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Speaker 1: Here a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally also
Speaker 1: about what you can do about it. And today we're
Speaker 1: doing We're we're going, we're we're going completely full into it.
Speaker 1: What you can do about an episode, and specifically we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about unions, union organizing, the basics of
Speaker 1: what they are and also some of the history of it,
Speaker 1: and to to talk with us about this. I I
Speaker 1: have brought. I brought my good friend John Horonymus, who
Speaker 1: is a nurse steward with National Nurses United in Chicago. John,
Speaker 1: how are you? How are you doing? I'm doing good.
Speaker 1: Yesterday was my first full day back at work after
Speaker 1: being out on light duty from having covid UH for
Speaker 1: this last year. And so I got home yesterday and
Speaker 1: was pretty tired because I haven't walked that much in
Speaker 1: a day. No, it's fine, but I mean it was
Speaker 1: a good day. I got lots of lugs from my coworkers.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't forget anyone's name, which I was
Speaker 1: terrified of, um, and didn't funk anything up. Um. And
Speaker 1: then when I got when I got home, I hopped
Speaker 1: on after I got my kids from school, I hopped
Speaker 1: on a union organizing call with twenty nurses from a
Speaker 1: hospital in the South. We're very excited about so um
Speaker 1: I was. It was. It was a big day that
Speaker 1: that rules. Oh yeah, yeah, I guess that should also
Speaker 1: do a do a very very brief long COVID check
Speaker 1: in because this is a everthing that I think people
Speaker 1: are talking about that is also like a huge labor issue,
Speaker 1: which is that Yeah, like long COVID fucking sucks and
Speaker 1: like I like I know, like my like like one
Speaker 1: of my cousins had it, and you know, they they've
Speaker 1: been in bad shape for a long time, like they
Speaker 1: still can't taste properly, and like they I think you
Speaker 1: got from from what I remember, like pretty bad, like
Speaker 1: in terms of yeah, sorry if you don't have to,
Speaker 1: we don't want to, but oh I don't care. I
Speaker 1: mean I think people should like know that this is
Speaker 1: still going on, like the pandemic is still happening. Um,
Speaker 1: people are still getting sick and some are still dying,
Speaker 1: which really sucks. And the long COVID thing is real.
Speaker 1: Um they I didn't get sick in the sense of
Speaker 1: showing up having to be in like a hospital or
Speaker 1: I see you or anything like that. Mine book, I
Speaker 1: got sick, and um, the recovery, like the the year
Speaker 1: or the month or so after I got sick was
Speaker 1: when things actually got bad because something happened with my
Speaker 1: um my nerves and my neuro I had a neuromuscular
Speaker 1: variant of like the long COVID symptoms, and that led
Speaker 1: me to having all its kinds of issues with basically
Speaker 1: just being exhausted from basic things. Anything more than just
Speaker 1: getting up and walking around. I would have to like
Speaker 1: lay in bed afterwards. And it would add multiple episodes
Speaker 1: of the past year where I would cross some invisible
Speaker 1: line in terms of like endurance and then be stuck
Speaker 1: in bed for a week. And so it's been a
Speaker 1: long thing, but I've been slowly getting better, and people
Speaker 1: who fall into that neuromuscular thing do slowly get better.
Speaker 1: I think that's the upshot. People with heart problems, those
Speaker 1: tend to be permanent and aren't getting better, which sucks. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's just like I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people. It's a very weird, surreal thing
Speaker 1: to watch what is effectively like a like a a
Speaker 1: global public health catastrophe get politicized the way it has
Speaker 1: and treated the way it has been by everybody involved.
Speaker 1: So um, anyway, I just I'm doing better with that,
Speaker 1: and it's shaped me over the last year, and it's
Speaker 1: shaped union organizing, and um, I'm glad that I would
Speaker 1: say this to people who are thinking about unions. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that I had the union kind of backing me up, um,
Speaker 1: even when I had to pull them a little bit
Speaker 1: in the direct the right direction. It's much better to
Speaker 1: have that kind of collective power behind you when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with those kind of problems. So that's actually a
Speaker 1: good way into looking at just sort of in general
Speaker 1: what a union is, because I think there's there's there's
Speaker 1: two things here. There is what a union is legally
Speaker 1: and what a union actually is in terms of just
Speaker 1: the people in it and the sort of power behind it.
Speaker 1: And so I was wondering if you could, well, one,
Speaker 1: I mean, just on an incredibly basic level, explain what
Speaker 1: a union is like legally, like what is legally defined
Speaker 1: as doing, because I feel like that's also something that
Speaker 1: is not as well understood as it should be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So in the United States, there's a series
Speaker 1: of laws that kind of regulates um, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of collective UM bargaining UM and collective organization of
Speaker 1: workers at work UM and or being to understand is
Speaker 1: that UM. Those laws are mostly designed to constrain workers
Speaker 1: power to affect their their you know, working conditions UM.
Speaker 1: And so when you look at what a union legally
Speaker 1: is UM, unions are, for the most part UM, they're
Speaker 1: legal organizations that kind of like operate on a dues basis.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a union, you're paying dues out
Speaker 1: of your paycheck. UM. If you work at a unionized workplace,
Speaker 1: those dues will get subtracted out regardless of your membership
Speaker 1: or activity within the union. UM. One thing that people
Speaker 1: don't understand is that you can if you don't want
Speaker 1: your dues to go to anything besides supporting organizing your
Speaker 1: particular workplace, you can request unions are legally wired to
Speaker 1: offer you that as an option UM. And then those
Speaker 1: dudes get taken out of your paycheck and they get
Speaker 1: used to do things like rent a union hall, UM,
Speaker 1: pay staffers to help you with your organizing. UM. They
Speaker 1: get taken to do lobbying, various types of political activity.
Speaker 1: And so for a lot of people, unions will feel
Speaker 1: like a professional association that lobbies on their behalf rather
Speaker 1: than a collective expression of the will of workers in
Speaker 1: a particular workplace. But UM or it'll feel like patronage
Speaker 1: machine for you know, Democratic Party, that sort of stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: But that being said, UM unions all have by laws,
Speaker 1: they all have mechanisms by which there you know, theoretically
Speaker 1: democratically accountable to the membership UM. And there are oftentimes
Speaker 1: UM campaigns by workers to change how unions operate and UM.
Speaker 1: And then also you know, when you're setting up a union,
Speaker 1: if you're in a new if you're in a place
Speaker 1: that doesn't have a union, and you're looking to get
Speaker 1: a union because you're fed up with not having any
Speaker 1: kind of power over your workplace, or you feel like
Speaker 1: people are getting discriminated against or bullied, UM, you feel
Speaker 1: like you haven't gotten a raise, UM, those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: You can pick the union that you decide if you
Speaker 1: want to get up a collective bargaining agreement, which is
Speaker 1: a legal contract kind of like dictating how your workplace
Speaker 1: operates in a uniform way. You can pick the union
Speaker 1: that you want to organize with, and their unions that
Speaker 1: are better to organize with, that are more democratic and
Speaker 1: more collectively accountable. There are unions that are more organized
Speaker 1: or more focused on actually building the union power and
Speaker 1: organizing new workplaces. And then there are unions that are
Speaker 1: kind of like there you know, and I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: that kind of blur in the US, there's like a
Speaker 1: blurry line between rank and file unions and business unions
Speaker 1: because even the rank and file unions are kind of
Speaker 1: constrained by the same pressures that business unions operate under.
Speaker 1: And I'll explain the difference. I'll sell any difference in
Speaker 1: a second, but I just want to say that, like
Speaker 1: when you're when you're getting a new union, it's really
Speaker 1: important for you to critically look at what your options
Speaker 1: are and you're setting who you're organizing with, because unions
Speaker 1: have different cultures and different amounts of um, different kinds
Speaker 1: of politics, and you should be aware of that before
Speaker 1: you and your coworkers decide to commit to working with
Speaker 1: one union while you're getting an or a union organized. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I can explain that next part if you
Speaker 1: want me to. All right, So, yeah, So, And you know,
Speaker 1: if you it deep into union history and deep into
Speaker 1: organizing and figuring out like what unions are and what
Speaker 1: they do and how they've worked kind of in the past,
Speaker 1: you'll find that there's different types of unions. So American
Speaker 1: unions started as like kind of like craft guilds, where
Speaker 1: basically you would have a factory that might have like
Speaker 1: twenty different unions of each individual group of people UM
Speaker 1: in each individual skill set would be underneath the union,
Speaker 1: and it was used as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: control UM who was able to do the work and
Speaker 1: who was getting hired in to do the work. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times that would end up in the
Speaker 1: United States UM being segregated UM and there would be
Speaker 1: these called union scabbing where you would go in and
Speaker 1: do work against people who are striking because your union
Speaker 1: was fine and you were cool with your boss and
Speaker 1: these other people, whatever their problem is, You're just going
Speaker 1: to keep doing. The boss will offer you more money
Speaker 1: and you'll do the work right. So, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that has kind of carried into we called trade
Speaker 1: unions in the US a specific and trade unionism is
Speaker 1: particularly UM prominent in UH in construction. So you'll have carpenters,
Speaker 1: and you'll have you know, masons, and you'll have you know,
Speaker 1: pipe fitters and iron workers and all these different guys
Speaker 1: and they all kind of come together and work as
Speaker 1: a crew for like a construction company, and oftentimes their
Speaker 1: union operates more like a contractor than like a collective
Speaker 1: like expression of the power of those workers. So um,
Speaker 1: then there are more there are unions that are would
Speaker 1: be considered like industrial unions, so industrial unions. Industrial unionism
Speaker 1: was invented by a union a hundred years ago called
Speaker 1: the Industrial Workers of the World, and they were like,
Speaker 1: what if we got took all of the workers in
Speaker 1: an industry and got them into one big union, right,
Speaker 1: and then what if all those workers in those different
Speaker 1: industries were talking to each other and building their their
Speaker 1: power And the goal would be that you had become
Speaker 1: so powerful that you could basically take over industries as
Speaker 1: workers and run them on a democratic basis, so that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have you kind of liquidate capital and want
Speaker 1: I want to say this briefly also like yeah, so
Speaker 1: the bosses did not like this. I mean the MW,
Speaker 1: Like the MW was so feared that like like there's
Speaker 1: only the Everett massacre where it's like it got to
Speaker 1: a point in the early neteen hundreds where just a
Speaker 1: group of IWW people showing up to a place was
Speaker 1: enough to get like the the the the entire like
Speaker 1: the entire city police force and like rounding up literally
Speaker 1: every right winger they could do and deputizing them and
Speaker 1: then just opening fire like into the crowd because like
Speaker 1: the IWW had showed up on a boat like this
Speaker 1: was these people were terried, like people were terrified of them.
Speaker 1: And I think that the other thing I think is
Speaker 1: really interesting about the early WWS history is that is
Speaker 1: the so you know, part of the response to them
Speaker 1: is like they are just massive, and this is what
Speaker 1: the first red scare was. Basically it was an anti
Speaker 1: IWW thing. And also you know, they shot people, they
Speaker 1: arrested people, they like they deported people, and but they
Speaker 1: also you know a lot of the things that I
Speaker 1: think we we have this tendency to look at as
Speaker 1: like a socialist reform where for example, like putting workers
Speaker 1: on corporate boards, right, or like like in internal democratic
Speaker 1: self management, but that's like, you know, that's still still
Speaker 1: sort of boss controlled, right. It's like, well, okay, you
Speaker 1: have like a council of people who can make recommendations
Speaker 1: or like even even down to you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to have our own internal like corporate unions like set
Speaker 1: up by the company, but you know that the corporate
Speaker 1: union gives you a workers council and the council can
Speaker 1: sort of control production. But you know, it's it's still
Speaker 1: it's still run by the bosses. Like all of these
Speaker 1: things were stuff that like the Rockefellers set up or
Speaker 1: like even even the early New Levels would set stuff
Speaker 1: up because they were they were so scared of people,
Speaker 1: Like they were so scared if people just taking over
Speaker 1: stuff democratically, just running it just literally through the union
Speaker 1: that they were like, we will we will literally give
Speaker 1: you democracy in the workplace. We will give you like
Speaker 1: we will give you like workers on corporate boards literally
Speaker 1: just so long as you don't like take everything over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's hard for people to imagine
Speaker 1: how intense like the struggle for getting any kind of
Speaker 1: rights in the workplace. I've been in the United States
Speaker 1: in particular. I think a lot of people think that,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, maybe not so much anymore. But when
Speaker 1: I was younger, you know, twenty years ago, people would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you know, we're in America. We've got
Speaker 1: you know, like we've got all these things, like we've
Speaker 1: got you know, an eight hour work day, and we've
Speaker 1: got like a weekend and all. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is it literally only people were murdered to win those things, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you like the reason why we have an eight
Speaker 1: hour work day is because there was in Chicago a
Speaker 1: famous uh, a famous strike that um ended up with
Speaker 1: a massacre of UM. It was like a police riot,
Speaker 1: and then they rounded up a bunch of union organizers,
Speaker 1: socialists and anarchists who were like involved in the labor
Speaker 1: movement at that time, and then the state of Illinois
Speaker 1: hung them. UM. And so the wife of one of them,
Speaker 1: of one of those people who was murdered at the
Speaker 1: Haymarket or they called them the Haymarket murders, h Albert
Speaker 1: Parsons was one of them. Her or his wife, Lucy Parsons,
Speaker 1: who was had a very veritable kind of like not
Speaker 1: quite sure what her background was, but we do know
Speaker 1: that she was probably be a former slave. H Albert
Speaker 1: Parsons was a former Confederate. They got married in the South,
Speaker 1: became Southern Republicans trying to like participate in radical reconstruction,
Speaker 1: and then they basically had to flee because they were
Speaker 1: um with their lives to the north and UH. But
Speaker 1: after that whole trial and all that shook out, Lucy
Speaker 1: Parsons became a labor agitator across the United States, fighting
Speaker 1: for the eight Hour Day and U and they memorialized
Speaker 1: the Haymarket Martyrs and something that I think some of
Speaker 1: your listeners will know about. Maybe they won't, but you know,
Speaker 1: made a made a A lot of people is like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's Russian or some foreign sort of thing. Now, that
Speaker 1: is an American labor tradition that like started here, and
Speaker 1: it was because of a specific like the the labor
Speaker 1: movement in the movement for the eight hour day in
Speaker 1: the United States. So um, and that's kind of like
Speaker 1: once you go from the i w W and industrial
Speaker 1: unions as an idea, it got crushed in the twenties
Speaker 1: because it was so terrifying. There's a really good, uh,
Speaker 1: a really good essay on all that called the stop
Speaker 1: Watch and the Wooden Shoe by a guy named Mike Davis,
Speaker 1: who kind of explains how it is that IWW as
Speaker 1: the first union too not only um try and build
Speaker 1: workers organization, but to challenge workplace organization and to make
Speaker 1: those push back on how production was happening and fight
Speaker 1: something called the speed up where I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have worked have experienced this time where
Speaker 1: a boss will come in and say we're gonna do
Speaker 1: things differently. And they'll either get rid of a worker
Speaker 1: and put all the extra work onto people who remain,
Speaker 1: or they'll change things so you're doing more with the
Speaker 1: same amount of time. UM they got you know, they
Speaker 1: provoked a backlash. UM. There were like spectacular like general strikes.
Speaker 1: The first general strike in America. UH in Seattle, there
Speaker 1: were i w W members who are key members of
Speaker 1: the Seattle Labor Council, which took craft unions and got
Speaker 1: their radicals together and coordinated a general strike, which is
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of tweets about general strikes, but
Speaker 1: general strikes require a lot of organization and coordination. We
Speaker 1: can talk about that later if we want to, but
Speaker 1: the key thing is the IWW was always pushing for
Speaker 1: the organization necessary to pull off a general strike, and
Speaker 1: they did it. And so amongst those different things and
Speaker 1: their mind wars in Colorado, mine wars in Virginia, West Virginia, UM,
Speaker 1: they were the first union that was explicitly anti racist. UM.
Speaker 1: They they weren't perfect, but they were, but they organized
Speaker 1: multi racial unions in UM Philadelphia, the docks, and various
Speaker 1: other places. They were one of the few unions that
Speaker 1: really took the first steps into organizing in the South
Speaker 1: in the way that um, a lot of unions have
Speaker 1: kind of failed too since and because they were so
Speaker 1: effective and so frightening, they got crushed. Yeah, I mean. Also,
Speaker 1: whatever thing I want I want to say about them
Speaker 1: is that like, like the WW fought in the Mexican
Speaker 1: Revolution because you know a lot of the WW members
Speaker 1: in California particular were like a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of indigenous people, a lot of sort of boted Mexican immigrants.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they had these huge eies and like they
Speaker 1: like they I think, I think to this day, this
Speaker 1: is still true outside of Puerto Rico, Like they are
Speaker 1: the only leftist movement that has ever like taking control
Speaker 1: of an American city, like they took to Lexico and
Speaker 1: Mexicality and like a bunch of the sort of the
Speaker 1: border area. Yeah. That that's that, that's you know, part
Speaker 1: of why it just escalates to everyone starts shooting them
Speaker 1: because well, and and they were truly an international union
Speaker 1: because they were they focused on uh, longshoremen and organizing
Speaker 1: and docks that sort of thing. There were members of
Speaker 1: the i w W organizing basically everywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: and they were considered part of like what was like
Speaker 1: a global movement, and we call them syndicalists, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like a an Italian term or French term um,
Speaker 1: which is this the you know, like like the Latin
Speaker 1: version of the Union of syndicate and UM. There were
Speaker 1: similar unions across the world up through the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century until right about the time when the Russians, the
Speaker 1: Russian Revolution happened, and then there were subsequent crackdowns. And
Speaker 1: because these people, who I mean, the IWW was a
Speaker 1: mix of native native born Americans and immigrants, and they
Speaker 1: were painted as this foreign sort of force. They were
Speaker 1: un American. That was like the whole nexus of un
Speaker 1: Americanism as like an idea, and the US state was
Speaker 1: able to mobilize after World War One to really put
Speaker 1: that down. And so so there's a lot of history
Speaker 1: there and then, but the idea of the industrial Union
Speaker 1: didn't go away, right The union, the IWW was effectively
Speaker 1: dismembered and scattered. But a lot of people who had
Speaker 1: experienced as IWW members, who had been in those strikes
Speaker 1: UM didn't like just disappear. They didn't all get deported
Speaker 1: or sent away. UM. A lot of them kind of
Speaker 1: tuck their heads down and went back to work, you know.
Speaker 1: And in the ninet thirties we saw the rise of
Speaker 1: another industrial the next step towards industrial unionism. So it's
Speaker 1: called the c i OH, which is the Congress of
Speaker 1: Industrial Organization. Now there were multiple at that point. There
Speaker 1: was the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party of America,
Speaker 1: and UM former members of the i w W and
Speaker 1: various like anarchists who were participants in kind of the
Speaker 1: organization of the c i O. And the thing about
Speaker 1: c i O was was that when they came together, UM,
Speaker 1: it was in the Great Depression had really kind of
Speaker 1: kicked off, and they were able to organize like really
Speaker 1: explosively across all these new industries. So they like the
Speaker 1: u a W. United Auto Workers was like part of
Speaker 1: the c i O, and they would they pioneered forms
Speaker 1: of strikes called sit down strike, which was basically a
Speaker 1: factory seizure. All the workers would just say, we're not
Speaker 1: going to walk out, We're going to lock ourselves in
Speaker 1: and we're going to sit down and it's our factory now,
Speaker 1: and now you're going to have to negotiate with And
Speaker 1: it became this thing where it was like millions of
Speaker 1: people were like the I w W at any one
Speaker 1: time was like hundreds of thousands of people. And the
Speaker 1: c I O became a thing where it was millions
Speaker 1: of people and UM. And at least at the beginning
Speaker 1: when they had there, when they had we're at the
Speaker 1: peak of their like power and militancy. UM. They were
Speaker 1: able to mobilize workers to take over factories, take over
Speaker 1: factories from some of the most powerful corporations on the
Speaker 1: earth on Earth. And you know, at the same time, UM,
Speaker 1: while they were doing this, the police and UH company
Speaker 1: UM company security and vigilantes which had never gone away
Speaker 1: from like the IW we're doing the same sorts of things.
Speaker 1: So they would regularly beat strikers, would regularly there would
Speaker 1: be you know, regular labor massacres, UM disappearances of various
Speaker 1: UM of labor organizers or labor leaders or even just
Speaker 1: random workers that they thought were like, oh, you're a unionist, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, get in the back of this uh, get
Speaker 1: in the back of this truck. And then they were
Speaker 1: never seen again. UM. And then laws started to be enacted,
Speaker 1: I believe out of fear that if this, if this
Speaker 1: movement didn't get somehow put under brought in under control,
Speaker 1: that there would be a revolution and so. Uh so
Speaker 1: that's when we started to see the enactment of laws
Speaker 1: like the National Labor Relations Act, which made having a
Speaker 1: union like that was the first time when being any
Speaker 1: union is considered legal at the federal level. And that uh,
Speaker 1: the FDR and the New Deal Democrats basically attempted to
Speaker 1: broker something called labor peace where they would say, we're
Speaker 1: no longer going to mobilize the state against workers in
Speaker 1: the way that we have previously. Now local police would
Speaker 1: still side with bosses that sort of thing. But uh,
Speaker 1: and those sorts of massacres and that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: didn't really go away until like the forties. Um. But um,
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of because what you do see
Speaker 1: is unions get channeled into Once you have like a
Speaker 1: million people in the union, you have just enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of resources, all these dues coming in. You have the
Speaker 1: beginning of the labor bureaucracy. Whereas before it would be
Speaker 1: you know, there would be hired you know, paid labor organizers,
Speaker 1: but they were always shifting around, and they were they
Speaker 1: were brought up as communists or socialists, and they had
Speaker 1: ideological commitments to building the power of the union and
Speaker 1: the power workers that you know, if you are just
Speaker 1: a you know, and someone with some ambition and decided
Speaker 1: you want to become like anyone at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: who wants to become a paid union staffer. If you're
Speaker 1: like you know, if you care to and a lot
Speaker 1: of people, um, then being a union staffer was a
Speaker 1: different thing than it is now. It was I think
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the name of the president. I
Speaker 1: think it's John Lewis. John Lewis, who was a Republican
Speaker 1: back in the day said, you know, I think famously
Speaker 1: said at one point it's like if you want to
Speaker 1: build a union, or if you want to build a house,
Speaker 1: you call a carpenter, if you want to build a union,
Speaker 1: you call communists, and so uh and so they would
Speaker 1: literally would go to like the the you know, the
Speaker 1: Communist Party and say we need organizers. And the Communist
Speaker 1: Party did a lot of work to training people to
Speaker 1: be organizers. And they were militant, they were ready to
Speaker 1: throw down because to them, they were looking at this
Speaker 1: as part of a class struggle against you know, bosses,
Speaker 1: and you know, a way of overthrown capital UM. That
Speaker 1: kind of went through until World War two. And uh,
Speaker 1: when World War two hit, that's when the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: which in many ways controlled what was happening with communists
Speaker 1: with cp us A, basically said we need a labor
Speaker 1: piece because we need to support the war effort. And
Speaker 1: so that's when union started signing contracts with no strike clauses,
Speaker 1: and they started um agreeing that they would no longer
Speaker 1: strike UM and and they started agreeing to things like
Speaker 1: speed ups. There used to be a time when uh,
Speaker 1: these mass industrial unions, the stewards would walk around with
Speaker 1: a whistle on their neck. They have a whistle on
Speaker 1: a lanyard and any time that workers decided that this
Speaker 1: is like an example of how powerful these unions were.
Speaker 1: Not just like as like an organization, but every day
Speaker 1: at your workplace, if you thought that something was not right,
Speaker 1: or you were not being treated fairly, or somehow the
Speaker 1: contract was in breach, you would go to your steward
Speaker 1: and your steward would pull out this whistle and it
Speaker 1: would blow the whistle. It's called a whistle stop strike
Speaker 1: and everyone would set down their tools until management would
Speaker 1: come out and they would either agree to pay more
Speaker 1: or stop what was happening and fix it, and so um,
Speaker 1: there was a time when strikes would be you would
Speaker 1: have intermittent work stoppages. So you wouldn't go out like indefinitely.
Speaker 1: You would go out on strike like three months though
Speaker 1: that happened. You wouldn't just and it wouldn't just be
Speaker 1: your factory. It would be Hey, we're getting on the
Speaker 1: phone and we're calling our friends down the street at
Speaker 1: the next at your supplier. It's called a secondary strike.
