks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my co host is Toddy Dows. She's the She
Speaker 1: plays Mariner on Lower X and a wonderful show. I
Speaker 1: guess watch Lower X two now that we're past strike times.
Speaker 1: Watch watch TV that you'd like, and I guess don't
Speaker 1: watch TV that you don't like. But whatever.
Speaker 2: Also whatever, Well I want to plug. I want to
Speaker 2: plug mutual a disaster relief. They're great people, yeah, and
Speaker 2: they do really amazing work and you can probably support
Speaker 2: them somehow. I didn't ask or look how people can
Speaker 2: support them, but if you look it up, usually pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like they've been around long enough that they
Speaker 2: probably know how to have on the website somewhere says
Speaker 2: how to help them, and I I want to plug
Speaker 2: the don't become misogynist and then an FBI agent.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you're one of those things, you can
Speaker 3: you can stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have two choices. Stop or take the Margaret
Speaker 2: rock challenge, in which you pick up a really heavy
Speaker 2: rock and you walk into the nearest large body of
Speaker 2: water and don't just see Yeah, just see how long
Speaker 2: you can make If you can't hold the rock underwater
Speaker 2: long enough, Yeah, you're weak.
Speaker 3: You're weak. That's right.
Speaker 2: Sophie guiding Plug at cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: On the social medes, look out for our newest show,
Speaker 1: Better Offline.
Speaker 3: Whoo ya all right?
Speaker 2: Speaking of offline, That's where I'm going to be now.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 2: People who did Cool Stop is a production of cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.