Speaker 1: So if you're working at like a steel mill, and
Speaker 1: your steel mills dependent on coke from the next factory over,
Speaker 1: you're calling up your friends in the same union down
Speaker 1: the way, say stop sending coke, stop sending materials. Where
Speaker 1: these things to us? We're on strike, you guys, you
Speaker 1: all set your tools down, you go on strike. And
Speaker 1: it would and these strikes would like massively expand, so
Speaker 1: you would see things instead of seeing you know, we
Speaker 1: just went through Striketober, right, Yeah, and we just and
Speaker 1: so we saw like what we call a strike wave.
Speaker 1: But in and in some ways it was a strike wave.
Speaker 1: But I think that we still don't. I think it's
Speaker 1: so far away from living memory of what a real
Speaker 1: strike wave is where people would go on strike in
Speaker 1: one factory and then the next factory, in the next factory,
Speaker 1: the next very It literally would be a way of
Speaker 1: people um going on strike. And this was all the
Speaker 1: results of all the organization that people had, in the
Speaker 1: militant attitude that people had about like how they were
Speaker 1: going to be treated at work. It's worth mentioning that
Speaker 1: one of the so the National Labor Relations Act, which
Speaker 1: because past nineteen turty five, which is like the you know,
Speaker 1: this is the beginning of labor piece, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's okay, we'll give you the right to re union,
Speaker 1: but you cannot do secondary strikes like that, Like this
Speaker 1: is this is explicitly banned in this if I'm remembering
Speaker 1: this right, is that there's a specific thing that says
Speaker 1: you can't do secondary strikes anymore. And you know, and
Speaker 1: this was this was you know, the basis of this
Speaker 1: piece was that like, yeah, as you sort of said before,
Speaker 1: it was like, well, okay, so the state will put
Speaker 1: their guns down, but the workers also essentially had to
Speaker 1: put their guns down. And yeah, and this this starts
Speaker 1: this whole process of you know, once once you lose
Speaker 1: like that kind of consciousness. And once you lose just
Speaker 1: the practical experience of doing this stuff, it kind of
Speaker 1: it fades and and over time, you know, yeah, the
Speaker 1: atrophies and and the unions get weaker and weaker because
Speaker 1: you know, like with without like you know what, once
Speaker 1: you once you've set aside, right and you've decided that
Speaker 1: you're gonna essentially you know, okay, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: follow the laws, we're gonna sit down, we're gonna do this,
Speaker 1: We're gonna like negotiate in good faith, we're going to
Speaker 1: have all of this sort of um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're gonna go through the national relations board. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: at that point, people like people, people's willingness to pick
Speaker 1: the weapons back up that they put down just sort
Speaker 1: of continues to diminish. Well, I think what happens is
Speaker 1: I mean, And so there was like a ten year period.
Speaker 1: So first there was like the first five you know,
Speaker 1: five ten years of c I oh was when we
Speaker 1: see like this really like intense militancy within these unions.
Speaker 1: And halfway through like you know, the passage of that
Speaker 1: first long in the nineties, Um, that's when we started
Speaker 1: to see the erosion, and we constantly see I think
Speaker 1: I think that people don't understand that our bosses are
Speaker 1: always trying to assert their control over work, and we'll
Speaker 1: see that like UM, bosses will do all kinds of
Speaker 1: contortions as long as they get to stay in charge
Speaker 1: and that they're unquestioned. And I don't think we understand
Speaker 1: quite how long the long game is for UM, for management,
Speaker 1: for our bosses, and for capital. And so you know,
Speaker 1: it starts with the National Labor Relations Act and then
Speaker 1: it goes through uh, um, it goes through World War
Speaker 1: two and our World War two. That's when the c
Speaker 1: i O goes from you know, you know, millions of
Speaker 1: people to like tens of millions and it becomes like
Speaker 1: a thing where like that's when you know, like Americans
Speaker 1: are in a union, right um, because I mean to
Speaker 1: the extent that that, to the extent that um, there
Speaker 1: were those compromises happened. It didn't just compromise. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just like a failure of like, oh, like we're just
Speaker 1: going to start capitulating. It's like there were interests inside
Speaker 1: the union. They're looking at like, well, this is a
Speaker 1: lot of resources and power that we have now but
Speaker 1: wait until like it's you know of Americans paying union dudes,
Speaker 1: and there were people inside the Democratic Party who were
Speaker 1: willing to trade UM that labor piece for that. You
Speaker 1: would start to see, you know, that's when politicians would
Speaker 1: show up to UM two union halls to talk and
Speaker 1: try and get you know, and that's when you know,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, it would be it wouldn't be unusual
Speaker 1: to hear a Democratic politician UM say things about like
Speaker 1: labor that you would like that no politician would say today.
Speaker 1: And now that doesn't mean that they were like on
Speaker 1: the side of the workers, but you know, you would
Speaker 1: have literally, um, President Eisenhower telling the president of U. S.
Speaker 1: Steel to get fucked over like a general, like you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to shut down like you know, this is
Speaker 1: like the the steel industry is the lifeblood of backbone
Speaker 1: of the American economy, um, you know, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to shut this down, trying to kill the golden goose,
Speaker 1: like get back to work, let the pay these people
Speaker 1: what they're asking UM. But you know, so you would
Speaker 1: see the people who kind of floated to the top
Speaker 1: of those UH unions trading there, trading away their workers
Speaker 1: power and their workers well being for more and more months.
Speaker 1: First off, there would be more money, so you would
Speaker 1: you like, they would start getting raises that were really substantial,
Speaker 1: and it would boost up a union steel worker or
Speaker 1: union auto worker into what we consider like the comfortable
Speaker 1: middle class where people could like buy a like a
Speaker 1: fishing cabin or something up on a lake, send their
Speaker 1: kids to college, all these sorts of things that we're
Speaker 1: just kind of like unobtainable sorts of things if you
Speaker 1: were the same in the same industry twenty years earlier
Speaker 1: and um and that felt like wins you know, two people.
Speaker 1: And also in the nineteen forties, after World War Two,
Speaker 1: they passed the taff Hartley Act, which basically meant that
Speaker 1: they forced unions. Well they didn't, okay, they wrote into
Speaker 1: law that it was illegal to be a communist or
Speaker 1: an anarchist in uh in a union. And so they're
Speaker 1: literally still unions that still have language in their in
Speaker 1: their membership parts or they're like I declare, I'm I've
Speaker 1: never been a member of the Communist Party. I'm not
Speaker 1: an you know, an anarchist. Uh. I mean like I've
Speaker 1: I have friends who have pulled that out. Now it
Speaker 1: doesn't have any effect now. But that was they basically
Speaker 1: took all the people, you know, the people that uh
Speaker 1: that were you know, the people that you would have
Speaker 1: called to build the union twenty years later or before
Speaker 1: we're getting thrown out of unions. And that didn't happen
Speaker 1: in every like there were attempts to do that in
Speaker 1: all kinds of countries. Uh, they try to do it
Speaker 1: in the UK, and the unions in the UK told
Speaker 1: basically told the government to go fund themselves. And they
Speaker 1: you know, it's like but because the leadership of the
Speaker 1: of the c I O industrial unions began to see
Speaker 1: themselves more in alignment with are ruling class and are
Speaker 1: you know, like the Democratic Party, they decided that they
Speaker 1: were big enough that they didn't have to have militants
Speaker 1: involved anymore. And that's when you know, uh, people were
Speaker 1: literally would get fired out of did either either militants
Speaker 1: in staff would get fired or uh, they would get
Speaker 1: fired out of factories if you're like a rank and
Speaker 1: file worker. So um, and that's when we begin to
Speaker 1: see the rise of what we call business unionism. And
Speaker 1: that's where he would have union bureaucrats would and um
Speaker 1: would you know, would basically start making concessionary contracts and
Speaker 1: this started you know back in you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, oh, you know, back in the fifties,
Speaker 1: unions are really powerful and they were powerful to get
Speaker 1: you know, like raises, but those races came at the
Speaker 1: expense of control over the work process. It came at
Speaker 1: the expense of the speed up UM and as unions
Speaker 1: like because the rank and file workers, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, rank and file workers, and they see their
Speaker 1: things there, these tools getting put down, and they were
Speaker 1: more reluctant to pick them up, first off, is because
Speaker 1: of the amount of money that they're getting paid. And
Speaker 1: but they did push back. They were like this is
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's a really great book called The
Speaker 1: Next Shift UM by Gabriel Winant. It's all about the
Speaker 1: shift from steel, the steel industry as like the center
Speaker 1: of the U. S economy to healthcare UM and how
Speaker 1: unions basically started to erode away there like throw it
Speaker 1: like hand over their power in exchange for money. And
Speaker 1: then when they are told like there was UM and
Speaker 1: attempts to get socialized medicine and the under the Truman administration,
Speaker 1: and when they were basically ah, they they hit a
Speaker 1: speed bump in there and it got shot down. They
Speaker 1: decided that instead of trying to win those uh, those
Speaker 1: broad social reforms for everybody, they're like, well, we can
Speaker 1: use our our power to strike to get basically construct
Speaker 1: a private welfare state for our workers. And so that's
Speaker 1: when you begin to see UM things like uh. The
Speaker 1: they call them like the gold plated insurance plans for
Speaker 1: certain types of unionized workers, and those would kind of
Speaker 1: UM and those are kind of used as like a
Speaker 1: private welfare state for all those workers. And it was
Speaker 1: built with the assumption you're going to have low cost
Speaker 1: workers basically doing all this care work UM, and oftentimes
Speaker 1: it would be women of color and UM. And through
Speaker 1: that you start to see this real sharp pick client
Speaker 1: from the sixties in like uh in union um, militancy UM.
Speaker 1: And that's when factory, when capital starts moving factories out
Speaker 1: of city centers where it's very easy to organize a factory,
Speaker 1: when everyone lives within walking distance the factory, and when
Speaker 1: they're done with their shift at the factory, they're all
Speaker 1: at the bar outside the outside the factory gates, and
Speaker 1: you can just like if you want to have a
Speaker 1: union meeting, if you want organized, even a wildcat strike,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is show up at the
Speaker 1: right bar, and that's where everyone is after they're done
Speaker 1: with their shift. Um, they started moving and dispersing the
Speaker 1: industrial capacity of the United of you know, the the
Speaker 1: US urban core out into suburbs. So that's now where
Speaker 1: you'll drive through rural Indiana and you'll pass like five
Speaker 1: factories and they're surrounded by nothing but corn fields. It's
Speaker 1: because it's a lot harder to organize auto workers when
Speaker 1: they all live thirty minute drive from each other and
Speaker 1: none of them hang out at the same bar anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you start to see UM. And all through
Speaker 1: that time, the commitments to anti racism are eroded, so
Speaker 1: you'll see UM jobs get start to get segregated out
Speaker 1: inside it's like steel mills and things like that. But
Speaker 1: then you know there's also the rise of rank and
Speaker 1: file movements to push back. So UM. All the while
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, there's always workers who remember what
Speaker 1: these things were like and why, and the power that
Speaker 1: they used to have, and they would do the best
Speaker 1: that they could get organized. So UM. There's a really
Speaker 1: good UM documentary. You can find a YouTube called Finally
Speaker 1: got the news. It's about the Dodge Revolutionary Union movement
Speaker 1: in Detroit, which was a rank and file reform movement
Speaker 1: organized by UM by black auto workers. They got like
Speaker 1: a fair amount of support from white auto workers because
Speaker 1: they're basically there's you know, interviews with U a W.
Speaker 1: Bureaucrats and they're just like, you know, we're getting people
Speaker 1: these raises. Why are they upset that they're like getting
Speaker 1: named in the factory right, or why are they getting
Speaker 1: upset that you know, you know, black workers are constantly
Speaker 1: getting put into the shittiest jobs or the first to
Speaker 1: get laid off, that sort of thing. And that's a
Speaker 1: it's a really I suggest anyone has time. And that
Speaker 1: came out of like the I think that was immediately
Speaker 1: after the was getting organized after the assassination Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King and all the riots that were happening in the
Speaker 1: h in the sixties had like that late sixties period
Speaker 1: UM in the seventies, there was a teamster, the teamster
Speaker 1: rank and file rebellion. My grandpa was a team trucker,
Speaker 1: was a teamster. She was like a punch card operator.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean like teams at
Speaker 1: these unions got so big and they have kind that's
Speaker 1: how you end up with like there's UAW teaching assistance
Speaker 1: now right, Um, Like how do you end up with
Speaker 1: these huge like uh unions? And during teams are rebellion
Speaker 1: And my grandpa would tell these stories like we're going on,
Speaker 1: there would be a wildcat strike and they call it
Speaker 1: out over the CB radios. And the way they would
Speaker 1: enforce the picket line wasn't just like oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: like standing in the road or something. They would hang
Speaker 1: coke bottles full of rocks over the overpasses, just high
Speaker 1: enough up to like that cars have pass underneath them,
Speaker 1: but if you hit one and you were in a truck,
Speaker 1: it's funk up your day. Um. And that was like
Speaker 1: a really um like a really kind of like powerful
Speaker 1: pushback by breaking file workers against what they saw was
Speaker 1: the erosion of their power. Because I think that I
Speaker 1: think there's this sometimes amongst people who would cosider themselves
Speaker 1: to be left or whatever, there's like this kind of
Speaker 1: doom and gloom like, oh, it's only like we're only losing, right.
Speaker 1: But and there's been a lot of as the seventies happened,
Speaker 1: and capital is kind of reconfiguring itself in the middle
Speaker 1: of all the economic upheaval inflation. Um, basically, they got
Speaker 1: to the point where we can't maintain labor peace and
Speaker 1: maintain profits, right, so they could maintain labor peace and
Speaker 1: have something more like a socialist system, or they can
Speaker 1: maintain control over the work process and just do everything
Speaker 1: in their power to destroy the power of workers. And
Speaker 1: they decided to do that. UM. So I think we
Speaker 1: were coming out of this kind of era where you know,
Speaker 1: if you were in a union and working at a factory, um,
Speaker 1: there was a real threat that they're like, well, we're
Speaker 1: just going to shut this factory down and you know,
Speaker 1: not to get signed. Well, first it was the pet
Speaker 1: Go strike with Reagan. Reagan gets elected and air air
Speaker 1: traffic controllers decided they're going to go strike and um,
Speaker 1: and they and Reagan decided he was going to break
Speaker 1: it and they brought in they Basically there was this
Speaker 1: bigger session. It was like this huge mess where people
Speaker 1: were really desperate for work, and UM, you know, they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to hire anyone to be an air traffic
Speaker 1: controller and we're gonna break the strike. And that was
Speaker 1: the first real the first like that. The beginning of
Speaker 1: the end of that final like that big moment era
Speaker 1: of industrial unionism in the United States. And we went
Speaker 1: from a place where you know, U a W had millions,
Speaker 1: the United Auto Workers had millions and millions of workers,
Speaker 1: and if you drove a car or a truck in
Speaker 1: his main America was made by union worker to this
Speaker 1: point where now the U a W is around fifty people.
Speaker 1: I was shocked when I heard that, literally like two
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Um, you know, we just had the big
Speaker 1: U a W strike at John Dear Um. And there's
Speaker 1: been and you know, all through this while this is
Speaker 1: going on, Um, there's various union corruption scandals. And that's
Speaker 1: again the cause of like when you kick out all
Speaker 1: the people who have an ideological commitment to improving the
Speaker 1: lives of working people and building the power of working
Speaker 1: people out of this organization that's only existence is to
Speaker 1: like build the power of working people. Um, then you
Speaker 1: then you end up with people who are basically criminals,
Speaker 1: like you end up like there would be uh. I
Speaker 1: think Reagan scat like Ronald Reagan was h was a
Speaker 1: union member, but he was like the union member for
Speaker 1: like a corrupt like there was like there was like
Speaker 1: a battle between like the c I O controlled union
Speaker 1: in like Hollywood and like the corrupt like moss mobbed
Speaker 1: up union and the mobbed up union, like that was
Speaker 1: the side if I'm sure that that was a side
Speaker 1: that Reagan picked and uh and yeah, so it's like
Speaker 1: you could kind of and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: like media where they would be like you know, the
Speaker 1: waterfronts in various like movies and things talking about union corruption.
Speaker 1: And I think that union corruption is real, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's when it happens, it's a huge problem. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't like it's in other countries like in like in Germany,
Speaker 1: if they found out like a union union official like
Speaker 1: misappropriated like two thousand euros, it would be a nationwide
Speaker 1: scandal like um also in uh in like European countries,
Speaker 1: like you pay union dudes on a voluntary basis right
Speaker 1: in the US legally since we're a close shop system,
Speaker 1: like once you're at a union uh union workplace, your
Speaker 1: dudes get taken, whether you know whether you're happy with
Speaker 1: the union or not. Now there are people will say
Speaker 1: that's really important because unions need every penny they can
Speaker 1: to fight where they have. But when unions have to
Speaker 1: fight for membership and make sure that their membership knows
Speaker 1: that they're getting like what they're paying for. You get
Speaker 1: a little bit more responsiveness. So I think that's another
Speaker 1: thing that especially people are thinking about unions and thinking
Speaker 1: about joining a union are creating getting any of the workplace.
Speaker 1: Just understand what a union is and how they work
Speaker 1: and where your money is going to, and that if
Speaker 1: you're unhappy with that, the best thing to do is
Speaker 1: to get involved with your union, to try and like
Speaker 1: get connected with your coworkers who have similar complaints and
Speaker 1: change the union. Because there's a saying it's like any
Speaker 1: union is better than no union. That's not always true,
Speaker 1: but it generally is there there there's like a very
Speaker 1: small chance that like you're like living in nine nine
Speaker 1: China and like your union is like is controlled by
Speaker 1: like a commodation of the K and T and like
Speaker 1: literally the Chinese heroin trade. But you know that that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that like doesn't like there there there are things where
Speaker 1: you'll have like they're my dad worked at a factory
Speaker 1: and there was it was a teamster organized factory and
Speaker 1: like some of the stewards were bullies and literally like
Speaker 1: there were some people who were dealing drugs out of it,
Speaker 1: and they gave the the workers like try to bring
Speaker 1: in another union, and the and the management decided to
Speaker 1: offer to also try and desertify de certify the union
Speaker 1: at the same time, and the workers voted to desert.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is that now that factory shut
Speaker 1: down and gone. Um, And I guess, like the thing
Speaker 1: is is that you have to it's far better for
Speaker 1: workers to assert their rights within their union where they
Speaker 1: have some modicum of democratic control over what's going on
Speaker 1: than it is to just throw up your hands and
Speaker 1: like there's and do nothing. Because if you do nothing,
Speaker 1: the boss is always doing something. Yeah, Like that's the
Speaker 1: thing is, like management is always organizing. They're always coming
Speaker 1: up with ways to like to undermine the control of
Speaker 1: workers at work, to pitt people against each other. Um,
Speaker 1: we can get into it later, but like, uh, they want,
Speaker 1: they'll use racism and those sorts of things to dole
Speaker 1: out favors or curry favoritism and like you know, pitt
Speaker 1: people against each other. So I think that it's important
Speaker 1: to just say that, like the union is going to
Speaker 1: be your only effective way to push back. Well, the
Speaker 1: union or collective action, because I guess I also want
Speaker 1: to say that there are times when organizing union isn't
Speaker 1: the best solution to solving your problem at work. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: this is all about how do you solve problems at
Speaker 1: work right? And they're sometimes when you can do collective
Speaker 1: action that is protected as you know as labor organizing,
Speaker 1: but it's not done within a union and so and
Speaker 1: because America is the really best of place and you
Speaker 1: have right to work states and places where like being
Speaker 1: in a union is like literally illegal. Um sometimes putting
Speaker 1: the time, you're like you can't get into a union
Speaker 1: and therefore you have to come up with other solutions.
Speaker 1: Or sometimes because the nature of a workplace, like getting
Speaker 1: a union is like it is very hard or like
Speaker 1: basically impossible, that doesn't mean that you can't organize. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's the thing that everyone needs to understand.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of like boosterism of unions
Speaker 1: amongst younger workers because people just don't understand how they
Speaker 1: work or they haven't experienced in themselves. And I think
Speaker 1: that the main thing is is that you've got to
Speaker 1: be very careful with your time and understanding, like building
Speaker 1: a union can take like ten years from the beginning
Speaker 1: of we're upset to now we have a collective bargaining agreement,
Speaker 1: or now we have a collective bargaining agreement. It could
Speaker 1: be another five or ten years before you actually get
Speaker 1: to the point where you're organized enough to go on strike.
Speaker 1: And people oftentimes think that that's like they look back
Speaker 1: at the history of things and they're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: so easy. But back then people were taking all they
Speaker 1: mean they it took them years to build the the
Speaker 1: US labor movement into what it was at its peak.
Speaker 1: It took decades, right, And I think that we are
Speaker 1: kind of used to this instant gratification kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: We have to understand that it's like, if you're going
Speaker 1: to be in a workplace where you're there for enough
Speaker 1: time to build the trust and relationships and understanding of
Speaker 1: how the work workplace works and keep your job and
Speaker 1: be someone that people don't look at as like a
Speaker 1: shirk or whatever. Not that I don't think that people
Speaker 1: should you know, people should work as hard as they
Speaker 1: can and not any more harder than that, but whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think that you know, I'm anti work, but
Speaker 1: you know that's the whole other thing. Unions are the
Speaker 1: best way to limit the amount of work that you
Speaker 1: have to do um if you're gonna if you're going
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, work as a wage labor um.
Speaker 1: But I will just say that it's like I think
Speaker 1: that people don't that. It's difficult sometimes to understand how
Speaker 1: much work goes into getting to the point of getting
Speaker 1: a union, but it's always worth putting the time in
Speaker 1: to get there. And you may not win the first try,
Speaker 1: but if you are, if if the conditions are right,
Speaker 1: and things like, you know, we make our history, but
Speaker 1: not in conditions of our choosing. Sometimes things don't work out,
Speaker 1: but not doing it is I think a it's detrimental
Speaker 1: to you and your co workers. And even times like
Speaker 1: I've talked with people who have been involved in campaigns
Speaker 1: where they got fired but then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: conditions improved afterwards, and they look at that as like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: we didn't get our union, but everyone got raises and
Speaker 1: they change some things that work, and that's actually a victory.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think that I think of each
Speaker 1: other as like collective building collective power, and the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes to do that is daunting, but
Speaker 1: I think it's the sort of thing that we need
Speaker 1: to do if first serious about changing how we can
Speaker 1: actually like how our lives work and how much power
Speaker 1: we have outside of work, because unions are also places
Speaker 1: where we do things that affect outside of our work
Speaker 1: as well. I'm Colleen with Join me, the host of
Speaker 1: Eating Will Broke podcast While I eat a meal created
Speaker 1: by self made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal
Speaker 1: they once ate when they were broke. Today I have
Speaker 1: the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of compon Asia
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Speaker 1: your podcast. UM, George Slade Uprising. You know, in Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: there were nurses union nurses who walked out the door
Speaker 1: um to support uh, you know, people who were uh
Speaker 1: basically having an insurrection against like, you know, police violence
Speaker 1: in in Minneapolis when the WHENVID pandemic hit off, year
Speaker 1: of everything going off, nurses nurses were going out and
Speaker 1: confronting uh. Union nurses were going out and confronting anti
Speaker 1: mass protesters. Like I was literally getting screamed at by
Speaker 1: like some Looney Tunes doctor holding a banner that said
Speaker 1: nurses are dying. Go home with like twenty other union nurses.
Speaker 1: And we were the only people out there who are
Speaker 1: like together, who are you know, immediately impacted by this stuff?
Speaker 1: And UM, and I think it made a difference, Like
Speaker 1: I think it's important, and so I think that UM.
Speaker 1: And there's some idea called social unionism. So if you
Speaker 1: get to the point where building a union and you're
Speaker 1: making progress, and you get to that point where you
Speaker 1: have a union always be advocating for to the extent
Speaker 1: that you can that your union is engaged in the
Speaker 1: kind of UM like connecting with your community around your workplace,
Speaker 1: figuring out the things that are impacting people's lives outside
Speaker 1: of unions, because I think that's another thing that UM
Speaker 1: For a long time, unions just ignored or let atrophy
Speaker 1: because they didn't think it was their problem anymore. Was
Speaker 1: you know, mutual aid helped build the labor movement. You know,
Speaker 1: workers would get would literally like in West Virginia and
Speaker 1: matuan uh they had uh company police throwing people out
Speaker 1: of their apartments who are on strike, and the there
Speaker 1: were you know, all of a sudden, two thousand of
Speaker 1: your fellow workers showing up and throwing the police out
Speaker 1: of town and putting people's uh, you know, belongings back
Speaker 1: in their house or you know. And I believe we're
Speaker 1: getting back to that point where you know, teachers went
Speaker 1: on striking West Virginia and the union and the teachers
Speaker 1: did everything they could to support their students while they
Speaker 1: were out. Because like, I think there's this idea that
Speaker 1: a lot of union workers at this point are you know,
Speaker 1: everyone is like, you know, the American workforces so desperate
Speaker 1: and so and they've just been pushed around so much
Speaker 1: that you know, there was this idea for a time
Speaker 1: like in Wisconsin, what was or what was the Scott
Speaker 1: Walker was constant uprising just Elen, wasn't it? I think
Speaker 1: it was like right around occupy it was around there,
Speaker 1: and like there was this idea that's like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: a nurse, Oh you're a teacher, Like you should just
Speaker 1: be happy that your job has some kind of meaning
Speaker 1: to it, right, And it was a lot of like
Speaker 1: weird discourse around in the media and about like how
Speaker 1: dare these people? I think that they deserve anything? And
Speaker 1: the thing is is that how can you, like, as
Speaker 1: a nurse, how can I take care of my patients
Speaker 1: safely when I'm constantly having um like more and more
Speaker 1: work put on me, right, and that that immediately affects
Speaker 1: the people that I'm taken care of. So that when
Speaker 1: when we went on strike in twenty nineteen, it was
Speaker 1: around our safes laffing. UM. And if I've seen management
Speaker 1: make decisions about staffing that kill people, and I've seen
Speaker 1: management make decisions that lead to my co workers getting injured, um,
Speaker 1: I management made decisions that led to me getting uh
Speaker 1: COVID and messed me up for a year. And uh
Speaker 1: so when people in these kind of care worker roles,
Speaker 1: which I think has become a more prominent part of
Speaker 1: the US economy as people are getting older and they
Speaker 1: need more like care work, home care workers, nursing home workers,
Speaker 1: hospital workers. UM. Parents don't can't rely on family the
Speaker 1: way they used to help take care kids. School has
Speaker 1: become like this really important like uh institution for you know,
Speaker 1: working class survival. UM that you can't do those jobs
Speaker 1: as a worker if you don't have the resources. So
Speaker 1: like our our children were at the Chicago Public School
Speaker 1: and there that you know, the Chicago Teachers Union, which
Speaker 1: was taken over by the rank and file UM, I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand five or six by you know,
Speaker 1: a group of black women led by Karen Lewis. They
Speaker 1: set up a group called like a rank and file
Speaker 1: caucus called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators or
Speaker 1: Radical Educators. CORES might be messing on that, but it's
Speaker 1: called CORE. They went out on striking and as a
Speaker 1: you know, as just this was before my kids were
Speaker 1: old not to be in those schools. I was out
Speaker 1: there still taking them coffee donuts, right, because I knew
Speaker 1: that they were in there. Because things stuck. By the
Speaker 1: time my kids were old enough in nineteen for it
Speaker 1: to be a big thing and the teachers went on
Speaker 1: strike in Chicago, it had gotten so it's so bad
Speaker 1: that Chicago teachers, like Chicago Public schools have the the
Speaker 1: lowest number of staff of two students of any school
Speaker 1: system in Illinois. It's not even like half right and um,
Speaker 1: And it's funny because the state have been constantly trying
Speaker 1: to erode the power of the union. They're making Chicago
Speaker 1: teachers like pay their for their own retirement basically in
Speaker 1: a way that no other like workers have to. Um.
Speaker 1: They were making it so that Chicago teachers could only
Speaker 1: go on strike. Over of the teachers voted to go
Speaker 1: on strike. Um. So when so what that does is
Speaker 1: there's kind of like a a little bit of a
Speaker 1: flip where oh, we have to make of you know,
Speaker 1: people agree to go on strike. Well, let's organize so
Speaker 1: much that we get people to agree to go on strike,
Speaker 1: and then how powerful is our strikes, our strikes going
Speaker 1: to be. We're literally like one of the things I
Speaker 1: do as a steward is I connect with all the
Speaker 1: different unions and at the University of Chicago at work
Speaker 1: through a labor council. We were going, as you know,
Speaker 1: university workers to all the picket lines of the public
Speaker 1: schools around our neighborhood and we're bringing out coffee, bringing
Speaker 1: out donuts, talking to people. Hey, I'm a nurse. We
Speaker 1: were on strike like six or like two or three
Speaker 1: months ago. What do you all need? Connecting with people?
Speaker 1: And then and then like at one point when the
Speaker 1: teachers were like, we're not getting what we want and
Speaker 1: this is LORI lightfoot is trash there, uh, we helped
Speaker 1: organize this mass march where multiple marches of teachers and
Speaker 1: school workers and we're all out in the streets dodging
Speaker 1: cop cars until we have this big convergence. And it
Speaker 1: was really beautiful. Like we had like multiple people with
Speaker 1: like multiple banners and different columns, each one saying we
Speaker 1: will win, going through the streets of our neighborhood. UM
Speaker 1: and like messing up like the commercial traffic area in
Speaker 1: uh in our very bougie neighborhood and um. But that
Speaker 1: was happening all over the city and it's just like
Speaker 1: when you see that happen it's because we're literally in
Speaker 1: the support of the community for those strikes was so
Speaker 1: overwhelming because people knew that. It's like these people, aren't it.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, first off, it's a hard job. There's
Speaker 1: no reason why anyone doing that job shouldn't have like
Speaker 1: a materially comfortable life. That's how stressful it is and
Speaker 1: how much work they do. And I really, like, I
Speaker 1: really need to emphasize this enough people. There's like this
Speaker 1: whole thing is like, oh, teachers don't work over the summer, Like,
Speaker 1: oh but no, no, Like their job sucks. They have
Speaker 1: to they have to deal these kids all day. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is like you know, the part of
Speaker 1: it that you don't see is they have to do
Speaker 1: all the lessed plans. They have to great all the stuff,
Speaker 1: have to do all this stuff like after the school
Speaker 1: day end, they have to do all this honestibly, all
Speaker 1: the time. This job is awful. It is extremely hard,
Speaker 1: and like they don't Yeah, the conditions are extremely bad.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget when I'll never forget when I ran
Speaker 1: into my seventh grade science teacher on the summer she
Speaker 1: was waiting tables at a local restaurant. You know, I
Speaker 1: mean and so I think that there's this assumption that like, uh,
Speaker 1: that especially care workers get some sort of you can't
Speaker 1: you know, you can't cash in fulfillment right or prestige
Speaker 1: or whatever that doesn't pay the rent, that doesn't put
Speaker 1: you know, groceries on your table um that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think we're beginning to see
Speaker 1: this thing resurgence. And it started with teachers and I
Speaker 1: know for and teachers and nurses have been out fighting
Speaker 1: like hell for the past like five years, and it's
Speaker 1: beginning to kind of like spark other kinds of organizing
Speaker 1: outside of outside of the care work areas, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff was It's funny how it was
Speaker 1: kind of like predicted by occupy and like revolt of
Speaker 1: the carrying classes. Someone who wrote a really cool book
Speaker 1: that just came out, David Graber, who was talking about like,
Speaker 1: why is it that we're seeing all these people who
Speaker 1: are out in the streets like during occupy, who are
Speaker 1: like social workers and nurses and teachers and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: There there's something going on here, and I think that
Speaker 1: so you'll see places where organizing conditions are easier because
Speaker 1: the pressure on especially care workers right now is immense
Speaker 1: in a way that it isn't as immense other places.
Speaker 1: But look at for those like when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: unions and whether to do build a union at your
Speaker 1: workplace or do some sort of collective organizing your workplace,
Speaker 1: do you have the dynamics where you guys are can
Speaker 1: the boss shut down your uh, your your workplace and
Speaker 1: move it like ten miles without completely destroying their like
Speaker 1: their business, right And so you know, we've seen strikes
Speaker 1: happen in grocery stores, um and uh Massachusetts there was
Speaker 1: a really like uh, pretty well publicized grocery strike and
Speaker 1: apparently there was like internal documents got released to like
Speaker 1: shareholders about how that was like one of the most
Speaker 1: like it was like for a month in the winter
Speaker 1: or three weeks, and they said they lost like of
Speaker 1: customers refused across the picket line. I mean, and I
Speaker 1: think we're thinking it's like getting to the point where
Speaker 1: you can go on strike, it's a lot, it's a
Speaker 1: process and it takes a lot of work, and I
Speaker 1: think that people underestimate what that looks like. Hence we
Speaker 1: see hashtag general strike things all the time. Um, But
Speaker 1: like when you get there, I think that we're at
Speaker 1: a point now where people have a lot more sympathy
Speaker 1: for workers, and workers have become more visible in a
Speaker 1: way that they weren't before. Like the essential workers over
Speaker 1: the past year and a half have been the only
Speaker 1: workers that sometimes people will see, right, so you'll see
Speaker 1: things also like you have you know, Amazonians United, which
Speaker 1: is a union that's organizing, but they're trying to organize
Speaker 1: something called a solidarity union. So they're not you know,
Speaker 1: at least the ones here in Chicago, and I think
Speaker 1: some of them in New York. And this may be changing.
Speaker 1: Things are always shifting around, but for a long for
Speaker 1: a while, through like the pandemic, they were organizing on
Speaker 1: a like in contrast to the best sumer uh Amazon campaign. Sorry,
Speaker 1: there was a a business union tried to organize a
Speaker 1: union in Alabama, Investment Alabama at an Amazon warehouse, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like media attention to that.
Speaker 1: Democratic politicians were paying attention to it. Joe Biden said,
Speaker 1: I support the right of workers to choose to have
Speaker 1: the choice. Stabby union some really milk toast bullshit and
Speaker 1: a lot of celebrities showing up and what wasn't happening
Speaker 1: was you weren't seeing a lot of evidence that the
Speaker 1: workers themselves were very excited about the union, and it
Speaker 1: turned out that that campaign failed. UM, whereas workers at
Speaker 1: Amazonians united up here, like in Chicago, and granted it's
Speaker 1: a very different organizing environment in Illinois than it is
Speaker 1: in Alabama, UM, they haven't been focusing on getting contract.
Speaker 1: They've been focusing on getting work changes. Like they're like,
Speaker 1: we want to have water, like we need water breaks,
Speaker 1: and so they would they have these stand up meetings
Speaker 1: at the beginning of every shift, and they had coordinated
Speaker 1: where you have, you know, thirty of your coworkers all
Speaker 1: say we're not starting until we get water, and then
Speaker 1: management panics because they're not used to that kind of demand.
Speaker 1: They're used to We're going to have a campaign. Then
Speaker 1: we can you know, mess with votes and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing and make people afraid. Collective action overcomes fear, right,
Speaker 1: So when you have collective action, even through a regular
Speaker 1: like a more regular conventional union campaign, those collective actions
Speaker 1: are what leads to successful unions. So like UM, so
Speaker 1: you know, they'd say we aren't starting the shift until
Speaker 1: we get water, and then all of a sudden, a
Speaker 1: manager disappears and then comes back with palates full of water, right,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, people are like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a drink water before I start like all together.
Speaker 1: And then they go off and do their thing, and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, things like that build the power
Speaker 1: of the union to the point where they shut down
Speaker 1: that warehouse. But then Amazonian United popped up in the
Speaker 1: three new warehouses that they stuff in Chicago. So it's
Speaker 1: like when you build that kind of collective power and
Speaker 1: people feel like this is how you get things, then
Speaker 1: it's hard to repress. Right. It's one thing where like
Speaker 1: we lost an election, why did we even bother? It's
Speaker 1: another thing where like, no, we wont like all this
Speaker 1: like this, that, and the other thing like we got
Speaker 1: you know, like our regular schedules fixed, We got like
Speaker 1: water on our ships. We got this. You know. That's
Speaker 1: what gets people into the mindset that they can change.
Speaker 1: And so I think this is the thing that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't get. It's it's like, the difficult
Speaker 1: part isn't getting people to agree that things are fun
Speaker 1: up at your workplace. Most people understand that things are
Speaker 1: sucked up in their workplace. Difficult part isn't saying that, like, well,
Speaker 1: this is a solution, right. The difficult part is getting
Speaker 1: people to understand that collective action is the only way
Speaker 1: to solve the problems, right even within unionized workplaces. Getting
Speaker 1: your coworkers to understand that if we don't do this
Speaker 1: as a collective we will fail. And so like when
Speaker 1: there was a like the first successful private hospital union
Speaker 1: drive in North Carolina popped off early. Um, throughout that campaign,
Speaker 1: they were constantly like demonstrations of collective power. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a vigil. How many people are gonn show up
Speaker 1: to the visual We're gonna all walk around stickers saying
Speaker 1: like safe staffing saves lives or like you know, um,
Speaker 1: patients over profits. That sort of stuff, and building that
Speaker 1: kind of collective power together is what it's you. Um,
Speaker 1: it's what gets you a successful Like that's what builds
Speaker 1: a union. Fundamentally, union is um, there's the legal thing
Speaker 1: and then there's the real thing. And the real thing
Speaker 1: is only as powerful as people are willing to fight
Speaker 1: for and build that kind of collective power together. When
Speaker 1: nurses were on straight and I talked a lot about
Speaker 1: nurses because I know a lot about nurses, but like
Speaker 1: you know, or like you know in um In, Iowa,
Speaker 1: when the John Deere strike happened, people were out on
Speaker 1: the picket lines and people were ready to get hit
Speaker 1: by cars to like stop scabs from coming like crossing
Speaker 1: the picket line. And if you're not willing to do
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And I'm not saying that you
Speaker 1: need to put your body on the line for things,
Speaker 1: but you do need to be willing to draw outside
Speaker 1: the lines. Right, there's the law and then there's what
Speaker 1: you can get people to do. And you will be
Speaker 1: surprised when people start moving. They move fast, and they
Speaker 1: get really riled up, like this, funk this, this is
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. And sometimes unions try and like
Speaker 1: bottle that energy up um or you know, if you're
Speaker 1: in a good union, you use that energy to fix things.
Speaker 1: So I think that's kind of where land on all
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's like be aware of like the pitfalls
Speaker 1: of what organizing at work means. Everyone has the right
Speaker 1: to organize at work everywhere in this country. If you
Speaker 1: get fired for like for organizing, you can fight that
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Yeah, it is, it's federally protected,
Speaker 1: Like it's this is this is a federal government thing
Speaker 1: like you know, this is this is this is what
Speaker 1: we got in exchange for everything else is like like
Speaker 1: this is you know, like this this is what we
Speaker 1: got in exchange of putting our guns down. Is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the actual Feds will be like, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do this. Yeah, I mean, and sometimes that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound fold constellation and it doesn't always work. But and
Speaker 1: I guess this is the other thing is there are
Speaker 1: people who are like, this is how we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna when socialism is everyone's any union. And I guess,
Speaker 1: like my take on it is is this is how
Speaker 1: we build all the networks and get the skills and
Speaker 1: all the necessary things to be prepared to do bigger
Speaker 1: stuff down the road. So when we when workers are
Speaker 1: talking to each other across like you know, at when Chicago,
Speaker 1: when Chicago teachers went on strike, they didn't just go
Speaker 1: on strike as the teachers. They also talked to the
Speaker 1: They lined up their strike to go out as the
Speaker 1: same as education like the school workers who are in
Speaker 1: s c I you, and they went out at the
Speaker 1: same time. Um in order to incre improve the power
Speaker 1: of the strike because the more workers who are out
Speaker 1: less able the bosses are to like like to undermine
Speaker 1: the boss either with people scabbing on each other or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just like and like that's the
Speaker 1: point of our labor council is Like when like the
Speaker 1: grad workers at Universe Chicago go on strike, we got
Speaker 1: teachers out or we got well, there were teachers from
Speaker 1: CTU out on those picket lines. There were nurses or
Speaker 1: a new on those picket lines, and we were doing
Speaker 1: everything we could to communicate to each other because like
Speaker 1: in my work, it doesn't matter that I'm a nurse
Speaker 1: and you're a secretary. We have the same boss. We
Speaker 1: have the same problems a lot of the times. And
Speaker 1: so I think people people want to do the thing,
Speaker 1: which is to all have the glorious general strike that
Speaker 1: like overthrows capitalism or whatever or fixes all the problems
Speaker 1: that your work. But you know, starting everyone forgets all
Speaker 1: the necessary intermediate steps to get to that point. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it means just get the union and in the
Speaker 1: door in the first place, because like at a campaign
Speaker 1: I was a part of here in Chicago where my
Speaker 1: Universe Chicago bought a non union hospital that was out
Speaker 1: in the community. Just getting in there, they were able
Speaker 1: to expose like basically an entire hospital wide scheme of
Speaker 1: like racial racist like practices around raises and compensation. And
Speaker 1: that is like that first step and then fixing that
Speaker 1: right because you don't want to have like white worse
Speaker 1: nurses making more than black nurses and black more than
Speaker 1: like did immigrant nurses like Filipino or like Mexican nurses.
Speaker 1: Get everyone on the same page so that you're fighting
Speaker 1: together instead of fighting each other. And you know, those
Speaker 1: are those first steps that you take. And then and
Speaker 1: then you start reaching out to people on other other
Speaker 1: workplaces or other work areas and build that kind of
Speaker 1: militancy across unions so that you can support each other.
Speaker 1: So maybe a secondary strike is illegal right now, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that you don't have, you know, teamsters
Speaker 1: who won't cross the picket line, right you know, how
Speaker 1: do you go out and make it or you can
Speaker 1: build that solidarity so that like in Buffalo and the UM,
Speaker 1: the c w A nurses went on strike and they
Speaker 1: want pretty impressive things around staffing ratios. They literally had
Speaker 1: other unions going out and picketing board members of their
Speaker 1: hospital businesses and like getting really really like aggressive with
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. So I think that I think
Speaker 1: that people need to just big takeaway is it's the
Speaker 1: biggest barrier to any of this stuff, is just getting
Speaker 1: people to believe that collective action is possible and they
Speaker 1: can get you wins. And then making sure that you
Speaker 1: take your time and be patient and understand that there's
Speaker 1: going to be losses. But in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: don't don't don't mistake what looks like a setback when
Speaker 1: it's actually a victory for like a victory, like for
Speaker 1: a real like a defeat and um, and talk with
Speaker 1: people like that's what they hate that, Like, bosses hate
Speaker 1: it when we're talking with each other and talk to
Speaker 1: people you're not comfortable with. That's the That's the other
Speaker 1: thing is that people are very nervous to talk to people.
Speaker 1: Like It's always funny when you run into people who
Speaker 1: are ra ra like unions, ra ra like socialism, YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and they don't talk to their co workers, right, and
Speaker 1: your co workers are the people you're gonna be around
Speaker 1: for maybe some years, and that's where you spend a
Speaker 1: huge chunk of your time and like, but you don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. They're like, Oh, they're all hostile.
Speaker 1: They don't want to know anything, they don't want to
Speaker 1: do anything. Funny thing is is that oftentimes the most
Speaker 1: people who seem very skeptical and anti union can be
Speaker 1: flipped and sometimes those people become the best, like the
Speaker 1: most dedicated people to the union. It also means that
Speaker 1: you're going to talk to people you disagree with. Like
Speaker 1: there was a Trump dude who was on like the
Speaker 1: bargaining committee for the like our last strike. He fucking
Speaker 1: loved that thing. He was like, we're going on strike,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's also union full of black women,
Speaker 1: and he shut the funk up when you know it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, being racist and ship, but you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna be with those people. And part of
Speaker 1: the thing is that it's about how we're all moving
Speaker 1: together rather than making sure everyone is on the same
Speaker 1: page for every single thing, because the biggest thing is
Speaker 1: the collective action and building that collective power and hopefully
Speaker 1: the collective powers. Hopefully the collective power outweighs. It's if
Speaker 1: you stand firm on principles like anti racism and fighting
Speaker 1: against discrimination and misogyny, that sort of thing. It actually
Speaker 1: builds the power of the union. I think that's the
Speaker 1: other things that people are like, Oh, I don't you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, working class people are all racist or
Speaker 1: reactionary or whatever. So I'm going to do that And
Speaker 1: that's how I'm gonna get that's my in. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people who like,
Speaker 1: they really don't like, you know, they don't like being
Speaker 1: around loud, racist assholes or people who you know, say slurs,
Speaker 1: like especially if it's like I mean, you can make
Speaker 1: the arguments like this is that's their way of dividing us.
Speaker 1: Our goal is to be together. And historically speaking, the
Speaker 1: one thing that's done the most too fight working class
Speaker 1: racism is union organizing. Ye. So, And I think also,
Speaker 1: like you know, in terms of like building something that's
Speaker 1: actually durable and powerful on top of sort of just
Speaker 1: the division. I mean, you know, even when it becomes
Speaker 1: stuff like transphobia, right, it's like, you know, if if
Speaker 1: you can convince people to fight like first, like fight
Speaker 1: for the person next to them, right, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean this is this is the thing that people like
Speaker 1: said a lot during the during the brainding campaign, but
Speaker 1: it was like you know, if people like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: if you can get someone to uh fight, like fight
Speaker 1: for the person next to you in a concrete way
Speaker 1: in the workplace in a way that's actually real for
Speaker 1: something that doesn't directly affect them. You the you know
Speaker 1: a a it's just like the the amount of power
Speaker 1: that you've built there is incredible. And then be also, Okay,
Speaker 1: I forgot where I was going with that, Daniel, please
Speaker 1: cut that. Hold on, hold on, I can kind of
Speaker 1: build off, but we just say this. My personal experience
Speaker 1: is that queer women run the labor movement and that
Speaker 1: like and that if you think that people who have
Speaker 1: been bullied from the day they like stepped into like
Speaker 1: a into a kindergarten aren't going to be the people
Speaker 1: who are most equipped to fight bullshit, bullying from a
Speaker 1: boss or justice or bullshit you're fucking like, like, just
Speaker 1: get the funk out because you haven't been in a
Speaker 1: union and you don't know what you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you like the like people. Unions are at their best
Speaker 1: when they incorporate, you know, all, like when they are
Speaker 1: fighting for everybody, because what a boss can get away
Speaker 1: with with the weakest person, that's what they'll do to
Speaker 1: all of us if they get the chance. And so
Speaker 1: I think that there's this idea that's like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to set we're not going to we're going to
Speaker 1: ignore this or that sort of thing. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's when people like, you know, people will turn away
Speaker 1: from unions as they feel like they're not being listened
Speaker 1: to or taken seriously. And you don't know what people's
Speaker 1: like identities are just because you see how they look.
Speaker 1: And so I think that it's real important for us
Speaker 1: to understand that if we're going to fight these fights,
Speaker 1: we need to do so with the understanding that it's everybody,
Speaker 1: and that the working class is a giant, multi racial
Speaker 1: conglomeration of every identity in this country. Um, and that
Speaker 1: the more marginal your identity is, the more useful having
Speaker 1: a union is to like solving your problems. Like I said,
Speaker 1: like racist racist compensation practices, there was no way that
Speaker 1: was going to get fixed, Like it wasn't even uncovered.
Speaker 1: People didn't understand it was happening until like the union
Speaker 1: got in. Doesn't mean there are other ways to fix things,
Speaker 1: but it's one of the one of the most powerful
Speaker 1: ways to fix things. I think that people just like
Speaker 1: don't understand because they don't have experience. Because they don't
Speaker 1: have an experience, they end up with they end up
Speaker 1: with misconceptions about what they're going to get into, and
Speaker 1: then they get disappointed. And I think the reality, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the reality is not as bad as
Speaker 1: sometimes it seems. But also you gotta go into all
Speaker 1: this ship with open eyes. And I think of there's
Speaker 1: and that's the other thing one of the fun things.
Speaker 1: Maybe this will make it into the podcast. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but um, one of the fun things is always like
Speaker 1: hanging out with like if you like every workplace has
Speaker 1: like its lefties just about, and like hanging out with
Speaker 1: the lefties who just can't get their brains wrapped around
Speaker 1: the ship that you need to have a union. I
Speaker 1: think that there's like this idea that's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk to my friend. They're like they're like they
Speaker 1: say they're a communists, so that the and then that
Speaker 1: all those people do not always but they're they're sitting there.
Speaker 1: It's like talking a bunch of ship about like the union.
Speaker 1: They're a bunch of sellouts is or that, and it's
Speaker 1: like literally it's the only thing you're gonna do to
Speaker 1: get your like to fix the problem, and you're just like,
Speaker 1: we're just trying to get this problem fixed. Can we
Speaker 1: just set aside what you think needs to happen like
Speaker 1: that you guys talked about it. You're like Spartacus leak
Speaker 1: meeting or whatever, like, oh, this isn't a real strike,
Speaker 1: Like we're not going out until like for like you know,
Speaker 1: three months. And it's like, you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: sort of thing where um sometimes or oftentimes, And I
Speaker 1: think it's because a lot of people kind of pick
Speaker 1: up their politics almost like an aesthetic as opposed to
Speaker 1: like a thing that like is about like fixing the
Speaker 1: problems in their lives. And sometimes even I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: like this is the problem that I face. Is like
Speaker 1: like shit is real like for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And you can sit there and talk about this or that,
Speaker 1: and like you're you know, you think that things. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got this perfect ideal vision of what things should be,
Speaker 1: and then you've got this kind of imperfect thing in
Speaker 1: front of you that is, even though it's imperfect, it's
Speaker 1: basically what you've got. And so it's like you've got
Speaker 1: to kind of you've got to work with what you
Speaker 1: have and fix it up and make it the best
Speaker 1: that you think it can be. Um, But also understand
Speaker 1: because it's an organization full of people, that it's not
Speaker 1: going to be perfect every time. And yeah, maybe your
Speaker 1: union is going to do some liberal ship you know,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna and that's gonna annoy you. But you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: those people are still going to show up on the
Speaker 1: picket line if you're like, if you're organized and you're good,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, that's it's not the end of
Speaker 1: the world that your union isn't perfect. Um, but you've
Speaker 1: got to do everything you can to do your best
Speaker 1: to make it better because if you don't, then then
Speaker 1: liberals will do whatever they're gonna do, or conservatives will
Speaker 1: do whatever they're gonna do, and then they will like
Speaker 1: furtter away this thing. Like you can destroy a union
Speaker 1: if you aren't engaged. Like a union can be destroyed
Speaker 1: by people who think that you know, they're just like
Speaker 1: I just want to get my rays and like go home,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, if people's main concern is like
Speaker 1: their healthcare or like you know, that hour of prep
Speaker 1: time before they start their shift, or whatever, should you
Speaker 1: start their school day or whatever. Um. You know, a
Speaker 1: union can like dissolve out from underneath you and people
Speaker 1: are like, why is no one showing up to this thing?
Speaker 1: It's because you didn't talk to people and kind of
Speaker 1: what it is. I think that's the other thing. It's
Speaker 1: like listen, Like there's this idea that you're gonna get
Speaker 1: up and give a big speech and get everyone really
Speaker 1: excited about your about like being in a union. But
Speaker 1: the main thing is listening to people and listening to
Speaker 1: people who are critics. You know, your co workers who
Speaker 1: have complaints aren't like people that you should ignore. Those
Speaker 1: are people who need to listen to because those are
Speaker 1: people who they've got I mean, everyone's got legitimate problems
Speaker 1: with how you know work is happening. And like just
Speaker 1: because someone's like, you know, union is like, you know, trash,
Speaker 1: Like then find out why they think it's trash and
Speaker 1: then try and be like I want to try and
Speaker 1: fix out what can we do to fix it together?
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. I remember when when I was working,
Speaker 1: so I worked at like maintenance and a county facility
Speaker 1: for a while, and you know, so I was like
Speaker 1: a like I was like I was like a summer
Speaker 1: higher basically, and so would we We weren't in the union,
Speaker 1: but like everyone we were working for was in the union,
Speaker 1: and they all like, you know, these are old ex
Speaker 1: construction worker guys and you know, like they're in the union.
Speaker 1: But like I remember that we show these conversations that
Speaker 1: were like, okay, so we have a union meeting this week,
Speaker 1: like do you want to be the person who tries
Speaker 1: to talk about raising wages? And it was like everyone
Speaker 1: was just like no, And you know, people you know,
Speaker 1: like these guys are like very right wing and they
Speaker 1: were just sort of like piste off all the time.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting because the thing they were piste
Speaker 1: off all the time about was that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: their union didn't do anything like their union like they
Speaker 1: they they're they they're like they were They were basically
Speaker 1: constantly annoyed that like the union didn't like the the
Speaker 1: the union wasn't fighting for pay raises, uson wasn't sort
Speaker 1: of fighting. And I think that was, you know, an
Speaker 1: example of how this stuff sort of just fails if
Speaker 1: if people aren't like people don't feel like they can
Speaker 1: actually do something like itself. I mean, and they call
Speaker 1: it service unionism. There's this idea that like um or
Speaker 1: like like that a business union's job is to kind
Speaker 1: of serve you and you kind of like they do
Speaker 1: all the work. Like one of the complaints that some
Speaker 1: people who are not big fans of our union and
Speaker 1: our hospital is that, like, oh well, other other unions
Speaker 1: have lawyers negotiate the contract for you. And when we negotiate,
Speaker 1: we have a room full of nurses who are doing
Speaker 1: the who are doing the negotiations, and the goal is
Speaker 1: to have it be as transparent as possible. And like
Speaker 1: the idea that you're going to hand over negotiations to
Speaker 1: a lawyer and somehow get a better deal than than
Speaker 1: a room full of the actual workers. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because we have our bargaining team and then like will
Speaker 1: periodically do something called open bargaining because it's the thing
Speaker 1: that bosses hate. It's like they want to make a
Speaker 1: deal like with a door shut right, Um, But there's
Speaker 1: no reason why a union has to do that. Like,
Speaker 1: you can invite whoever you want to your bargaining. You
Speaker 1: can invite community members to your bargaining if you feel
Speaker 1: like you're man it could because management behind closed doors
Speaker 1: will say all kinds of things, and you know, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll trash talk everyone involved, and they'll you know, and
Speaker 1: they will make absurd demands about you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're all gonna take a pay cut, you know, on
Speaker 1: this contract, that sort of thing, and they hate it.
Speaker 1: They absolutely hate it when like workers actually show up
Speaker 1: to these things. And so, um, I think that understanding that, Like,
Speaker 1: I think there's this idea that like some people are
Speaker 1: big on like we have to be kind of like
Speaker 1: secretive to like get the best deal, and like we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be like we shouldn't be transparent with everyone about
Speaker 1: what's going on because that's how like because then they'll
Speaker 1: figure out some way to counter us. But in my experience,
Speaker 1: my understanding is that the more transparent your union is,
Speaker 1: the more involved people get, and the more able people are,
Speaker 1: the more willing people are to put their time and
Speaker 1: energy into it. Because that's what comes down to is
Speaker 1: like people out to like everyone's working and busy and
Speaker 1: their life life is hard and sucks, and so like
Speaker 1: do you have time to like dedicate to show up
Speaker 1: to like talk to like if you why would you
Speaker 1: go to a union meeting? If when you raise the
Speaker 1: concern like we want higher wages, and like the union
Speaker 1: like staffer doesn't care if you get higher wages because
Speaker 1: they're like while we're getting our union dudes, and like
Speaker 1: what what then do we care? Right? That's like a
Speaker 1: huge problem. And the part of the thing is that
Speaker 1: those problems don't get solved if they if they exist,
Speaker 1: because they that definitely exists in some muni and a
Speaker 1: lot of unions, more unions than uh than not um,
Speaker 1: if the workers don't get organized together, Like we just
Speaker 1: saw an election within the Teamsters International where uh the
Speaker 1: halfa uh don't Jimmy Haffa Jr. One of the half
Speaker 1: a kids, was like president of the union and was
Speaker 1: this like not doing a great job and um, and
Speaker 1: like there was a rank and file like push to
Speaker 1: get that guy uh unelected, you know, and put it
Speaker 1: replaced with a rank and file worker who wants to
Speaker 1: put actual time and resources into organizing you know. Like
Speaker 1: there's nothing sadder than a than like watching a union
Speaker 1: campaign fail because the union clearly is phoning it in.
Speaker 1: Like that's happened. I've seen it happen not inside my union,
Speaker 1: but in other unions and uh, and I mean, like
Speaker 1: at my workplace, there's several unions and I've seen I've
Speaker 1: seen a failed campaign and it's like obvious, like there's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I don't co sign everything that
Speaker 1: someone like Jaye mccavalary. I think that's alway share mcavleary
Speaker 1: has to say. She wrote like no shortcuts. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't sign off on everything she has to say, but
Speaker 1: she has some really insightful things. It's like if you're
Speaker 1: not organizing to win, like you'll fail, and like you
Speaker 1: have to take this so seriously. And that's where like
Speaker 1: I'll say that, like, if you've got a choice between
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put time into a political political campaign versus
Speaker 1: a union campaign, You're going to get way more bang
Speaker 1: for your buck. You're gonna get so much more experience.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get like a durable organization that's going to
Speaker 1: be around for years if you put that time into
Speaker 1: a union campaign. Because like, imagine winning an election, right, um,
Speaker 1: except the politician you're running against is the incumbent and
Speaker 1: they can basically drag every one of their constituents into
Speaker 1: like a meeting and tell them how awful you are
Speaker 1: all the time, and lie and say whatever they want,
Speaker 1: and then they can, you know, do all kinds of
Speaker 1: tricks to like basically dismantle your campaign. So I guess,
Speaker 1: like the thing that I would say is that like
Speaker 1: if you if you do it the right way and
Speaker 1: you actually win one of those campaigns, you're gonna come
Speaker 1: out way ahead in sort of understanding. Like you have
Speaker 1: to talk to people, you have to be super organized,
Speaker 1: you have to know what people's issues are in their
Speaker 1: different targeting units. UM. You have to find people like
Speaker 1: part of like it's successful campaigns. I've been part of
Speaker 1: literally going on a search to go find like the
Speaker 1: people that need to be like signing cards and stuff.
Speaker 1: And you just have to be a very good listener,
Speaker 1: ready to talk and listen and hear what people have
Speaker 1: to say. Um, and then turn that um information into knowledge,
Speaker 1: knowledge and power UM and UM. I think that if
Speaker 1: you pull it off, you have done something substantially harder
Speaker 1: than say like winning a school board election or something
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, it's it's it really is. It's
Speaker 1: like taking like those kind of skills that you would
Speaker 1: use to like win some sort of small municipal election,
Speaker 1: and it's like exponentially more hard because the rules are
Speaker 1: just so tilted against you winning. So if you are
Speaker 1: serious about it, if you're serious about changing the world,
Speaker 1: if you can't like someone, Yeah, I think Murray Buckschen
Speaker 1: once said, if you can't run for dog catcher, you
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be talking about revolution, you know, But I
Speaker 1: think that probably more you know, more appropriate to be, Like,
Speaker 1: if you can't win a union election, you probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: be talking about revolution because even if you want to
Speaker 1: do all the things, you need to have the ability,
Speaker 1: the skills, the ability immediate conflict, getting everyone on board
Speaker 1: to do the collective action that like you would need
Speaker 1: to do to successfully kind of like carry out like
Speaker 1: you know, it's one thing to have the the grand insurrection.
Speaker 1: It's the other thing to carry it forward and keep
Speaker 1: carrying it to the point where you're over the line
Speaker 1: you've completely changed the world, right, So and I think
Speaker 1: that And so I just think that like UM and
Speaker 1: I think that's similar things go with like you know,
Speaker 1: tenant organizing, community organizing. There's various types of organizing that
Speaker 1: use those similar skills that you get in like a
Speaker 1: union campaign. UM. And it's just a very different type
Speaker 1: of UM politics and organization and skills that you would
Speaker 1: get from, you know, showing up for your local justice
Speaker 1: dem and you know, like knocking on the door, sister rangers.
Speaker 1: You'll never you may never speak to you again. You know.
Speaker 1: When you're talking with your coworkers, those are your coworkers.
Speaker 1: They are going to be there until you're you know,
Speaker 1: you retire or you're fired yep, or you quit. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's I guess that's another good takeaway I think from
Speaker 1: all this. So one thing I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: to get to is, so I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are listening to this, who working no
Speaker 1: need workplaces and want to try to start this, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what would be your recommendations for them.
Speaker 1: You know, how, how how do you start this process?
Speaker 1: What does this look like? In what kinds of conversations
Speaker 1: should you be having with your coworkers? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So um, I think one of the first things that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't understand is that there is an amount of risk
Speaker 1: and stuff too organizing, and that you're, like, first off,
Speaker 1: like you should be chill and like not like running
Speaker 1: around telling everyone you want a union, because that's a
Speaker 1: great way to lose your job. Um. I think the
Speaker 1: thing is is that you build relationships and find out
Speaker 1: what's happening, like just like you know, take from your
Speaker 1: experience and figure out what's like in h like, man,
Speaker 1: it really sucks like I got like I got screwed
Speaker 1: over on my vacation requests or like I, you know, man,
Speaker 1: our raises were really shitty this year, and I heard like,
Speaker 1: you know, boss talking about like how much like like
Speaker 1: they've made so much money that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think that it comes down to you have
Speaker 1: to be It's kind of like a combination of like
Speaker 1: like an investigative reporter and like someone who is just
Speaker 1: really good at like talking to people and just kind
Speaker 1: of like understanding what's making them tick and understanding also
Speaker 1: that maybe you're not the person who's going to get
Speaker 1: everyone on board, but that finding other people who ever,
Speaker 1: Like I think the big thing is like who's like
Speaker 1: the most prospected person on like in your work area
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, who like they know that the
Speaker 1: unit or they know the work area, they've been there
Speaker 1: the longest, they have like the most experience. People look
Speaker 1: up to them. There are the people who train other
Speaker 1: people that sort of thing. Those are the people who
Speaker 1: everyone looks to when it comes down to these sorts
Speaker 1: of things, and you know, just you don't have to
Speaker 1: be friends with everybody, but like doing it's I think
Speaker 1: it's really good to just, like two, be open to
Speaker 1: listening to everybody that you work with and finding out
Speaker 1: what it is that's really going on. Yes, I've noticed
Speaker 1: like in a lot of places that I've worked, like
Speaker 1: the boss is often don't really know what's going on either,
Speaker 1: like they, And I think that that that's something I
Speaker 1: can give you if you understand how the process works
Speaker 1: and who's doing what and what people like need, that
Speaker 1: gives you like a big vantage over the bosses who
Speaker 1: just have no idea what's going on, which I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's very it's very normal for bosses to
Speaker 1: really not know what's happening, and there's always someone who does,
Speaker 1: like figuring out the people who really know how things
Speaker 1: work are like those are like the those are the
Speaker 1: people who, um, you want to be talking with and
Speaker 1: figuring out like where they kind of stand on things,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I think like the first step
Speaker 1: is like just having good relationships and people trusting you
Speaker 1: and you know, you know, if you know, like, I
Speaker 1: don't think everyone needs to be a superstar workers sort
Speaker 1: of thing to be a good union organizer. But like
Speaker 1: they always say, it's like people who have the most
Speaker 1: problems oftentimes are people that are don't make great organizers
Speaker 1: because people don't see them as people to follow. But
Speaker 1: um um, but I think that it's important to just
Speaker 1: like talk with your to like just figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on first. That's your first step. Figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on? What are the things I mean? And you
Speaker 1: can come around together in you know, and like and
Speaker 1: how do you get people outside of the workplace? So
Speaker 1: you talk like how do you, like do you have
Speaker 1: like a group chat or signal chat or like a
Speaker 1: What's app chat or Facebook group? And where do you
Speaker 1: just like start kind of like and you know, be
Speaker 1: very care be careful about who's involved and just kind
Speaker 1: of like low key, just like start talking with folks
Speaker 1: and identifying to people who, um, who are outside of
Speaker 1: your work area, who know people like sometimes it's you know,
Speaker 1: you'll talk to people and they're like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about a union, but you'll be like, do
Speaker 1: you know anyone who cares? Who who has said anything
Speaker 1: about unions before, and so talking to people to find
Speaker 1: out who they know. Like these are all this kind
Speaker 1: of like crucial first steps to like organizing. And I
Speaker 1: think the thing is is that, like there have been
Speaker 1: times where you'll have a non union work place where
Speaker 1: if the people in a particular area of of like
Speaker 1: a of like a hospital or like a workplace wherever,
Speaker 1: we'll do some collective thing that gets some sort of results.
Speaker 1: So I think it's always like it's like, let's get
Speaker 1: people to sign off on a petition about like you know,
Speaker 1: like if of your coworkers are unhappy with like raises
Speaker 1: or something like that. Like the more people that are
Speaker 1: involved in those first steps, the more likely it is
Speaker 1: that it won't result in retaliation and like you'll end
Speaker 1: up getting some sort of victory. Um. So I guess
Speaker 1: like the thing that I would say is just like
Speaker 1: be be ready for like people to look at greet
Speaker 1: you with skepticism because like it's it's hard, it's a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do, and always just be finding out
Speaker 1: what is bothering people and then look at little things
Speaker 1: that you can do to kind of like flex power,
Speaker 1: like to like actively flects your power and um. It
Speaker 1: can be as small as like everyone bringing up the
Speaker 1: same issue at like a work meeting, right Like if
Speaker 1: you and it could be like, hey, let's talk about
Speaker 1: this at this work meeting. This is and if we
Speaker 1: all say something together, like, we're going to be fine, right. UM.
Speaker 1: So like starting with those first steps, I think it
Speaker 1: is the first like thing, Like the first thing is
Speaker 1: know what's going on, build relationships, be a trustworthy person,
Speaker 1: Like you can't be like the unit gossip or the
Speaker 1: the work area gossip that like knows that's in everyone's
Speaker 1: business or stirring up stuff and be successful at this. UM.
Speaker 1: But if you are, you know, if you're someone that
Speaker 1: people like trust or look to or you know, like
Speaker 1: a person that people are like they help solve our problems,
Speaker 1: those are the people who I mean you're going to
Speaker 1: be well set to begin to kind of take the
Speaker 1: steps on that and then you know as you kind
Speaker 1: of build those kind of like build that organization step
Speaker 1: by step. No, no union UM is going to invest
Speaker 1: the time in a union campaign. If it's just you
Speaker 1: and like two other people, like you need like you
Speaker 1: need to get a room, They're always say like, well,
Speaker 1: if you get a room full of people together, I'm
Speaker 1: willing to talk to them, and that's kind of the thing.
Speaker 1: And you know, Zoom and stuff has actually made that
Speaker 1: a little bit easier UM, which in some ways can
Speaker 1: be a weakness because you end up with like it's
Speaker 1: a lot less commitment to show up to a Zoom
Speaker 1: meeting that it is to UM to show up at
Speaker 1: like a bar or a place after work UM or
Speaker 1: a church or wherever. It's like a good, like h
Speaker 1: like neutral safe place and people feel like they can
Speaker 1: be honest with each other about what's going on. UM.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, just like being the more
Speaker 1: the the more people you get on board with the thing,
Speaker 1: the more likely that it will succeed. You'll attract support
Speaker 1: from like an actual union that UM is able to
Speaker 1: help you if you decide that that's how you want
Speaker 1: to do it, or if that makes sense in a
Speaker 1: legal context. And so I just like always like start small,
Speaker 1: figure out the small things, be willing to do like
Speaker 1: collective action to get little small victories. And that's a
Speaker 1: great way to get started, I think, and then like
Speaker 1: really do like sleuthing and research, like figure out how
Speaker 1: things actually work. UM. That's like you know, That was
Speaker 1: a problem with the Best Market campaign down in uh
Speaker 1: down in Alabama with those Amazon workers is they didn't
Speaker 1: know how many people worked at that facility, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they're like, oh, yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: to include like an extra thousand people in this vote,
Speaker 1: you know, like six weeks out, and you know, like
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to take a
Speaker 1: dump on the people who did that. But like, if
Speaker 1: you don't know that there's like another thousand people, or
Speaker 1: you don't have like everyone on board, you're not going
Speaker 1: to succeed. So no, everything you can as you're going
Speaker 1: in and do everything you can to find out things
Speaker 1: or make buddies with the friends buddies of the people
Speaker 1: who are gonna you know, know these things and you know,
Speaker 1: and then support each other, like it means showing up
Speaker 1: when like someone Sometimes what we do during these campaigns
Speaker 1: is someone will will have the contact for someone who's interested,
Speaker 1: and then your job is to go and find that
Speaker 1: person where they work and talk with them and then
Speaker 1: talk with them while they talk with their coworkers or
Speaker 1: back up them while they're talking to the co workers.
Speaker 1: Because they trust their their coworkers, trust their coworker, you know,
Speaker 1: you're a random stranger, you know, and then like, don't
Speaker 1: be afraid to say I don't know, but I will
Speaker 1: find out. Right, there's like this, there's this pressure I
Speaker 1: think to like have all the answers to like whatever
Speaker 1: people's questions are. And I think that it's like, um,
Speaker 1: I think that it's like I think that it's important
Speaker 1: to be honest when you don't understand, but then do
Speaker 1: the work of figuring out the answers for people. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think people respect that. And you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are vocally against these sorts of
Speaker 1: things up front it's because they don't know. And if
Speaker 1: you you know, you're like, no, we've got a right
Speaker 1: to do this, or like, you know, the the you know,
Speaker 1: a management will say things like managion will say things
Speaker 1: like oh you will, um, you know, the union will
Speaker 1: get in between our relationship with you know, with you
Speaker 1: and us, right, And the point is is that like, well,
Speaker 1: the union is us where the code where the people
Speaker 1: doing it? Like everyone running You can't run a union
Speaker 1: if you don't have a bunch of people involved from
Speaker 1: the workplace. And it's like and making sure that people
Speaker 1: who are UM those people who end up being kind
Speaker 1: of like spokespersons for everyone else are people that folks
Speaker 1: trust and they have like a good like grasp of
Speaker 1: what everyone wants and yeah, so yeah, and then like
Speaker 1: you know, don't get bogged down in the legal ship.
Speaker 1: Like you know, collective action really is like your most
Speaker 1: powerful tool. Um all the other kind of like the
Speaker 1: grievance is not stuff. It's important and you can't let
Speaker 1: it go, but it's also like it's designed to kind
Speaker 1: of grind people down. So um, you know, the more
Speaker 1: collective action you take, like the more likely it is
Speaker 1: that you're going to be successful and keep people engaged
Speaker 1: and excited. Yeah, going back to what you were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: this might mind up being last episode depending on where
Speaker 1: this breaks down time wise, But yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: also it's just this is going to take time and
Speaker 1: a lot of work, and I think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: important age to understand going in that this is a
Speaker 1: long and difficult process. It's not gonna happen overnight, and
Speaker 1: be that it's a lot of work, Like you have
Speaker 1: to there's there's a lot of things that you have
Speaker 1: to do. There's a lot of sort of logistics. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of talking, there's a lot of like negotiating,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of I mean just just
Speaker 1: even I don't know, before anything gets off the ground,
Speaker 1: you have to spend enormous amounts of time and effort
Speaker 1: doing off And that's that's that's like it's just the
Speaker 1: reality of it. So yeah, there's there's no there's there's
Speaker 1: no there's there's there's there's no magic bullet like there's
Speaker 1: no sort of yeah, there's there's no just like one
Speaker 1: thing you can do that like magically makes a you
Speaker 1: need appear. It's a bunch of people coming together and
Speaker 1: like fighting for it for a long time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that that's like the main thing is like you're
Speaker 1: it's it's a cliche. That's like it's a marathon, not
Speaker 1: as prints. Um. Sometimes I hate when people say that ship,
Speaker 1: but it's true, like you you really do have like, um,
Speaker 1: you're in it for the long haul, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times it's like your people are ready to do
Speaker 1: these things when they're like this is like I don't
Speaker 1: want you know, it's one thing to pop up in
Speaker 1: a place and be there for like you know, six months,
Speaker 1: to be like I need a we need a union. Right.
Speaker 1: No one you know that works in that place trust you.
Speaker 1: They don't know who you are. Like, they're not going
Speaker 1: to follow you to do anything or you know, or
Speaker 1: take you you know, follow your lead. Um. It's the
Speaker 1: people who are like, I'm gonna be here, this is
Speaker 1: my this is where I want to be, and you know,
Speaker 1: this is a I want to be here for the
Speaker 1: next few years. And think of it as like a
Speaker 1: long term investment in the quality of your life and
Speaker 1: the quality of life at your workplace, because to win,
Speaker 1: you have to be sticking around, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's where it gets tough with people who are
Speaker 1: in like precarious types of employment or different types of
Speaker 1: and that's where you have to start looking at alternate
Speaker 1: ways to organize because maybe you're a precarious worker who
Speaker 1: does maybe you drive, like for a right here service,
Speaker 1: or maybe you like do delivery or like you know,
Speaker 1: um for an app or whatever you delivery for an app.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing is is like that sort
Speaker 1: of thing because of how and you know, these aren't
Speaker 1: like new forms of work. This is actually really old
Speaker 1: forms of work that are just like been like rebranded
Speaker 1: by tech bros decided like they're like they're like they're great.
Speaker 1: Genius is like rebranding the kind of like precarious work
Speaker 1: that was really like prominent like throughout the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And it's like, so then what do you do is
Speaker 1: you come up with ways to organize people regardless of
Speaker 1: like oh, like i'm you know, I work for this,
Speaker 1: like I work for lift or work for Uber and
Speaker 1: it kind of switches back and forth. Like the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's like that's when you start talking with you know,
Speaker 1: rideshare drivers across different like apps or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: you come up with a way to work collectively, um
Speaker 1: to to change sorts of things. And sometimes that's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be it's gonna be tough, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: when I kind of look at those that sort of
Speaker 1: thing is like this is where it's a learning experience
Speaker 1: and maybe I don't get everything I want, but you
Speaker 1: know it's really important. I mean, it's like building these
Speaker 1: networks of people who care about like what they're working.
Speaker 1: Conditions are like, and you can pull things off maybe
Speaker 1: unexpectedly that you didn't expect. We're going to be like
Speaker 1: the thing, you know, like you may start with something
Speaker 1: that looks like a union drive and then you end
Speaker 1: up with something that looks like very different. It could
Speaker 1: you know, could go in all sorts of different directions.
Speaker 1: So um, you know there and look outside of the US,
Speaker 1: you know, their countries where like in UM, I think
Speaker 1: that there have been some pretty successful delivery app organ
Speaker 1: to organizing in London, UM. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: that to a certain extent, like formal extent, US unions
Speaker 1: have not been very successful in organizing those workers because
Speaker 1: it doesn't it's hard to do from the extant business
Speaker 1: union model, and so it's like it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you know, it used to be, you know,
Speaker 1: they would have like you know, the fight would be
Speaker 1: instead of trying to get like workers are like a
Speaker 1: contract at a particular like work site, you set up
Speaker 1: a hiring hall, like the i w W would set
Speaker 1: up hiring halls, UM and like you know for lumberjacks
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and those workers are always precarious, right,
Speaker 1: but they would go trying set up so that like
Speaker 1: people would only take jobs out of the hiring hall
Speaker 1: and that's how they would control their like their work.
Speaker 1: And I think that more unions needed. And part of
Speaker 1: this is, like would if there's any union people out
Speaker 1: there who are in staff and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Is like, there needs to be a serious re examination
Speaker 1: of how we do unions in this country. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people inside unions understand that, but
Speaker 1: no one has quite done it yet in a way
Speaker 1: that's effective. And I think that we really do need
Speaker 1: to kind of re evaluate that sort of stuff. So
Speaker 1: just you know, as someone who's going into like a
Speaker 1: new sort of organizing campaign, just understand that like getting
Speaker 1: the union contract isn't necessarily the end gold end goal
Speaker 1: is to try and get your boss to do things
Speaker 1: differently so that you're not like miserable at work. And
Speaker 1: that might look like a contractor it might look like
Speaker 1: you know, a a one day like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: app strike or something like that. You know, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: figure you've got to figure out how it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Like with you know, in healthcare, you know, there's this
Speaker 1: idea that like, you know, there's the gold standard of
Speaker 1: the strike where you strike until we win and we're
Speaker 1: out for like you know, like two or three months. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem is is that there's an industry of scab
Speaker 1: nurses and healthcare workers where at any point they can
Speaker 1: bring in people to replace enough of you that a
Speaker 1: hospital can maintain operations. And unless you're super organized like
Speaker 1: they were up in um Buffalo, uh with c W
Speaker 1: A like, and have a big network of people and
Speaker 1: you're ready to go to like you know, like picket
Speaker 1: board members houses and that sort of stuff. Um, those
Speaker 1: long term strikes can end in defeat where you end
Speaker 1: up with you know, you're all replaced with scabs and
Speaker 1: and it sucks, and it's happened, and then you gotta
Speaker 1: I guess you gotta learn from it, you know, like
Speaker 1: we've there was a famous strike in Minnesota with healthcare
Speaker 1: workers and they went out and they were out for
Speaker 1: months and months and there are people on you know,
Speaker 1: going to the SUP kitchen to feed their kids and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they lost right. And so my union tends to
Speaker 1: do one day strikes, but instead of just being at
Speaker 1: one hospital, we organized multiple hospitals across the country so
Speaker 1: that it soaks up all the like scat drives up
Speaker 1: right scabs and it really like that. I think ideas
Speaker 1: like intermittent strikes were actually a really powerful tool back when,
Speaker 1: you know, back when it was the c I oh,
Speaker 1: and it was like we're going to just stop working
Speaker 1: until he fixed this problem. UM. And that's why they
Speaker 1: made them illegal. And it takes a lot of work
Speaker 1: to pull them off. But if you can't pull them off,
Speaker 1: that could be an effective way. And if you're not
Speaker 1: in a union, maybe getting people down for a one
Speaker 1: day like work stoppage at your work or even you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's like we're not starting our shift right. I've
Speaker 1: been in the room. I've been in the room where
Speaker 1: it's like, no, we're not going out to take that
Speaker 1: assignment until like we get our staff situation set up
Speaker 1: like fixed. And you know, sometimes it's just those collective
Speaker 1: actions are you know, it's not the end, Like there's
Speaker 1: no end. I'll be all one size fits all solution,
Speaker 1: just be ready to kind of like explore what it means,
Speaker 1: get all the resources you can. There's groups like there's
Speaker 1: still like the Industrial Workers of the World, which has
Speaker 1: really good organizing trainings o T one oh one and
Speaker 1: one oh two. I'll pitch that as a member of
Speaker 1: as a also a dual carding member of the i
Speaker 1: w w UM. But there's also Labor Notes UM and
Speaker 1: other groups like Essential Workers Organizing Committee. That's sort of
Speaker 1: things that like give you good like rundowns on how
Speaker 1: to do the organizing work. So just be careful, always
Speaker 1: be careful. Be aware that people are afraid. Bosses use
Speaker 1: fear um to scare you guys, to scare everybody, and like,
Speaker 1: the the more people on board with a thing, the
Speaker 1: less fear. Like it's amazing when you're running up into
Speaker 1: a strike and you're really firing on all cylinders and
Speaker 1: like everyone in your like work areas, like we're getting
Speaker 1: together to take a picture, like getting ready to go
Speaker 1: on strike, and it's like literally, I mean when we
Speaker 1: went on strike, when our hospital went on strike, it
Speaker 1: was the first time where like there was like nurses
Speaker 1: on one places the first time when all of us
Speaker 1: were in one place ever. And it's this massive like
Speaker 1: coming together thing experience. And it's really hard to describe
Speaker 1: when you when because you know, we're always griping at
Speaker 1: each other about this or that thing is like, but
Speaker 1: when you're actually all out there together at the same time,
Speaker 1: when you pull it off, it's really amazing. Um, it's hard,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to describe, um, but when you do it,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the purest drug. And so I've
Speaker 1: I've heard some people who are union skeptical be like,
Speaker 1: well you just experienced like the good ship, and like
Speaker 1: what about all the defeats, Like, well, get the little hits,
Speaker 1: get the little hits here and there, and get yourself
Speaker 1: to the point where you can do the big thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you're the whole thing is like getting people
Speaker 1: to do the thing is like the is it's like
Speaker 1: the perennial uh, you know, curse at the left, can
Speaker 1: you do it? Or curse of you know, like the
Speaker 1: the organizer activist or you know, whatever you wanna call it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just but you know, if you don't
Speaker 1: do anything, nothing happens. You can all sit and complain
Speaker 1: and nothing changes. So you know, the only way to
Speaker 1: changes things is take those complaints and turn them into
Speaker 1: collective action. Yeah. I think I think that's that's that
Speaker 1: that that that that's that's a pretty good positive note
Speaker 1: to end on. Just go do thing. Go do the
Speaker 1: thing now, stop tweets, stop tweeting, stop tweeting about it,
Speaker 1: Go do the thing. Um. Yeah, I think that's I Like,
Speaker 1: I guess one last thing, because I talked about social
Speaker 1: media and talk. You know, I talked smack. I Like,
Speaker 1: I've been off Twitter for some months now, is it
Speaker 1: really cleared my brain? But you know, um, being on
Speaker 1: finding the social media space where your your coworkers are
Speaker 1: at is really important. And that might mean setting up
Speaker 1: like a discord or you know what's app or a
Speaker 1: Facebook group. You can set up secret Facebook groups that
Speaker 1: no one can see. And yeah, like you like, Facebook
Speaker 1: will periodically shut them down. But like our hospital has
Speaker 1: like a like a Facebook group with like two thousand
Speaker 1: nurses and we and that's where we got really amped up.
Speaker 1: And it was a way for us to be talking
Speaker 1: with each other and talk each other through um, the
Speaker 1: stress of setting up you know this thing. And then also,
Speaker 1: like you know, people workers can't organize like like people
Speaker 1: will do organizing even if like they don't have like
Speaker 1: that full support. So like some coworkers, not coworkers, but
Speaker 1: members of my union went on strike at Cook County
Speaker 1: this year, and the whole thing was organized practice without
Speaker 1: like staff right because the staff were barred from being
Speaker 1: in meetings, like in person meetings because of COVID, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't go into the hospital because of COVID. So
Speaker 1: people were very pissed about how things have been going,
Speaker 1: and they were talking to each other and we organized
Speaker 1: that strike. They organized that strike on their own practically, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it lined up. They were off there. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have that no strike clause like operating at
Speaker 1: the time, and um, and they pulled off like a
Speaker 1: pretty like a significant victory um from their one day
Speaker 1: strike and it really um really you know, like got
Speaker 1: them some big wins. But and they didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: need the union to do it for them. You know,
Speaker 1: the union was kind of like a facilitation tool rather
Speaker 1: than like the thing that got it done. I think
Speaker 1: that's the other thing is that there are people who
Speaker 1: think that like it's all dependent on like having like
Speaker 1: this hero staffer sort of thing situation, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, like if it's out the workers
Speaker 1: doing it themselves, nothing's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, the power,
Speaker 1: the power is with the working class itself, and if
Speaker 1: the working class doesn't use it, nothing will ever happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if it does use it, I will trail off here.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. So, John, is is there any place that
Speaker 1: you want people to find things that you do? Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to be on Twitter. UM periodically will show
Speaker 1: up on h varn vlog, which is uh see Derek
Speaker 1: Varnes m vlog on YouTube. UM there's I recommend people
Speaker 1: h listen to. There's a group of podcasts called the
Speaker 1: Emancipatient Network. I really like their stuff, specially UM. There's
Speaker 1: a what's it called General Intellect Unit which talks about
Speaker 1: like cybernetics and the lab. UM. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of particularly cool stuff that's just come out recently about
Speaker 1: UM about strategy that I think is really important for
Speaker 1: everyone to understand. UM. I was a founding member of
Speaker 1: the uh Libertarian Socialist Caucus at d s A, but
Speaker 1: I'm no longer in d s A. There's a but
Speaker 1: that group is still kind of kicking around. We're coming
Speaker 1: up with new things. Uh. Then then I guess like, UM,
Speaker 1: the University Chicago Labor Council is a group that I
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time with. And there's also a
Speaker 1: Tennants United High Park with LAN, which is a tenant
Speaker 1: union that you helped set up. And yeah, so you know, UM,
Speaker 1: go out there and you know, don't don't listen to
Speaker 1: me or don't try and find follow me. Go like
Speaker 1: you go figure it out and you're our neighborhood and yeah,
Speaker 1: and set up a mill, set up a million different
Speaker 1: you know, like labor councils and worker committees and tenant
Speaker 1: unions that. Yeah, like Bill, build power. That's why I
Speaker 1: think I sometimes we are afraid of the term power.
Speaker 1: I think that power is that it's best when it's everybody.
Speaker 1: And so I guess I might say it's like, go
Speaker 1: out there and build community and worker power, and um,
Speaker 1: don't be afraid because fear is the one thing that
Speaker 1: they've got to wave over our heads. And sometimes you
Speaker 1: just got to take that jump and do the thing.
Speaker 1: And uh and that's how we're hopefully going to win
Speaker 1: one day in the world. Yep. And you can do
Speaker 1: this just like all of these things, everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about for the past like two hours, these were
Speaker 1: all just done by ordinary people. Like there's there's there's
Speaker 1: it's all it's all done my random people. And you
Speaker 1: know that random person can be you. You just have
Speaker 1: to go and do go do the thing. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this that this has been It could happen here. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter at Happened Here pod and
Speaker 1: also on Instagram. There and Uh, yeah, there's other cool
Speaker 1: Zone stuff. Oh, I guess yeah, we there's there's there's
Speaker 1: a new show called Mega Corp that that we have
Speaker 1: that's about how corporations are bad and the first seasons
Speaker 1: about Amazon. It's out now. Okay, it just doesn't have
Speaker 1: a Twitter, but yeah, it's It's called Mega Corp. And
Speaker 1: you can find it wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Yes, okay, bye.
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Speaker 1: Welcome everybody too. It could happen here. UM podcast about
Speaker 1: I don't know how things are kind of kind of
Speaker 1: kind of crumbling and how we can maybe put it,
Speaker 1: put stuff, put stuff back together. And today I am
Speaker 1: excited to talk with a senior Let's see what is
Speaker 1: what is what? What is the actual? What's actual term?
Speaker 1: I saw it? A senior programs strategist at Wikimedia, Alex Stinson. Hello, greetings, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's so good to be here. I'm very excited about
Speaker 1: our talk today because I mean, this should this should
Speaker 1: surprise nobody that I used to I used to be
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia editor back in the day. Not not shocking
Speaker 1: at all, if if, if you know me. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about what kind of Wikipedia just
Speaker 1: itself and then also, uh, climate misinformation and disinformation and
Speaker 1: how we can maybe create a better understanding of climate
Speaker 1: change in its effects across kind of the world, and
Speaker 1: how digital information works. Those are all kind of topics
Speaker 1: we talk about often enough, but never within the actual
Speaker 1: context of like Wikipedia as an entity. Um, so I
Speaker 1: guess let's let's just start there with with Wikipedia, and
Speaker 1: like for those who don't maybe maybe people like use website,
Speaker 1: but they're not quite sure what it is, Like how
Speaker 1: how do you actually describe what Wikipedia is? Because it
Speaker 1: is like an interesting kind of amorphous entity. It's so
Speaker 1: many things. Um. I think most people are used to
Speaker 1: thinking about Wikipedia is like the fact checking device. Like
Speaker 1: I have a bar argument with my friends and I
Speaker 1: pull out my phone and yeah, yeahs website at me. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of things. It's three language Wikipedia's. Actually
Speaker 1: it's not just one. Each of these communities has its
Speaker 1: own editorial community. Um. Last I checked, it's like sixty
Speaker 1: million articles across the languages. It's it's really it's a
Speaker 1: lot of different content. Um. And a topic can be
Speaker 1: on each of those Wikipedia's right. Um, And this is
Speaker 1: important as we start talking about disinformation, is like each
Speaker 1: Wikipedia because it's edited by people in that language, and
Speaker 1: it's written by that language community. Um. You know, each
Speaker 1: article is different and it have different perspectives. Um. Two
Speaker 1: hundred eighty thousand volunteers editing every month. So this is
Speaker 1: a lot of people, right. But the bulk of that's
Speaker 1: happening on English Wikipedia and some of the larger languages
Speaker 1: that are spoken across multiple cultural context And then there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of other content sitting behind Wikipedia. So
Speaker 1: there's a media repository, um. And there's a we called
Speaker 1: Wikimedia Commons, and there's a database called wiki Data, which
Speaker 1: kind of powers those little knowledge graphs on the right
Speaker 1: side of Google and a whole bunch of other parts
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Wikidata shows up in Amazon, Alexa and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other places, right. And and so it's
Speaker 1: it's we're not just like one website. It's many websites,
Speaker 1: lots of knowledge, lots of platforms, lots of context. Um.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to that more as we talked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what really interesting part of it is like I don't know,
Speaker 1: my my personal kind of social leanings. I generally kind
Speaker 1: of like things that are more decentralized in general. Um.
Speaker 1: Other other hosts in the podcast are generally kind of
Speaker 1: on like the progressive left libertarian spectrum. Um. And one
Speaker 1: thing I do really appreciate about Wikipedia is is it's
Speaker 1: more like it's it's not I I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like open source, but its the way it has decentralized
Speaker 1: editing and all that kind of stuff. It's just a
Speaker 1: really interesting model of of like what if a lot
Speaker 1: more stuff worked this way? And I'm not sure like
Speaker 1: how how much of like a decentralization focus is there,
Speaker 1: like consciously at people at like the foundation and people
Speaker 1: who try to like act really like run it behind
Speaker 1: the scenes and stuff. Yeah. So Wikipedia grows out of
Speaker 1: the like open source movement and the kind of early
Speaker 1: days of the Internet. Right, this idea that like knowledge
Speaker 1: wants to be free, technology wants to be free, software
Speaker 1: wants to be free. Um, let's let's use the legal
Speaker 1: infrastructure to like create freedom, right uh in that sense.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the free as in like anyone
Speaker 1: can edit, and then the free to like do whatever
Speaker 1: you want out there in the world. Um. There there's
Speaker 1: people are like free as in beer and free as
Speaker 1: in speech, right uh. And those things are those things
Speaker 1: are also there's they're always intention uh and they're kind
Speaker 1: of working. And as you can imagine, especially when you
Speaker 1: get outside of kind of multicultural Internet spaces like English Wikipedia, um,
Speaker 1: it can get challenging. Like if you're in Croatia and
Speaker 1: everyone is speaking Croatian, there's a very small bubble in
Speaker 1: which to create that Wikipedia, right, um. And so it's
Speaker 1: interesting in that sense. Um. I think there's also another
Speaker 1: part of Wikipedia that a lot of people don't see,
Speaker 1: which is the movement behind it. So there's the editorial communities.
Speaker 1: People show up and make edits. Um. But because there's
Speaker 1: this ideology that you're talking about, this like decentralized, like
Speaker 1: we need to share knowledge or culture or language on
Speaker 1: the Internet, there's also a whole social movement sitting behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Uh. And there there's a podcast recently dot
Speaker 1: com The Wikipedia Story that kind of captured that the
Speaker 1: essence of that, um. And it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: people like myself, So I started editing in high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, one of those like, oh I know how
Speaker 1: to click the edit button and I figure out how
Speaker 1: to use the Internet and that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that like the intuitiveness of
Speaker 1: clicking and edit button on a piece of open source
Speaker 1: software to create content is just not It's not clear, right,
Speaker 1: And so you have to organize and invite people in
Speaker 1: and so we have a whole movement that does that too.
Speaker 1: That there's about a d organizations around the world that
Speaker 1: we organize events, work with libraries and museums and educational institutions,
Speaker 1: and so there's always this um kind of interesting dynamic
Speaker 1: where our values, which is this like open software platform
Speaker 1: stuff has also lived in our practice, in our outreach,
Speaker 1: like creating change through society by sharing knowledge and education. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think, yeah, it's it's it's an interesting
Speaker 1: it's an interesting dynamic. Yeah, I think that does create
Speaker 1: a really oftentimes beautiful reflection. It can it can have
Speaker 1: some dark sides different once in a while, but it
Speaker 1: is it is really nice to have like kind of
Speaker 1: the ideology driving it being reflected in the actions of
Speaker 1: operating it and spreading it and that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is something we kind of briefly touched on already,
Speaker 1: but I think I'd like to move on to kind
Speaker 1: of why like how climate change and broader like social
Speaker 1: issues are covered on Wikipedia because you already mentioned like
Speaker 1: it's kind because there's not a Wikipedia, there's many based
Speaker 1: on different languages in places. It feels like to me,
Speaker 1: whenever social issues kind of get covered on Wikipedia, it's
Speaker 1: going to be in some part like a local reflection
Speaker 1: of whatever is in that area. You know, if if
Speaker 1: there's like a white liberal writing articles in New York,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be different than someone you know, halfway across
Speaker 1: the world writing them in you know, a much smaller country.
Speaker 1: Let's say, like Belarus, who's under like what I would
Speaker 1: call a dictatorship. Um, so that's gonna change kind of
Speaker 1: the nature of what people are making because of that
Speaker 1: kind of divide. So how how does that kind of
Speaker 1: crop up? And is there any like solutions to that
Speaker 1: or because because the because of the decentralized thing, it's like,
Speaker 1: how much can we like impose like who like I'm
Speaker 1: i'm I'm I'm not in Belarus? How much can I
Speaker 1: impose what I want their Wikipedia to look like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's kind of two or three dynamics you're you're touching
Speaker 1: on here. The first is because they're kind of an
Speaker 1: intention bias, Like something comes up in the news and
Speaker 1: our Wikipedia community like people are within minutes of breaking
Speaker 1: news stories are usually like editing the page, working to
Speaker 1: improve it. Right. Um, So if things show up in
Speaker 1: the you know, European American press, uh, it's very likely,
Speaker 1: especially something like English Wikipedia will pick up on it
Speaker 1: and immediately cover it. And because there are multiple perspectives
Speaker 1: in those press usually um kind of the ideological uh
Speaker 1: kind of multi sided nice like works itself out because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of eyes and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who know how to edit there, right, um on in
Speaker 1: a kind of cultural linguistic geographic context where there's like
Speaker 1: one set of stories and there's not a lot of diversity.
Speaker 1: Um uh, this this happens. And and I'm going to
Speaker 1: refer to the Croattion Wikipedia because we actually had an
Speaker 1: external researcher look at Croatian Wikipedia, because part of it
Speaker 1: has been caught by by folks with kind of very
Speaker 1: ideological leanings in a way that's excluding others. And this
Speaker 1: is not good, right. It creates a very one sided
Speaker 1: information environment and it really reflects um kind of the
Speaker 1: news dynamic going on there. So when like breaking news happens,
Speaker 1: or when a topic like a social issue or not
Speaker 1: necess like climate change, is not a social issue, right,
Speaker 1: this is a global, like life threatening issue. UM. When
Speaker 1: when something becomes politicized, it's very easy for especially in
Speaker 1: smaller language wikipedias, for a few people to kind of
Speaker 1: swing the whole perspective on that. UM. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this breaking news issue and this is where are kind
Speaker 1: of organized communities are really important. So the example we
Speaker 1: when I point out of this working well, UM is
Speaker 1: in medicine. So are our medical community during the Bola
Speaker 1: outbreaks a few years back. UM in West Africa. We're
Speaker 1: able to organize both on English and then languages that
Speaker 1: were accessible for local communities, high quality coverage of the
Speaker 1: medical content because it's like has impact on people's lives,
Speaker 1: and so they recruited translators. They thought about, like what's
Speaker 1: a simple way to communicate the story, um in that context,
Speaker 1: and like what do the workers, the or the advocates
Speaker 1: or whoever on the ground who's working with that crisis,
Speaker 1: what knowledge do they need? Right? UM? And you see
Speaker 1: like other open technology movements do stuff like this, like
Speaker 1: humanitarian Open Streetmap has a similar kind of way of organizing.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, there's a crisis happening, UM, let's pull
Speaker 1: people together from different parts of the world who have
Speaker 1: the right knowledge or skills and like address the knowledge gap. Um.
Speaker 1: So so you can solve it. It's just it's complicated. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've been trying to address as a
Speaker 1: movement what we call the gender gap. So there's both
Speaker 1: less women editors as women's content on many of the wikis,
Speaker 1: and like, it's taken years, and it's very hard to organize,
Speaker 1: and even when there's investment in it, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: challenging to to make substantial progress because there might be
Speaker 1: contextual issues around it too. And so you can't just
Speaker 1: like drop in on a Central Asian language with a
Speaker 1: like Western perspective and expect to like change the culture
Speaker 1: of the wiki overnight. You have to engage with it
Speaker 1: consistently and be persistent and work on it over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. We are going to take a
Speaker 1: short break to hear a message from our lovely lovely
Speaker 1: advertisers unless it's exomobile again, but we will be back shortly, Okay,
Speaker 1: and we're back. Um. One one thing that we cover decently.
Speaker 1: Part of my job and and and and Robert Evans's
Speaker 1: job is disinformation and misinformation and how that's to a
Speaker 1: tough spreads online um, particularly you usually kind of linked
Speaker 1: to like political extremism um or conspiracy theories or you know,
Speaker 1: in that general kind of bubble um. And so what
Speaker 1: what type of kind of climate misinformation has really been
Speaker 1: festering on various you know wikipedias across the world really,
Speaker 1: because like we were just were talking about like these
Speaker 1: topics and how and how and like why it happens,
Speaker 1: but like what are the main types of misinformation or
Speaker 1: disinformation that is much more like prevalent? Yeah, Um, So
Speaker 1: the first is just kind of neglect of uh, content
Speaker 1: that's happening across the various things related to climate. Um.
Speaker 1: But we've identified on English Wikipedia over three thousand seven
Speaker 1: dred articles that are directly related to climate change. Uh.
Speaker 1: We don't have a very big editorial community in English
Speaker 1: on that topic. That's like interesting fluent in the science
Speaker 1: and fluent and the other stuff. And then you go
Speaker 1: out to the other languages and like some of the
Speaker 1: languages have like three thousand of them, some of them
Speaker 1: have like two hundred, right, um, And so there is
Speaker 1: both um and some of that content was like translated
Speaker 1: several years ago, right or five or ten years ago
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know, and like the climate rhetoric has
Speaker 1: really changed it and like numbers and statistics, all that
Speaker 1: stuff gets updated every year, and it's yeah, that is
Speaker 1: there is there's there's a lot to cap with and
Speaker 1: like reading the IPCC report or looking at any of
Speaker 1: the consensus science, there's like a lot of change that
Speaker 1: you have to be influent in, like science communication, you
Speaker 1: have to understand like where to look for the information. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. My partner is a Spanish language speaker
Speaker 1: and she was in a kind of workshop for journalists
Speaker 1: in Argentina for a climate communication and the workshop was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you should cite the Guardian, right, so even as to
Speaker 1: to kind of understand and this climate stuff. So a
Speaker 1: lot of these local language contexts, there aren't even good sources,
Speaker 1: and the sources they do have are often citing like
Speaker 1: the dominant narrative that's going on and like the anglophone
Speaker 1: news cycle, right, because there's not a lot of climate
Speaker 1: communication going on, and so there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: complexity involved in updating that much content all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the bulk of the stuff that kind of
Speaker 1: creeps in is like this neglect. Right. It's like some
Speaker 1: dominant idea in the narrative just hasn't been updated, and
Speaker 1: like we need someone to update it. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: like an organizing problem, right, that's uh, Like we need
Speaker 1: more people who are science literate, who speak the local language,
Speaker 1: who understand how to edit Wikipedia. Um. And that's trainable,
Speaker 1: Like we can do that. Yeah. The reason that matters,
Speaker 1: the neglect matters is it stops people from making decisions
Speaker 1: about climate change because they don't have like an accurate
Speaker 1: sense of what we need to do, right, which is
Speaker 1: cut the falsephiel, increase increased resilience, do adaptation like actual
Speaker 1: political change right um. And so so that that's just
Speaker 1: it's a problem. Um. The other stuff is a bit
Speaker 1: more it's a little bit more complicated. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things that happens is, as you know, there's quite
Speaker 1: a manipulation of narrative that has happened around climate change.
Speaker 1: There's this really great podcast by Amy Westervelt about how
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry like got its message into schools
Speaker 1: in the last three years in the US, and like
Speaker 1: that narrative is just so prevalent and so one of
Speaker 1: the things about wikipedias that we try to do a
Speaker 1: balance of positions. If there are reputable sources kind of
Speaker 1: describing or analyzing a topic, and this is back to
Speaker 1: your polarization question too. If they're reputable sources does gribing
Speaker 1: on topic, we try to give them equal weight and
Speaker 1: balance across the article. The problem with climate is that
Speaker 1: some of the narratives that look like reputable sources are
Speaker 1: just pumped out of fossil fuel industry funded think tanks, right,
Speaker 1: and these things are not truthful narratives, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: so the BBC ran an article, uh two weeks ago
Speaker 1: on kind of climate denial and some of these smaller languages,
Speaker 1: a smaller language wikipedias, and what they found was a
Speaker 1: lot of these narratives being given equal weight with the
Speaker 1: climate science. Um. And I took a look our community
Speaker 1: after that BBC article came out, started looking across all
Speaker 1: the language Wikipedia articles about just the main climate change page,
Speaker 1: and they found thirty one Wikipedia's that had some of
Speaker 1: that like equal weight of bad climate science. Interesting. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And you know the BBC article only found like five
Speaker 1: or ten, right, we found another lot a lot more yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's like it's a really like these
Speaker 1: narratives just seep in and you know, again, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back to the Croatian example, Like if your media
Speaker 1: environment has been locked down by a certain political rhetoric, too,
Speaker 1: those narratives might have traveled from like the Anglo sphere
Speaker 1: into these other spaces and then gotten stuck, right, and
Speaker 1: it's just like keeps getting recycled, and so that causes delay. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was listening to your podcasts recently about soft
Speaker 1: climate denial, Like this is what's happening in other language environments, right,
Speaker 1: is people are rehearsing this misinformation. It seems like a
Speaker 1: valid position because it's been rehearsed so many times by
Speaker 1: by folks. Some people who are championing that position are
Speaker 1: like doing so unknowingly, and then the process, we're kind
Speaker 1: of disconnecting it entirely from the source of the information.
Speaker 1: And that is just it's it's really bad. One interesting
Speaker 1: thing that I thought of when you were bringing up
Speaker 1: like sourcing, how sourcing itself coming an issue in like
Speaker 1: in the States. There's kind of like a joke that
Speaker 1: like wicked, like when people use just Wikipedia as like
Speaker 1: as a source to be like they just they just
Speaker 1: link the article. But like that is the default for
Speaker 1: so many people when they begin begin a research project,
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, what's the what's the what is what
Speaker 1: does Wikipedia have on it? What's the sources Wikipedia uses?
Speaker 1: Um and kind of branch off from there. It's a
Speaker 1: very common thing. So I'm not sure what like how
Speaker 1: different internet culture will be different in in other countries,
Speaker 1: But if they do not, if they if they don't
Speaker 1: have like the base sourcing necessary to create like a
Speaker 1: decent home page article, then just sourcing from Wikipedia in
Speaker 1: the first place becomes so much harder. Um, because you
Speaker 1: were saying, like just use the Guardian is is like
Speaker 1: one of the things, like that's not horrible advice, but
Speaker 1: if it's only just from one thing, then that that's
Speaker 1: going to change the entire nature of like coverage and
Speaker 1: information on specific topics. Yeah. Yeah, I've had just be
Speaker 1: really interesting kind of thing that I never thought of
Speaker 1: before is how different countries wikipedias or like language with
Speaker 1: Wikipedia's will have will have like different sources. So then
Speaker 1: getting information from from the page it's just going to
Speaker 1: be so different. And like yeah, like like the whole,
Speaker 1: like the whole like teared of sourcing is just completely changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and I think, like you know, in medicine, and
Speaker 1: most medical practitioners expect most of the medical literature to
Speaker 1: be in a handful of languages like English and Chinese
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, right, And like part of
Speaker 1: your professional work and part of like saving people's lives
Speaker 1: is being able to use those sources. And so if
Speaker 1: they metical Wikipedia article has a translation from like an
Speaker 1: English article into another language, and you're distributing that to
Speaker 1: medical practitioners and they find the citation and it's in
Speaker 1: English and they can go follow the source, Like that's
Speaker 1: not such a big deal. But with in a topic
Speaker 1: like climate UM, where the vast majority of the people
Speaker 1: that have to make decisions on this information do not
Speaker 1: have access to other languages. Maybe their access to English
Speaker 1: is through like machine translation Google or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like having not having sources in your local language, UM,
Speaker 1: or just having the sources that were translated from an
Speaker 1: English Wikipedia article, which happens a lot on these smaller
Speaker 1: language wikipedias, is kind of like not helpful for climate
Speaker 1: decision making. UM. And this is where it's UM and
Speaker 1: it's easy for example, and a lot of these like
Speaker 1: Eastern European languages or Central Asian UH languages for like
Speaker 1: a politically spun news site opinion about something to kind
Speaker 1: of creep in at the same level of of kind
Speaker 1: of UH validity, as as another as scientific research as
Speaker 1: the the you know, consensus understanding of the climate prices.
Speaker 1: So how how might I know we talked about like
Speaker 1: like trainings for like journalists and people to start editing
Speaker 1: Wikipedia's in their language, but like, how how do we
Speaker 1: kind of improve climate communication overall with open access to
Speaker 1: information and you know, creating more linguistic um diversity and stuff. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think there's like a couple opportunities um in this,
Speaker 1: and then I there's some other misinformation I also want
Speaker 1: to talk about too, UM. But I think that this,
Speaker 1: the sourcing one is a particularly challenging one. UM. We
Speaker 1: need like more basic science based climate communication and more languages.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying like just the the like more languages,
Speaker 1: like the big un languages are the ones that are
Speaker 1: kind of colonial across cultural languages like Spanish or French
Speaker 1: or Arabic or you know, all these languages that have
Speaker 1: been used across cultures. We also need it in local
Speaker 1: languages um. And we needed to be evidence based and
Speaker 1: we needed to be an audience based. Right. So if
Speaker 1: if someone is like searching online in Swahili about how
Speaker 1: like drought is happening in Kenya, right or Tanzania or
Speaker 1: or the you know they're suddenly flooding, or like I
Speaker 1: need to deal with X, Y and z adaptation to
Speaker 1: the climate crisis, um, which is by the way, what
Speaker 1: all of the global South is doing right now, right, like,
Speaker 1: the global South is having to adapt to this crisis
Speaker 1: that polluting countries has have made. Yeah, and we're not
Speaker 1: actually giving them the resources to the to the problem
Speaker 1: that we've caused. You Well, it's not even giving the research.
Speaker 1: We're not even like the people who are like, we
Speaker 1: want to adapt our society. We're not resourcing the folks
Speaker 1: on the ground who have the agency, who have the understanding,
Speaker 1: who know how to do the research in the context,
Speaker 1: who know how to do the communication in the context. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not even like bolstering their their request for help. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the the the UN Climate Conference kind of failed
Speaker 1: on this adaptation funding. Right, And uh, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is where like a platform like Wikipedia and like
Speaker 1: kind of approaching this from a knowledge activist perspective where
Speaker 1: you're like there are people who need this knowledge to address,
Speaker 1: like understand what's happening around them so they can make decisions.
Speaker 1: That doesn't like you know, yeah, we need those kinds
Speaker 1: of information. We need open source knowledge, not just Wikipedia
Speaker 1: but one of the platforms um and and you know
Speaker 1: the you all do open source investation, and you're used
Speaker 1: to like open source software communities, and I listen a
Speaker 1: couple of your podcasts and you're kind of constantly speaking
Speaker 1: back to those open communities that that come out of
Speaker 1: like anglophone software spaces, um and, like we need to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that. Like we we figured out how to acknowledge,
Speaker 1: but we haven't given all those tools. We haven't transferred
Speaker 1: the knowledge on how to do it. We haven't adapted
Speaker 1: those tools to other parts of the world and other languages.
Speaker 1: Um And. So just like starting to look for these
Speaker 1: other communities, asking for the people, like who's ready to organize,
Speaker 1: like giving them money to go do it right, these
Speaker 1: things are like really practical, um And I think we're
Speaker 1: we're not We're not often not listening or we're not
Speaker 1: looking for that solution. And reinder, like most of the
Speaker 1: people having to adapt, um are in the global South
Speaker 1: and speak other languages, Like we need to be there
Speaker 1: in that language if we want the climate crisis so
Speaker 1: like resolve itself without you know, destroying people's lives. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing we try to bring up, is
Speaker 1: that the people is going to be initially worse affected
Speaker 1: are the people who are already kind of not in
Speaker 1: the greatest situation in the first place. That's like how
Speaker 1: how like how like the areas that are gonna that
Speaker 1: are gonna experience the most flooding, the most extreme weather events,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. It's it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not starting with something like New York City. It's starting
Speaker 1: with areas that are already dealing with a lot of
Speaker 1: like local issues and now this is just something else
Speaker 1: on top. And yeah, fixing all of that is uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, fixing all of it's impossible. We can we
Speaker 1: can only take like small adaptive steps to like mitigate
Speaker 1: some of the worse effects. And yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: that's that's stuff that comes up a bunch. But you
Speaker 1: you mentioned you wanted to at least briefly mention and um,
Speaker 1: some other forms of disinformation. Yeah. So we we've also
Speaker 1: witnessed a couple of times, UM where something will hit
Speaker 1: like breaking news or become a political position in a context,
Speaker 1: and then like we will see bad actors show up
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia and try to manipulate it. UM. I have
Speaker 1: two examples of those. The first is about a year
Speaker 1: year ago. Uh, we found a group of accounts editing
Speaker 1: about some of the inter Amazonian highways that the Bolsonaro
Speaker 1: presidency is building through through the Amazon UM where they
Speaker 1: were trying to remove the environmental and indigenous people's uh
Speaker 1: impact assessments from the Wikipedia articles. Uh and so like
Speaker 1: basic human rights stuff, basic you know, healthy environment things
Speaker 1: that the government is like expected to follow through on.
Speaker 1: We're being like manipulated out of the articles for a
Speaker 1: more like pro economic growth narrative UM. And so you
Speaker 1: know it's we can't like the shift towards this like
Speaker 1: very extreme right like economic growth only version of reality
Speaker 1: um does play out on the wikie Now were we
Speaker 1: were lucky that this was fairly trans like fairly easy
Speaker 1: to see once we found it, But we had to
Speaker 1: coordinate across UM, English, Spanish and Portuguese to like address
Speaker 1: the problem. So so we need like multi lingual communities
Speaker 1: who are kind of coordinating and talking to each other
Speaker 1: to address that. Um. The other thing we've seen is like,
Speaker 1: so did you I don't know how well you follow
Speaker 1: the climate movement? Um, but did you see when Disha
Speaker 1: rabb got arrested in India? By chance? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So she She's a youth climate active that was part
Speaker 1: of Friday's for Future India, which is like a group
Speaker 1: kind of sister group of the group that formed in
Speaker 1: Europe around Greta Twinberg. Right. Um and uh she uh um.
Speaker 1: Her Gmail account got attached to a Google doc. Uh
Speaker 1: just seen active on a Google doc that was about
Speaker 1: sharing social media about the India the farmers protests in
Speaker 1: India which have been like a real political sticking point issue.
Speaker 1: And I had written so I'm both a volunteer and
Speaker 1: a professional who organizes the community. And in my volunteer time,
Speaker 1: I had written the biography Adisha Rabbi like months before
Speaker 1: the Indian government kind of identified her with this social
Speaker 1: media tool kit. And um, when she got arrested for
Speaker 1: something that's like just basic social organizing tactic with social media. Um,
Speaker 1: the kind of Hindu nationalist social media environment like zoomed
Speaker 1: in on her Wikipedia article and on all these other
Speaker 1: social media presences she had, and they tried to silence it.
Speaker 1: Um be like okay, we need to leave this article.
Speaker 1: And uh, fortunately like a group of us were watching
Speaker 1: the page and we caught it and we're able to
Speaker 1: stop that. But there's kind of the the the kind
Speaker 1: of flash mob situation that happens a lot now in
Speaker 1: social media, where it's that is, this thing has been polarized,
Speaker 1: now we need to go attack it. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you can imagine like English Wikipedia has a healthy immune
Speaker 1: system for this kind of stuff. It like sees it,
Speaker 1: but it has enough, it has enough people that it
Speaker 1: can do that. Yeah. Yeah, but you can imagine on
Speaker 1: a smaller wiki that the narrative could shift and stay
Speaker 1: permanently shifted quite quickly. Yeah, um, if that happened. And
Speaker 1: so that that's another concern. Right. So there's like the
Speaker 1: subtle like a few accounts just like quietly removing things
Speaker 1: and then like the act of political um kind of
Speaker 1: intervention that happens. And in terms of like disinformation, do
Speaker 1: you see the Wikipedia as being kind of susceptible to
Speaker 1: like intentional disinformation campaigns of people slowly kind of editing
Speaker 1: the ideology of of articles to to push kind of
Speaker 1: some agenda. What whether that be like individually and like
Speaker 1: like you know, more of like a crowd operation um
Speaker 1: or even like run by like people with political power. Um,
Speaker 1: Like do do you how much of a risk do
Speaker 1: you see that with this kind of open source idea
Speaker 1: is that of of like intentional slow dissemination of disinformation
Speaker 1: on like important articles and stuff. Well, so I think
Speaker 1: I might reframe your question a little bit, like, uh,
Speaker 1: all open source kind of knowledge spaces are susceptible to that, right, Um,
Speaker 1: the question is to like what degree and how harmful
Speaker 1: is it going to be? Right? Um? Like is it
Speaker 1: is it like very open to this? And will it
Speaker 1: cause a lot of problems? Um? The bigger language wikipedias
Speaker 1: have healthy immune systems, but we we have a combination
Speaker 1: of kind of bots that are like AI generated that
Speaker 1: flag bag edits, and then we have a lot of
Speaker 1: community patrolling happening. And even in some of the smaller
Speaker 1: communities that have like medium sized editor communities like Swedish Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take a lot for that local language community
Speaker 1: to patrol the pages and like be like oh, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: these changes are kind of weird. I can roll it back. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem like it fits our culture of Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: The problem is when a language Wikipedia has very few
Speaker 1: editors and they're not active all the time. Um and
Speaker 1: and so this is where we need kind of more
Speaker 1: eyes on the content, right, because it's it's very easy
Speaker 1: for like a really small language community to kind of
Speaker 1: have little bit of content but never see it maintained.
Speaker 1: Um and and this is where the like where where
Speaker 1: our communities are forming around these languages, like a lot
Speaker 1: of the West African languages for example, that our communities
Speaker 1: are are kind of organizing in we we like invest
Speaker 1: in those communities existing and like figuring out the governance
Speaker 1: and training people how to edit and getting access to
Speaker 1: the kind of technical skills to do this. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, we have kind of systems that we're hoping
Speaker 1: over the next few years invest in that resilience, right,
Speaker 1: like building a code of conduct making it easier for
Speaker 1: communities to see this kind of stuff. But it is
Speaker 1: three languages, right, um yeah, And it is a volunteer
Speaker 1: built system, and you do need a healthy editatorial community
Speaker 1: in order to keep a wiki from like drifting too much. Um.
Speaker 1: So a good example of listening to get a reference
Speaker 1: creation because it's the one we've done research on. Like
Speaker 1: it was possible for a few people to push people
Speaker 1: who are more in consensus with the global position on
Speaker 1: various topics out of the wiki. Um. And that's just
Speaker 1: like we we have to find a balance between like
Speaker 1: local language uh. And this is my personal opinion, right,
Speaker 1: we need to find a balance between kind of local
Speaker 1: language sovereignty on this stuff and also not like radicalizing
Speaker 1: its topical environment. And we and we see this particularly
Speaker 1: on impactful topics, right, like ones that directly affect like
Speaker 1: politics or in the kids climate crisis, like people's livelihoods
Speaker 1: and ability to function in society, right. Um. And we
Speaker 1: just like we need to be cautious about that. But
Speaker 1: but you know, Wikipedia is a common resource. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think this is really important. Like the way Wikipedia
Speaker 1: works is you know, THEMNIA Foundation provides the servers. We
Speaker 1: fund our communities, we support them, we help them work
Speaker 1: through governance issues. But like the we need editorial communities
Speaker 1: to maintain it. That's what those thousand people are doing
Speaker 1: as volunteers as they're building an editorial practice that makes
Speaker 1: the content work, um and and we we need that, um.
Speaker 1: And so we need you know, like minded communities like
Speaker 1: the people for your podcasts who are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: need the Internet to be reliable and have accurate information
Speaker 1: a lot to show up, um. Because if we don't
Speaker 1: do that, it's it's really like it's the common resource
Speaker 1: we we we have a decent international listening MACE as well. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking like, what would would you like recommend
Speaker 1: people you know in different countries or even people inside
Speaker 1: inside kind of like, uh, you know the States, America, Canada,
Speaker 1: the UK who are like multi langual, would you at
Speaker 1: least encourage them to browse other language wikipedias and maybe
Speaker 1: start making edits when they see this type of misinformation
Speaker 1: popping up. Yeah, so I to kind of perspectives on
Speaker 1: this one, UM, look for a local organized community. So
Speaker 1: we we have what's called Wikimedia Affiliates. These are fifty
Speaker 1: organizations around the world. They regularly run events, especially now
Speaker 1: that we're leaving COVID, increasingly more in person events. They
Speaker 1: train folks like look for them in your context and
Speaker 1: if you need help finding you know, find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and I can connect you with those communities. UM.
Speaker 1: And the other part is small edits. So I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people look at Wikipedia and they think
Speaker 1: about like a traditional publishing platform, right, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to write the whole whole article. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to be a master. And and the secret
Speaker 1: sauce to all of this is like most people start
Speaker 1: with one citation, one comma, one type of fix, and
Speaker 1: they do a handful of those a month, and then
Speaker 1: they keep coming back. And as you do those small edits,
Speaker 1: you start reading the content more carefully and fixing the
Speaker 1: things you can fix. And so I I recommend going
Speaker 1: in to like add one citation, Like if you go
Speaker 1: and add one citation today, that like makes life better,
Speaker 1: or you fix the communication on the sentence. UM. The
Speaker 1: other part of it is, you know, I said there's
Speaker 1: these organized groups, uh for the climate in particular, I
Speaker 1: run this campaign called Wiki for Human Rights, which is
Speaker 1: focused on UM. We with it's a theme that we
Speaker 1: kind of identified with you and human rights on the
Speaker 1: right to a healthy environment, which is this new human
Speaker 1: right that has been acknowledged by the Human Rights Council,
Speaker 1: And we're we're organizing kind of writing contests and edit
Speaker 1: the fonds and kind of train names for communities to
Speaker 1: go and look for the human dimension of the climate crisis. So,
Speaker 1: I think when we think about climate communication, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like science right there, like oh, this
Speaker 1: is you know about how weather systems work and how
Speaker 1: the atmosphere it forms, and the kind of stuff and
Speaker 1: the content that's more impactful is this like human inflected stuff,
Speaker 1: like how does the climate crisis in fact you as
Speaker 1: an individual and agriculture in the cities you live in,
Speaker 1: and the clothing you buy in the manufactured goods mine
Speaker 1: around the corner that's producing water pollution that's gonna harm
Speaker 1: your children for the next thirty years, right, um? And
Speaker 1: and that is the kind of stuff that we're encouraging
Speaker 1: communities to pay attention to. Is it is more the
Speaker 1: like justice and human rights oriented perspective on these topics.
Speaker 1: And your cat is very cute. Every once in a
Speaker 1: while they love to love to take the camera. Um
Speaker 1: and so yeah. So so if you follow me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I will I can hook you up with that campaign
Speaker 1: as well. Um yeah, where where can people find you
Speaker 1: online and to learn more information about you know, the
Speaker 1: various kind of topics we've discussed today, So UM search
Speaker 1: if you're interested in climate change stuff on Wikipedia English.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia has a wonderful wiki project climate change that has
Speaker 1: a little tab at the So if you search wiki
Speaker 1: project climate change on Google and you find there's a
Speaker 1: tab at the top that says get started with easy
Speaker 1: edits and that kind of can get you oriented to
Speaker 1: like where can you affect English Wikipedia on this? And
Speaker 1: you know, once you find a gap on English, it's
Speaker 1: easy to find it on other languages. UM. For the
Speaker 1: kind of learning about wiki free human rights, you can
Speaker 1: search for that UM and or follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: UM s A D A D S sad ads on Twitter. UM. UH.
Speaker 1: We also have a group called Wikimedians for Sustainable Development
Speaker 1: who's kind of communicating on Twitter, which is the group
Speaker 1: that's really focused on sustainability topics were generally UM, and
Speaker 1: you know, the other way to look is find something
Speaker 1: you've been reading about about the climate crisis or stainability
Speaker 1: issues in the news, look it up on Wikipedia, see
Speaker 1: if it's missing. UM. If it's not, click that edit
Speaker 1: button at a sence right. UM. The good example of this,
Speaker 1: I learned about a park and UH the center of
Speaker 1: Nairobi that's being protested by environmental activists because some of
Speaker 1: the big trees were being cut down a Huru park,
Speaker 1: right Uh. This came by on my Twitter handle, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not connected to this at the moment, right um,
Speaker 1: But because I had news sources, I had three or
Speaker 1: four news sources, I could say really simply in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, the park came under scrutiny for renovation that
Speaker 1: included removing old trees. That's a climate action, right uh.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, I am constantly overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: the climate crisis, as as is a lot of yea yeah,
Speaker 1: And and like just being able to tell that little story,
Speaker 1: like hey, um, the decisions people are making are not
Speaker 1: productive here, right Um. Just just gathering that story is important.
Speaker 1: And what's important is Wikipedia plays institutional memory on this, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of activists work is very temporal. It's very like in
Speaker 1: that moment, right um. And if it doesn't get documented
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia, the local news sources are gonna get lost
Speaker 1: in the window of time. Um. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if you to do your little activist motion,
Speaker 1: like a sentence describing what happened in a moment where
Speaker 1: resistance was happening is like a huge step forward, right, um,
Speaker 1: because it connects the environmental crisis, clanic crisis, human rights
Speaker 1: issues to like daily lives. Like people look up this
Speaker 1: park probably on Google because they want to go there, right,
Speaker 1: or they read about it because people are like when
Speaker 1: was it created? What was that protest that happened there
Speaker 1: the other day? And if those sourcesn't there, um, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't really exist in their minds. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in their minds. And I think that's like one
Speaker 1: of the big issues with climate crisis and you know,
Speaker 1: amplified even worse in other languages, right, is that people
Speaker 1: aren't making that connection. They aren't seeing it around them,
Speaker 1: and they're not you know, kind of connecting action to
Speaker 1: how we address it. That. Uh, that is a really
Speaker 1: good that's a really good point. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I will encourage everybody to to start making small ledits.
Speaker 1: That's what's what I did for a long time before
Speaker 1: I moved into like open source um journalism and reporting.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to get started, and it's a
Speaker 1: great way to get just start start disseminating small bits
Speaker 1: of information because the only thing that we can really
Speaker 1: do is people is small steps. We can have like
Speaker 1: an adaptive goal in mind, but you need to take
Speaker 1: small steps to get there. And that is a really
Speaker 1: great way to start influencing the way people think about
Speaker 1: climate and our situation. Um yeah. And and I think too,
Speaker 1: you know, your your podcast kind of appeals to folks
Speaker 1: who are interested in like finding the truth and reality, right,
Speaker 1: and that that's that's like that that investigation is what
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia article is. It is like one ten hundred
Speaker 1: editors out there in the world trying to go, like,
Speaker 1: what the heck is this topic about? Right? How do
Speaker 1: I compile my notes? Uh? In a way that helps
Speaker 1: other people? And I think in the face of the
Speaker 1: climate crisis, Dr Ianna Johnson says, like, find the thing
Speaker 1: you're good at, find the thing you're passionate about, and
Speaker 1: find the thing that like or that that makes you
Speaker 1: feel good and you're you're just rewarding, And find the
Speaker 1: thing that actually like helps affect the climate crisis. Right.
Speaker 1: And a small editor on Wikipedia meets your kind of
Speaker 1: knowledge needs. It's very satisfying because people will read it
Speaker 1: and it is incriminal change in the right direction, right,
Speaker 1: People will make decisions on it. Uh Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: and I guess, uh, I think that I think that
Speaker 1: probably closes this up today. And let's do have anything
Speaker 1: else to add. Um, I guess one more plug for
Speaker 1: your Twitter so we can get get more eyeballs on you,
Speaker 1: um and the work that you're doing. Yeah. Um so
Speaker 1: at S A D A D S it's my long
Speaker 1: term handle on the internet and you you can find
Speaker 1: me over uh and I tweet about Wikipedia and the
Speaker 1: commer carssis will and we'll we'll link the Wikipedia wiki
Speaker 1: project climate change page in the description for people to find.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking time to talk to
Speaker 1: us all about these topics. Um, I'm really really great, uh,
Speaker 1: really grateful to have this type of knowledge readily accessible
Speaker 1: to more people. Also, you know, in the spirit of Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Thanks so, thank you so much. Um. You can follow
Speaker 1: us by subscribing to the feed and on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: at Happened here pod and cool Zone Media. See you
Speaker 1: on the other side. Everybody, Raffie is the voice of
Speaker 1: some of the happiest songs of our generation. Baby so
Speaker 1: who is the man behind baby Bluga? Every human being
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Speaker 1: Listen to as our guests reveal their business models, hardships
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Speaker 1: class mixed with pop culture. You want to learn about
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Speaker 1: We got you interested in starting a trucking company or
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Speaker 1: credit work. We got it all covered. The Earnier Leisure
Speaker 1: podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier Leisure on the
Speaker 1: Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. It's it's could happen here.
Speaker 1: That's the podcast that this is. It's about things crumbling
Speaker 1: and uh, how to maybe uncrumble some of the things
Speaker 1: that are crumbling. And today when we think about the crumbles,
Speaker 1: when you start thinking about the hell world that that
Speaker 1: we're all increasingly inhabiting, the scary ship that is getting
Speaker 1: scarier day by day. Number one on a lot of
Speaker 1: people's list is going to be the cops. Um real
Speaker 1: cause of anxiety for a significant chunk of people listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast right now, including its hosts. Um Alexander,
Speaker 1: you and I have chatted before on the air. Our
Speaker 1: guest today, Alexander Williams. Um, you were a police officer
Speaker 1: in the past and you are not currently and you
Speaker 1: want to chat about UM. The topic kind of the
Speaker 1: way you pitched it to us is there's a lot
Speaker 1: of aspects of police training that are very similar to
Speaker 1: what colts do to indoctrinate people, and you kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to speak on that. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cross sections. Um So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: used to be a cop. I was in law enforcement
Speaker 1: for just shot a fifteen years until I woke up
Speaker 1: and got out luckily. And all the stuff that's been
Speaker 1: going on over the last couple of years, and the
Speaker 1: craziness and really ingesting a lot of stuff around, you know, cults,
Speaker 1: And I've started going down that the little checklist that
Speaker 1: you go down of like are you in a high
Speaker 1: control group? And man, they all just look just deemed
Speaker 1: in my head every single time of like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is exactly what it was like being a cop. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what it was like being a cop.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, kind of before we get more into it,
Speaker 1: do you want to walk us through a little bit
Speaker 1: more kind of what was your process of Um, I know,
Speaker 1: de radicalization isn't exactly the right term, but I think
Speaker 1: you know what I'm getting. It's it's in the it's
Speaker 1: in the it's in the neighborhood shore. Yeah. Mine. So
Speaker 1: I was raising a cop family. My dad was a
Speaker 1: copy went the whole nine yards, retirement, the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and when I got into it, just shy of twenty
Speaker 1: two years old, which that's young to be making these
Speaker 1: kinds of choices looking back on it. Um. We had
Speaker 1: talked on the last podcast of your season one, UM
Speaker 1: about when my brother got arrested and got beat by
Speaker 1: my own team, my my own crew, and the jail
Speaker 1: that I worked with, which is the jails is where
Speaker 1: I primarily spent most of my time. And I think
Speaker 1: that that was, uh, item number one kind of on
Speaker 1: my shelf, like people call it, that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: big one to right on the shelf. Um. And during
Speaker 1: my training, I've always been an obstinate little bastard and
Speaker 1: I've always had that kind of like authority defiance. And
Speaker 1: in training, they they start telling you really early like hey,
Speaker 1: you know what you know where your family, we understand you,
Speaker 1: We're going to get you. And then like the language
Speaker 1: even then kind of flared red flags wrong for me.
Speaker 1: And whenever a group of people says we're your family,
Speaker 1: and so right, like that's what you like, we're your
Speaker 1: family and you can talk to us anytime. Fine, where
Speaker 1: your family? And I got your back, Fine, we're your
Speaker 1: family and that's why you need to do this. Things
Speaker 1: have gone to ride. It's it's it usually is where
Speaker 1: your family comma now yeah? Yeah, and yes, So that
Speaker 1: that was like literally day one. It was where your
Speaker 1: family now, where you're you know, they use all that language,
Speaker 1: the familiar language, where your brothers, your sisters. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the one that kicked for me and my brain was
Speaker 1: they said, within a year, you're not gonna have any
Speaker 1: friends that aren't cops. Like all of your friends are
Speaker 1: going to be gone because they're not gonna understand stand
Speaker 1: you and they're not going to be able to be
Speaker 1: around you and handle you. So within a year, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to be everything you've got. And for me
Speaker 1: that was like that was a line of the sand
Speaker 1: and like part of my brain was screaming like nope,
Speaker 1: never letting that happen. I will not let my uh
Speaker 1: myself not have any non cop friends. Yeah that's probably
Speaker 1: good because that's I mean, you have like when it
Speaker 1: it gets to it's the same thing that happens to anybody, right,
Speaker 1: Like some people got like last year in Portland and
Speaker 1: Activist Brain where there was this all the people were
Speaker 1: spending time with other people were out protesting, and so
Speaker 1: we have this really intense bond, and we also are
Speaker 1: kind of separated, increasingly separated from the people around us
Speaker 1: because we just can't communicate with anybody else. And that
Speaker 1: kind of going on for years and years, because this
Speaker 1: is your career for twenty something years, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would you'd be, you'd be after a couple of
Speaker 1: years of that you were inhabiting a different planet. They
Speaker 1: really are. And it's the how you said that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is usually twenty to thirty years, you know,
Speaker 1: because you want to get that sweet retirement at the
Speaker 1: end after you've abused your mind and your body for
Speaker 1: three decades um. It was it keyed off something that
Speaker 1: you and Garrison talked about in a previous episode of
Speaker 1: The Hiring Practices where the Washington Stay guys and they
Speaker 1: were they got busted because the therapist was showing tons
Speaker 1: of bias, and that brought up for me the hiring
Speaker 1: process because those psych exams are the only time as
Speaker 1: a cop that you get a psych exam. That's the
Speaker 1: only time you ever talked to a therapist mandatorially. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really bad move, And there's a joke in
Speaker 1: cop culture of like, well, yeah, you gotta pass it
Speaker 1: before you get hired, because after you get hired, you're
Speaker 1: never going to pass that test. M because you know,
Speaker 1: being a cop is is micro dosing PTSD in your
Speaker 1: system the entire time. See, I guess one thing I'm
Speaker 1: wondering because you you were in it for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: So that's the it's not an insignificant span of time.
Speaker 1: Has it gotten to be more that way? Because I
Speaker 1: knew about fifteen something years ago when I was like
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, just like I lived in the shitty little
Speaker 1: apartment complex and like the dude who live below above me,
Speaker 1: and then like the dude who lived two doors down,
Speaker 1: we're both Dallas cops um and I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I you know, I was not particularly political at that point,
Speaker 1: but I didn't They didn't seem to have trouble relating,
Speaker 1: Like they would hang out and ship after work, like
Speaker 1: just like not like like we would be like barbecuing
Speaker 1: outside and they would drop by and stuff, and it
Speaker 1: was never I never got the sense that they were
Speaker 1: living in a separate planet. But this is like fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and I'm wondering what to what extent do
Speaker 1: you think this is kind of increased in recent memory,
Speaker 1: like this the kind of you don't really uh socialize
Speaker 1: with people outside of the family, so to speak. It
Speaker 1: is kind of like that. So, yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: language are using is perfect because so what you're describing
Speaker 1: and when I remember from being a kid in the
Speaker 1: eighties and the nineties and stuff, was um community policing
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a literal style of policing, going back
Speaker 1: to more of like the professional police style before it
Speaker 1: went military, and in areas where people actively live in
Speaker 1: their community and engage with their community, there's a striking
Speaker 1: difference in the level of police violence that happens. But nowadays, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not the same thing because a lot of especially
Speaker 1: in bigger metropolitan areas, you're a cop there, you can't
Speaker 1: afford to live there. You're you're definitely not getting paid
Speaker 1: enough to live most of the time in the cities
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to be you know, a part of.
Speaker 1: And it's gotten to the point where they actually teach
Speaker 1: this like method up methodically in academies. They'll be like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a cop in a big town,
Speaker 1: you need to start shopping around in the smaller cities
Speaker 1: around it to find a place to live maybe like
Speaker 1: an hour away. Um. And then they also pitch it
Speaker 1: as a same thing because it's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: the cheology Grossman. We're all under attack, so they'll teach people,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's it's safest to not live in
Speaker 1: the town where you're a cop now. M So it's
Speaker 1: become intentional and it's one of those things where because
Speaker 1: I don't want to breeze past this is not the
Speaker 1: episode world talk about community policing. There's very good criticisms
Speaker 1: of community policing, and there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: doesn't solve. But I think it's yeah, yeah, absolutely, we're
Speaker 1: not trying to say like the solution is just to
Speaker 1: get cops, you know, to be members of their communities.
Speaker 1: But it it is worse when they're driving in from
Speaker 1: an hour out of town and see it as like
Speaker 1: I'm occupying almost this area like it does. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: language fits perfectly, especially with Grossman and all that. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we've got a two partner on David Grossman or
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards if you want to check it out.
Speaker 1: But he's kind of the one of the big one
Speaker 1: of the big individuals, who's who's done the most to
Speaker 1: like really push UM. I don't even like it's usually
Speaker 1: framed as militarized thinking, But I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of soldiers who have been who were trained to think
Speaker 1: that way about ship Like most of the people I
Speaker 1: knew who were getting shot at every day for years overseas,
Speaker 1: we're not thinking the way Grossman does. No, that's probably
Speaker 1: because he never actually wouldn't did anything. I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should probably Alexander, have you go start going through
Speaker 1: this um this document you put together, kind of walking
Speaker 1: through UM and I wonder if you might start when
Speaker 1: you kind of started thinking about police training and the
Speaker 1: mindset inculcated inside police departments from like a cultic perspective.
Speaker 1: When did that really start to come together for you? Uh?
Speaker 1: It probably really started to come together, um uh when
Speaker 1: actually when I got involved, I used to be an instructor,
Speaker 1: when I got you know, behind that part of the curtain,
Speaker 1: and I got involved in those things. UM, and I
Speaker 1: started going and teaching, and I started teaching other departments
Speaker 1: that would come to us, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a joke in my head at first was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we all speak the same language. And then that got
Speaker 1: my brain rolling on linguistics and how linguistics work and
Speaker 1: how that you know, the words we use change how
Speaker 1: we perceive reality. And then I clicked and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're like a we're a subculture. We're We're like no
Speaker 1: matter where you go in the country, we are a
Speaker 1: little subculture. We are a little group. And that's what
Speaker 1: started to kind of push me towards like it's like
Speaker 1: being in a cult, because you know, you grow up
Speaker 1: around Central California and there's a lot of really religious
Speaker 1: people and you start seeing the intersectionality of it really fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because we've talked a few times on
Speaker 1: various shows I've done about how any good subculture, any
Speaker 1: really good party, has elements of like a cult. Right,
Speaker 1: There's there's little bits of that. There's bits of that
Speaker 1: in friendship and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a thing
Speaker 1: like cults are taking advantage, like pulling a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that people do together in order to manipulate human beings. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering kind of where where you think where are
Speaker 1: some of the areas you think it kind of crosses
Speaker 1: the line with police from like this is you know
Speaker 1: a degree of like I'm sure firefighters have a degree
Speaker 1: of this. You know, Um, these are people that like
Speaker 1: I hang around with all the time and we wipe
Speaker 1: up in some intense situations together. That causes there are
Speaker 1: culti aspects that's always going to cause. Um, I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: kind of where where are the first areas you started
Speaker 1: to realize this, this is crossing that line of Probably
Speaker 1: the first area is in how much the department like
Speaker 1: and this was universal and loss of departments that I
Speaker 1: had contact with, is how much the department owns you?
Speaker 1: And I mean like they use that language. They they'll
Speaker 1: tell you like we own you. Like anything you do
Speaker 1: in your personal life, your first thought needs to be
Speaker 1: how does this affect my department and my my sheriff,
Speaker 1: my chief, my whatever, Like every single thing you do
Speaker 1: is supposed to be potentially pr for the department. So
Speaker 1: they tell you flat out in the forefront of your
Speaker 1: mind every waking moment, man, your own duty, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're here, we own you. Um. And that that was
Speaker 1: the first one that was just like oh man, like no,
Speaker 1: I punch out at the end of my shift and
Speaker 1: I go home. This isn't like, this isn't this is
Speaker 1: a job. It's not supposed to be a life, it's
Speaker 1: it's and that that was the first one that started
Speaker 1: going it. Um. Probably the second one that I really
Speaker 1: noticed was that you can tell anyone's a cop because
Speaker 1: they'll tell you within about five seconds of meeting them.
Speaker 1: But they're a com if you're at a bar, you're
Speaker 1: at a party or at whatever, they'll be like, Hi,
Speaker 1: my name, my miname's Alexander. I work for the Shares.
Speaker 1: Part Like it's it's gonna come out of their mouth
Speaker 1: in two seconds because it is. It's their identity, it's
Speaker 1: their entire sense of self. Yeah, I wonder because one
Speaker 1: of the things we've seen in the last couple of
Speaker 1: years in particular, is aspects of that bleed out, like
Speaker 1: the thin blue line flags and stuff, and some of
Speaker 1: that's some of that's just you know, signpost. Some of
Speaker 1: that's just I know people who were in uh, certain
Speaker 1: jobs where they transported things that were sketchy and had
Speaker 1: those flags. Is like, well maybe the cop won't search merry,
Speaker 1: you know, but like there and there's elements that they're
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't want the cops to stop
Speaker 1: me from you know, fucking with these people or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think there's also elements of that. Um And
Speaker 1: I think probably television is to blame for aspects of this,
Speaker 1: but of kind of that sheep dog culture as as
Speaker 1: a as grossman calls that are starting to bleed over
Speaker 1: into chunks of the civilian world. UM And I guess
Speaker 1: I'm wondering kind of like, yeah, what that looks like
Speaker 1: as a as someone unlike the the deep inside of
Speaker 1: that as a police officer, Like what is it? I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like to what extent where you kind of conscious of
Speaker 1: that aspect of society like filling out around you, like
Speaker 1: some of these like the cult of the of the
Speaker 1: heroic police officer kind of spreading to be um something new,
Speaker 1: which which it really started doing from like two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen up to the present moment is when a
Speaker 1: lot of that shift seems to have happened based on
Speaker 1: kind of what I've sawn. No, that timeline fits perfectly
Speaker 1: because I remember when I first got hired, the thin
Speaker 1: Blue line. It existed, it was a thing, but it
Speaker 1: was just it was just a matte black with a
Speaker 1: blue line and that was it. Uh, And I you
Speaker 1: didn't really even in cop culture, like I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up seeing that thing in the eighties and the nineties
Speaker 1: met much, not at all. And then when I was
Speaker 1: in the department in the in the in the two thousand's,
Speaker 1: you kind of saw it every now and again, someone
Speaker 1: might have a pelpin like in the department, but out
Speaker 1: in public, nobody had that stuff. No nobody, nobody had
Speaker 1: any of that rocking stuff. And it didn't it never
Speaker 1: really bothered me until it showed up on an American
Speaker 1: flag and then that was that was a big red
Speaker 1: flag of like, oh this this is bad. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is nationalism, guys, this isn't good. And
Speaker 1: like my whole crew look to me and go what's nationalism?
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, fuck, is there this like sense
Speaker 1: that people are toatying or is it this sense that
Speaker 1: this is kind of the silent majority that backs us
Speaker 1: in doing whatever hard work we need to do. I
Speaker 1: think it's started out as tony, it really did, and
Speaker 1: it's but it's now shifted into um this whole like,
Speaker 1: you know, you get those guys that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I see a cop getting in a fight, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get out of my car and I'm gonna jump
Speaker 1: in there and I'm gonna back them up because they're
Speaker 1: like they're playing top. They really want that authority or
Speaker 1: that whatever, but for whatever reason, they don't go do it. Um.
Speaker 1: But this has been a way of like kind of
Speaker 1: they get to see themselves as being like a posse
Speaker 1: kind of a thing, like I'm in the I'm in
Speaker 1: the club. I'm not in the club, but like they're
Speaker 1: my buddies and is there I don't know, does that
Speaker 1: make being in the club cooler? The fact that there's
Speaker 1: these kind of posse's forming around it, these people kind
Speaker 1: of work worshiping the culture associated with it. I mean
Speaker 1: there probably is now, but honestly, when I was in
Speaker 1: there and freaked me the hell out, it really really
Speaker 1: creeped me out. I didn't like it at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to think about, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a reasonable person, how weird it would be to
Speaker 1: see your job turned into a cult like Garrison. You
Speaker 1: know that feeling, um or you're you're going to learn
Speaker 1: when we when we make the cult. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to. I guess let's let's let's get back
Speaker 1: to this kind of list you put together, because you
Speaker 1: were sort of going through different hallmarks of what makes
Speaker 1: something a cult. One of them is the group displays
Speaker 1: and excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and
Speaker 1: whether he is alive or dead, regards his belief system, ideology,
Speaker 1: in practices as the truth as law. Um. And I'll
Speaker 1: remind you we were not talking about my podcast. We're
Speaker 1: talking about cults here. Uh that's right, Um, yes, stay quiet, Garrison.
Speaker 1: That's they're just smiling, silently staring at us through zoom.
Speaker 1: I see you, okay, And you've written under this the
Speaker 1: law is the higher power. They grant control of their actions.
Speaker 1: Blind faith in the system frees them from having to
Speaker 1: consider their role in the system. It's my job to
Speaker 1: arrest in charge high let the court figure out the rest.
Speaker 1: It sounds a lot like kill them all, let and
Speaker 1: let God sort them out. In this case, the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system is a direct replacement for God. I think,
Speaker 1: I think this is this is a really good point.
Speaker 1: This is even this is the thing even when I
Speaker 1: was like a dumb kid and thought cops were fine,
Speaker 1: this was the one thing that even like just even
Speaker 1: still freaked me out about cops because every once in
Speaker 1: a while you would see a video of like the
Speaker 1: cop was randomly like assaulting somebody, and then other cops
Speaker 1: nearby just mindlessly join in, and I'm like, whoa, that's
Speaker 1: so such a weird kind of group dynamic of they
Speaker 1: see someone doing something and they just don't question it
Speaker 1: at all and immediately back it up, no matter what
Speaker 1: actually was happening. Because like I always tried to think
Speaker 1: things through more like logically, and that type of like
Speaker 1: mindlessness really freaked me out. And I think was maybe
Speaker 1: one of the first things that was like huh, maybe
Speaker 1: it was. It was one of the first cracks and
Speaker 1: like maybe cops actually aren't good. Um, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a really great point in terms
Speaker 1: of how this ties into like, yeah, it's my job
Speaker 1: to it's my job to arrest and charge. I don't
Speaker 1: sort out what happens afterwards, so it doesn't actually matter.
Speaker 1: Like it's like I'm not I'm not actually hurting these
Speaker 1: people because if if they did something wrong, it's going
Speaker 1: to get figured out in the court system. I'm just
Speaker 1: doing this like preliminary task. It's it plays into a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of like weird psychological things that make you
Speaker 1: feel better about horrible actions you're doing because you have
Speaker 1: so much backing that's going to make sure what you
Speaker 1: do actually isn't bad. Yeah, this is like this, you know,
Speaker 1: this arrest, which may be physical and ugly, even if
Speaker 1: they're innocent later. It's just part of what you have
Speaker 1: to do to get to the point where you determine
Speaker 1: whether or not they're innocence. So I'm not doing anything bad. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And actually, Garrison, I it's it's what you said. It's
Speaker 1: perfect because in the bottom of the thing where I
Speaker 1: was just spewing notes to myself, I literally put down here.
Speaker 1: It's not a job to them. It's a central component
Speaker 1: of their sense of self. This is why they will
Speaker 1: do terrible things to validate their perceived reality. And how
Speaker 1: these things, yeah, they it's you might say, like imagine
Speaker 1: how like think about how hard it is to get
Speaker 1: people to admit they're wrong about a political belief on Twitter,
Speaker 1: especially when their name is attached to their account. Now
Speaker 1: imagine you have like imagine that's the thing being argued
Speaker 1: is like the central thing around which you organize your life.
Speaker 1: And also you get to shoot people who make you angry.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's it's a rough situation to be it.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, it's crazy. And the part that
Speaker 1: I wrote of it's my job to arrest and charge high,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a part of the mentality of
Speaker 1: it is like, yeah, I don't want to say it's
Speaker 1: like a game, but it almost is like a game.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're trying to get points, like score
Speaker 1: high and talk to me about talk to me about
Speaker 1: when you say a rest and charge high kind of
Speaker 1: what is that? What does that sort of look like
Speaker 1: on the ground before we get into kind of why
Speaker 1: people do that. So when you're using your your powers
Speaker 1: of arrest, you're you're you're supposed to hear to go
Speaker 1: a penal code. But there is code and I'm always
Speaker 1: speaking to California because that's where i got my trainer. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't expect cops to remember every single element of
Speaker 1: every single PC code because that's ridiculous. No one's going
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. Um. So there's there's
Speaker 1: wiggle room. There's play where I know you did this
Speaker 1: thing and I know it's what they call a wobbler,
Speaker 1: Like I can go felony and go misdemeanor. They'll teach
Speaker 1: you in the academy. They're like, if it's a wabbler,
Speaker 1: you always charge felony every single time, even if you
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work. Charge it felony, kick it
Speaker 1: to the d A and let the d A c
Speaker 1: if they can make it stick. And if they don't, whatever,
Speaker 1: who cares. That's not part of our job anymore. Wow.
Speaker 1: And yeah, And that's one of those things where a
Speaker 1: lot of people I've had friends who got charged with
Speaker 1: felonies that got dropped, but like, you're still living under
Speaker 1: your You essentially have to live as like the diet
Speaker 1: version of a felon while that's hanging over your head um,
Speaker 1: which is not fun. No, And it's a big part
Speaker 1: of the whole criminal justice. I'm sure you guys are aware.
Speaker 1: That 's love to crack deals. They love to make
Speaker 1: their big man general backroom deals. And facilitating that is
Speaker 1: cops charging high. You're here in the room, you're facing
Speaker 1: felony charges and the d A is gonna be like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I can knock that down to him his demeanor, But
Speaker 1: that's because he knows he doesn't have a case, but
Speaker 1: he didn't get that opportunity without a cop charging the
Speaker 1: higher charge. Now you know who isn't going to charge
Speaker 1: high because their prices are incredibly low, very reasonable, very fair.
Speaker 1: The products and services that support our podcast. Uh, we're back.
Speaker 1: So the next thing you've got on here is kind
Speaker 1: of talking about cult characteristics. Questioning doubt and dissent are
Speaker 1: discouraged or even punished. And you've written academies are commonly paramilitary.
Speaker 1: They're working to break down and build up cadets. As
Speaker 1: discussed last season on my show, the FDO program is
Speaker 1: where fresh cadets meet salty veterans in the cycle of
Speaker 1: abuse starts. The paramilitary environment is usually casual and unnoticeable
Speaker 1: until somebody questions orders or tradition. Questioning order gets the
Speaker 1: that's an order threat, while questioning tradition and suggesting improvements
Speaker 1: gets that's how it's always been done. There is no
Speaker 1: forum for change your progress. Some places have these forums,
Speaker 1: but they're just for public relations. And this is the
Speaker 1: thing that I think people who are trying to engage
Speaker 1: with from a perspective of like reform or whatever, trying
Speaker 1: to change law enforcement. As a lot of people were
Speaker 1: last year where things get jammed up a lot is
Speaker 1: the there's this attitude among civilians, so to speak, among
Speaker 1: most of us that like, well, anything the government does
Speaker 1: should be subject to like what we should watch out.
Speaker 1: We should look at it, we should see if it works.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, we should change it to make
Speaker 1: it work better. And that's how kind of everything should work.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're getting it here. Is interesting because
Speaker 1: it's the reticence to actual change among police as legendary.
Speaker 1: But I don't think there's a lot of discussion of
Speaker 1: the psychology behind it. Yeah, I mean it's that it
Speaker 1: goes back to that whole will do anything to reinforce
Speaker 1: our perception of reality thing. Um, Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: grew up in a cop family and it's specifically in
Speaker 1: the department that I worked at, So you know, we
Speaker 1: were called like blue bloods or legacy kids, and no
Speaker 1: matter what was going on, like anything that you questioned,
Speaker 1: it was always so, well, that's always it's that's the
Speaker 1: way it's always been done. That's the way it's always
Speaker 1: been done. And I grew to hate that answer, like
Speaker 1: with a passion in my personal life everywhere I refused
Speaker 1: to give that as an answer when I became a
Speaker 1: sergeant eventually, Um, and yeah, they'll do anything. I mean
Speaker 1: they will. They will bend laws, they'll break laws because
Speaker 1: who's going to charge them? Yeah, because it's what they've
Speaker 1: always done always. My department famously had um our union
Speaker 1: got all of our union news embezzled by people in
Speaker 1: our brass, and they got caught dead to rights. But
Speaker 1: that case never went anywhere. Nobody would touch it with
Speaker 1: a ten foot pole. Uh. And even if you go
Speaker 1: and google it and you try to look at archives
Speaker 1: from the local newspaper, it's gone. It never happened. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me because that's like cops getting screwed
Speaker 1: over by cops. Why how is that? How is that?
Speaker 1: How is it? Like? What? What? What is the impulse
Speaker 1: to defend the hat Well, because so there's a division
Speaker 1: in in cop culture of like like ranks and a cult.
Speaker 1: Once you get to what they call brass, your your lieutenant,
Speaker 1: captain or higher, they don't look at us the same
Speaker 1: way they don't look at the grunts, the line workers,
Speaker 1: the guys doing the twelve hour shifts were all that
Speaker 1: family talk goes out the window, and it's like well
Speaker 1: we're mom and dad now, and they changed their role
Speaker 1: in that world. And again, to maintain that power and authority,
Speaker 1: they'll do whatever they have to do. Yeah that's um.
Speaker 1: I mean it also kind of feeds in to this
Speaker 1: this idea that like there used to be less restrictions there,
Speaker 1: used to be like we used to really be able
Speaker 1: to like do this and do that, like we like
Speaker 1: a lot of violence get justified that way. But it
Speaker 1: also it provides an opportunity I think for like police
Speaker 1: who are trying to engage with reformers to do some
Speaker 1: sneaky ship because often this like community policing is referred
Speaker 1: to like, yeah, we need to go back to the
Speaker 1: old methods of policing. It's like, well, but there were
Speaker 1: probably do you remember the fire hoses being used to
Speaker 1: black people during the Civil rights movement? Like there were
Speaker 1: issues back before we got militarized. It's it's yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was the stuff they were doing outside. Um,
Speaker 1: the jail I worked in, because you bring up fire hoses,
Speaker 1: this is where I'm going. Um, they we had big
Speaker 1: cotton fire hoses up on the floors and this jail
Speaker 1: and there was actually built out of old parts of
Speaker 1: the Texas prison. And you know, everyone talks about the
Speaker 1: good old days when we could really do stuff. And
Speaker 1: the story that always went around was that when the
Speaker 1: inmates were getting rowdy, they would just walk down the
Speaker 1: tier with the hose and just name them. And then
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ put it back because again, who who's gonna
Speaker 1: who's gonna tell on me? Who's gonna believe these guys? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was back in like seventies era. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the that's the big fist story that guys used
Speaker 1: to always tell. But I'm like, I have no reason
Speaker 1: to not believe that story. It sounds yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: worse stuff happens in prisons today, So yeah, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1: All right, moving on down your list. This one's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me, and I'm curious from some detail on
Speaker 1: this because this is not something I ever really thought about. UM.
Speaker 1: Mind altering practices such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues,
Speaker 1: denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines are used in excess
Speaker 1: and served to suppress doubts about the group and its leaders.
Speaker 1: And you've written cop talk briefings, evails are always negative,
Speaker 1: and the work routine is abusive. It is paired with
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance. Um, I'm I'm extremely interested in that and
Speaker 1: kind of like how it how it sounds like the
Speaker 1: kind of language that you're talking about people using among
Speaker 1: each other when they're doing this, So I you know almost,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not even almost in kind of a
Speaker 1: PTSD response, I've blocked out like a lot of my
Speaker 1: memories from those years, Like I'll talk to that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to X cops and they're like, hey, remember
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and I'm like no, Um, so cop
Speaker 1: talk is mostly slang. It's like it's the ten code stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But it gets stuck in your head and you start
Speaker 1: and it's it's one of those things where they talk
Speaker 1: about how you're not gonna have friends outside of work
Speaker 1: because you're gonna start talking in this language. You will say,
Speaker 1: you know, what's your twenty you know, I'm code for
Speaker 1: if you see someone who's acting a certain way, like
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary, maybe a mentally ill person, you'll
Speaker 1: say like, oh, that's a jay cat. Like you'll use
Speaker 1: this jailhouse slang and it just it permeates your brain
Speaker 1: and like we said before, your words manipulate how you
Speaker 1: for see reality and you just start seeing everything that way. Um.
Speaker 1: The big one is the hyper vigilance cycle is the
Speaker 1: is the abusive part. That's that's the part that really
Speaker 1: got me thinking of cults of how they'll you know,
Speaker 1: deny you food, sleep, make you work crazy hours and
Speaker 1: do all these things. Um. And that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: one that really keep the whole calb aspect for me
Speaker 1: was the hyper vigilance cycle. The studies that have gone
Speaker 1: into it. UM. I learned about it from a book
Speaker 1: this little guy right here. It's called Emotional Survival for
Speaker 1: Law Enforcement. It's by Kevin M. Gil Martin, PhD. He's
Speaker 1: an ex cop who kind of PhD in neuroscience and studies,
Speaker 1: studied cops brains and got to see how they function.
Speaker 1: And he's the one that kind of coined this whole
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance cycle of you're always edging at this parasympathetic
Speaker 1: fight flight or freeze response time when you're on duty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just stays up there the entire time. I'm sure
Speaker 1: soldiers have had the same thing, funk. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: had the same thing, Robert, when you were doing your
Speaker 1: war journalism stuff man, or just being in Portland last year. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it keeps you at that edge, that cresting peek and
Speaker 1: then you crash and you get back up and boom,
Speaker 1: you peek up again and then you crash. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like a drug. Your brain becomes addicted to that
Speaker 1: peeked out feeling that you get from the hyper vigilance
Speaker 1: because you do here a little better, you see a
Speaker 1: little better, your brains moving a little faster because there's
Speaker 1: that heightened amount of adrenaline just constantly dripping into your system,
Speaker 1: and then you crash. And when you crash is when
Speaker 1: you're not at work, So you start associating not being
Speaker 1: at work with feeling bad and being at work feels good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the same thing happens, I'm sure Garrison. It
Speaker 1: happened like during the riots, where you would feel shitty
Speaker 1: when you weren't out there. Um. Yes, some days I
Speaker 1: would go out, not even to just to cover it,
Speaker 1: just to kind of just stand there like a block
Speaker 1: away because there was nothing else to do. Like it was.
Speaker 1: There's like I could sit at home and rest, but
Speaker 1: I'll just be watching whatever is happening, not doing anything else.
Speaker 1: You just it. It feels it would feel more relaxing
Speaker 1: just to stand on a street corner and watch people
Speaker 1: throw stuff over events, because that that that's just that's
Speaker 1: more relaxing than laying down. It was like, it's that
Speaker 1: a very a very weird disassociate of like feeling that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like my my brain is it's accustomed to this environment now,
Speaker 1: So this is the environment I'm gonna be in. Right,
Speaker 1: And look how fast your brain got into that groove now,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine doing it for thirty years, yeah, instead
Speaker 1: of like six months or even though it's it's it
Speaker 1: started only after like two months, right, and or even
Speaker 1: even in some cases like a month. Yeah, it's fast. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, So I wanted to get into the kind
Speaker 1: of the next thing here. Um, the leadership dictates, sometimes
Speaker 1: in great detail, how members should think and feel, e g.
Speaker 1: Members must get permission today, change jobs, are married or
Speaker 1: leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to
Speaker 1: have children, how to discipline children, and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: very classic cult ship, right, Like the nut really of
Speaker 1: what we had all all that stuff when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah, I would guess that like the time
Speaker 1: if you ask someone for a quick definition of a cult.
Speaker 1: This is what they're gonna say something or there. This
Speaker 1: this is the kind of ship they're going to highlight. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in. Yeah, just talk because you already
Speaker 1: chatted a bit about about this. Just the fact that,
Speaker 1: like the way in which police policy works kind of
Speaker 1: restructures how you function off duty, which I think is
Speaker 1: something that people everyone understands elements of it, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you're a fucking dishwasher for a living, you will
Speaker 1: wash dishes differently forever, right Like if you if you
Speaker 1: have bag your like bagsh it at a grocery store,
Speaker 1: like that's something that you'll always kind of know how
Speaker 1: to do. Like these bits and pieces of this, but
Speaker 1: it's not quite the same as what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: And I want to get kind of into why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you're when you're as an adult,
Speaker 1: you do something that you're like, oh, I used to
Speaker 1: do that at my first job and I was like fifteen,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it does stick with you the muscle. The
Speaker 1: muscle memory sticks in those narrow pathways that your brain
Speaker 1: gets carved unless you get the right kinds of mushrooms
Speaker 1: to fix that. So and then you just throw ship
Speaker 1: in the bed, smooth out those curves. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the leadership really does dictate. I mean some of them
Speaker 1: are some of them you can foy, and some of
Speaker 1: the republic you can. You can pull up policies and procedures,
Speaker 1: standard operating procedures, and you can look at like there's
Speaker 1: a ton of policies that literally dictate what you are
Speaker 1: and are not allowed to do in your personal life.
Speaker 1: Things you're allowed to post on social media, places, you're
Speaker 1: allowed to go in uniform, And it all just starts
Speaker 1: like tinking away at your armor. That that sense of identity,
Speaker 1: that sense of self, and that's how the job becomes
Speaker 1: your identity. Again. It permeates every corner of your life
Speaker 1: if you let it. Um, if you don't have like
Speaker 1: the I don't know the mental strength to kind of
Speaker 1: resist that, it washes over your real fast. Because while
Speaker 1: that's all going on, especially as a young cop, you
Speaker 1: feel great, You're you're special. Now, you're you're in this,
Speaker 1: you're in the magic club. You you have the the
Speaker 1: symbol on your chest and the gun on your hip,
Speaker 1: and it's really easy to let that slip and just
Speaker 1: become everything about you. Um. Yeah, remember permissions, like so
Speaker 1: permission to date and things like that might sound a
Speaker 1: little weird, but there are times where like my wife
Speaker 1: and I don't dress like the typical conservative Central Valley person,
Speaker 1: uh and act out of work functions. I would get
Speaker 1: I would get comments from people being like hey, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: your your wife has a lot of really colorful hair,
Speaker 1: like maybe she should tone that down. And again that
Speaker 1: was another one where I'm like, what, No, that's my wife.
Speaker 1: She can do whatever she damn well wants. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's that's the kind of talking that should
Speaker 1: get somebody slapped upside the head. Yeah. Um, the uh.
Speaker 1: The next thing you have here is the group is elitist,
Speaker 1: claiming a special exalted status for itself, it's leader and
Speaker 1: its members. The leader is and I'm interested in kind
Speaker 1: of because you you have you have elements of this
Speaker 1: right um with it like the sheep dog thing. We're
Speaker 1: kind of like the cop is the center of the
Speaker 1: cult for people who are not Cop Coults. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like does this exist, Like I don't see like cult
Speaker 1: a cult leader sort of within this this thing. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's almost more nebulous than that, where this
Speaker 1: idea of the agent of the law is kind of
Speaker 1: the center of the cult that the people who are
Speaker 1: agents of the law buy into, as well as folks
Speaker 1: outside of it. You know, I don't know, this is
Speaker 1: probably deserve any I mean, I'm interested in your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this. This probably deserves significantly more analysis then we're
Speaker 1: going to give it today. But I think it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing to think about. Right. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: how I when I put earlier that the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system is the direct substitute for God. It is God,
Speaker 1: the law is God. I mean, how many times have
Speaker 1: you gotten into a debate with someone where they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's ethically fine because it's legal, and you're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: legality does not equal you know, ethical or moral and there.
Speaker 1: But there's these people in America who are just like, no,
Speaker 1: if it's legal, it's legal, that means it's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the elitism, yeah, it's obvious. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: met it is kind of a religious belief though, that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's illegal, so it's bad. She there were a criminal,
Speaker 1: so they deserved X, like making a making a homebrewed
Speaker 1: cleric that believed in the law for D, and D
Speaker 1: was pretty easy to be like, Yeah, this is a church,
Speaker 1: this is a religion. Um, yeah it is. It is
Speaker 1: the sheep dog um on on sheep and the you know,
Speaker 1: it's us against the wolves and blah blah law. And
Speaker 1: then we have a guy's name in here that I
Speaker 1: won't say, uh for anonymity. But we had we had
Speaker 1: a braska, a lieutenant that would give us these prepared
Speaker 1: speeches whenever he thought someone's morale was getting low, uh,
Speaker 1: where he would talk about how and he was wrong
Speaker 1: that the word sheriff comes from um like sanscript or
Speaker 1: Arabic sharif, which is not true. It comes from shire Reeve.
Speaker 1: It's old English, just squished because English is a hideous language. Um.
Speaker 1: But he had to. I mean, I can't count how
Speaker 1: many times he told me that exact same speech to
Speaker 1: my face, over and over again, as if it was
Speaker 1: the first time I was hearing the story. And to me,
Speaker 1: that was another thing that clicked where I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: it's like talking, It's like a call and response when
Speaker 1: you're in church sometimes. Yeah, anytime you confront a religious person,
Speaker 1: they just they have that that that that dogmatic skeew
Speaker 1: that regurgitates and just like, well, here's my opinion that
Speaker 1: I was told by someone who told me. Okay, So Alexander, UM,
Speaker 1: we've got more to say. You've got a lot more
Speaker 1: that you've written here. Um, we're gonna we've gone kind
Speaker 1: of a little over the time we had here. So
Speaker 1: I want to have you back on tomorrow for part
Speaker 1: two of this before we roll out. Do you have
Speaker 1: anything you'd like to plug? Maybe the Washington State Patrol? No? Um, No,
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything to plug. I'm I'm never
Speaker 1: say die where all the easier threes because I'm that
Speaker 1: elder nerd from the nineties. Yeah, and uh saw hackers
Speaker 1: in the theater. I it's claimed to fame. So yeah,
Speaker 1: on Twitter if you want to come see me. How
Speaker 1: are your hips doing that? It's okay, Garrison's never seen
Speaker 1: Wayne's World. Oh I know that's true. That's true. Too young.
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Speaker 1: could happen here behind the podcast bad stuff. It could
Speaker 1: happen here, it is, it could happen here. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Part two of Why Police are Occult? Thanks Garrison, Thanks
Speaker 1: for doing the job. That is one of our jobs, certainly,
Speaker 1: but apparently not mine. Alexander Williams back again? Um, Alexander,
Speaker 1: how are you? How are you feeling good? Was your
Speaker 1: life in a radically different place now than it was
Speaker 1: when we ended part one? Oh yeah? Like no, Well
Speaker 1: that's for the best, because anything that would change in
Speaker 1: about the thirty seconds between these episodes probably would not
Speaker 1: have been a positive change. You're letting the magic out.
Speaker 1: People are gonna know. Yeah, they should know already. Uh So.
Speaker 1: The next thing you've got here, in terms of cult
Speaker 1: characteristics that you saw inside the Police is the group
Speaker 1: has a polarized us versus them mentality which may cause
Speaker 1: conflict with the wider society. Um yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: this is the one that like, yeah, we've all we
Speaker 1: all kind of saw that one. Actually, are you sure
Speaker 1: about that one? I'm not convinced. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: Eureka moment, right, Yeah. Um, I do think it's probably
Speaker 1: worth a little bit of exploration about like what it
Speaker 1: means emotionally to be told like I want to defund
Speaker 1: or even abolish the police as a police officer, like
Speaker 1: that's that's a um yeah. Yeah. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time that I heard that, the concept of it when
Speaker 1: I was a cop. I think I was about five
Speaker 1: years away from getting out, um, and it blew my mind.
Speaker 1: It was it was like I'm like, you don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't have enough funding, Like how how in the world,
Speaker 1: But we can't do our job because in you know,
Speaker 1: in our in my head, we're where the thing holding
Speaker 1: society up. If we're not here, everything falls apart and crumbles. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the idea of being told like we need to defund
Speaker 1: the police for cops, it's it's an attack on your
Speaker 1: values and your role in the world. It's also attack
Speaker 1: on like your personal life because because your life is
Speaker 1: police as well, right, and and and it's and it's
Speaker 1: like you're you've you've been talking a lot about how
Speaker 1: the job becomes such a central part of your identity
Speaker 1: that it's not even just attacking like your paycheck, but
Speaker 1: it's attacking like your essence now as a person. It
Speaker 1: is It's like if you've ever had a debate with
Speaker 1: with an extremely like evangelical religious person, it's the same
Speaker 1: as trying to tell a cop like, hey, you don't
Speaker 1: actually hold society up. You're not exactly as important as
Speaker 1: you think you are. Um. And like I said, like,
Speaker 1: we don't get we don't get paid very much. Health
Speaker 1: insurance usually isn't that good um our our unions that
Speaker 1: we toad as being the best, we're usually pretty corrupt um.
Speaker 1: And they don't really go to bat for us and
Speaker 1: get us the good health insurance and get us the
Speaker 1: good pay. They get us just enough. And so when
Speaker 1: a cop here's like, hey, we defund the police, it's
Speaker 1: like from our perspective, we think what we're hearing is
Speaker 1: we don't appreciate you. We already think you get paid
Speaker 1: too much. We we think of it less about like
Speaker 1: the structure of law enforcement, and we think it personally
Speaker 1: of like, oh, you don't think my kids should have dinner? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's uh, I mean yeah, of course that has
Speaker 1: like of course it ends the way that we saw
Speaker 1: it in you know, or at least it continues the
Speaker 1: way we saw it and continue last year, right, And
Speaker 1: and it's I think it could help like people like
Speaker 1: us are on one side of the line and you know,
Speaker 1: the other people are on the other side of the
Speaker 1: line still, and I think it could help people on
Speaker 1: our side of the of the of the barricades to
Speaker 1: understand just how willing these guys are to do things
Speaker 1: and things that they wouldn't normally do, things that you
Speaker 1: would never consider doing on your own, but for the
Speaker 1: job and as in order, they'll do it because again
Speaker 1: it's part of their identity, and it's it's there. You know,
Speaker 1: you're attacking me. You're also attacking my family, You're you're
Speaker 1: It goes back to that grossman thing of being told
Speaker 1: a lot of um, no matter what you do, you
Speaker 1: go home tonight. So no matter what I do on
Speaker 1: my shift, I go home tonight. It's better to be
Speaker 1: judged by twelve and carried by six. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of like the police of the riot line,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can see them being like middle aged
Speaker 1: conservative dudes, like look at all these like fucking like
Speaker 1: gay queer teenagers throws to fat me. Right, it's like
Speaker 1: the specific thing you're like, oh you you like I'm
Speaker 1: getting attacked by like the lowest of the low society.
Speaker 1: I'm being attacked by like did like degenerates and like
Speaker 1: this weird kind of scum. I'm actually what society should be.
Speaker 1: The people that are fighting against me are like this
Speaker 1: weird anti social thing, right, That's that's how from their
Speaker 1: perspective um when almost an actuality. I've been I've been
Speaker 1: slowly kind of appropriating that type of language for when
Speaker 1: I see a cop do something horrible, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at that, like anti social, violent freak, because you
Speaker 1: can look at that language because it flips the way
Speaker 1: we usually view like aesthetics when you know, because like
Speaker 1: when you see someone do something horribly horribly violent but
Speaker 1: they addressed in a uniform, it is it has the
Speaker 1: appearance of being proper, but like, no, that actually still
Speaker 1: is anti social and extremely violent. So I think I've
Speaker 1: been playing around with like flip flipping that language. But
Speaker 1: you can definitely see it on the cops faces when
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of like young queer as fun people
Speaker 1: are throwing water bottles at them. Oh yeah, you can't.
Speaker 1: And and the thing that to the thing to remember
Speaker 1: about most cops is they're there. Their ego is paper
Speaker 1: thin their skin. They cannot take a joke, they cannot
Speaker 1: take an insult. The the number of cops that I
Speaker 1: would see, and I would argue that I saw some
Speaker 1: of the worst worst behavior than on the eats, because
Speaker 1: because inside the jail you're you know, you're in your
Speaker 1: own little world. You're inside these walls. The public can't
Speaker 1: see you unless you're on camera and prebody cameras, you
Speaker 1: know where all the cameras are. And I the the
Speaker 1: amount of guys that like an inmate would call them
Speaker 1: like the f slur or any other slur and the
Speaker 1: cop would just snap, we just lose their mind. And
Speaker 1: me and another couple other guys being the only kind
Speaker 1: of cops that would get in the guy's way and
Speaker 1: be like no, And it was never we couldn't say no,
Speaker 1: that's wrong, don't do that. It was always no, it's
Speaker 1: not worth it, or no, you're gonna get in trouble
Speaker 1: or no, you know if you do that, he wins man,
Speaker 1: because if we said don't do that, it's wrong. We
Speaker 1: may have we may have stopped that bad thing from happening,
Speaker 1: but we have now marked ourselves as being, you know,
Speaker 1: potential apostates against the close. Um. So yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Calling them names works. Sixt and stones do brey Cops
Speaker 1: bones Like, Oh boy, it does work. Like in terms
Speaker 1: of if if the goal is make them extremely angry, yes,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. It's yeah. Obviously. The next one you've
Speaker 1: got is the leader. The leader is not accountable to
Speaker 1: any authorities, um, which the police regulate and investigate themselves.
Speaker 1: That's one of the most basic ones. But it does
Speaker 1: it kind of. It does lead to this, like it
Speaker 1: is interesting to think about the way the Church of
Speaker 1: Scientology handles uh misbehavior from its agents and the way
Speaker 1: that like a police department does. Because there's not a
Speaker 1: ton of daylight betwixt the two. There's not listening to
Speaker 1: you the l Ron episodes. Anyone who hasn't listened to them,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to them. They're fantastic. One of
Speaker 1: my favorites um, Yeah. Listening to that and the way
Speaker 1: that they're a little internalized security system was structured was
Speaker 1: very very analog to exactly what happens in law enforcement
Speaker 1: when they're so so called policing themselves b s. Because
Speaker 1: god they don't. They'll do every little thing to manipulate
Speaker 1: the situation to have the cop come out on top
Speaker 1: and not be in trouble because who's gonna all them
Speaker 1: responsible that my own guy at my own department's interviewing me.
Speaker 1: We've known each other since you were kids, or I've
Speaker 1: known his dad, or his dad's known me, or or
Speaker 1: he's you know, related or whatever. It never works when
Speaker 1: the you know, the watchman are watching themselves. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. We don't, well I do, you
Speaker 1: know how, But I really wish there was if we
Speaker 1: do have to still have law enforcement civilian oversight with
Speaker 1: actual power, actual authority to do. Yeah. That's that's the
Speaker 1: thing is that everywhere and a lot of the times
Speaker 1: that's been try to put into legislator, it doesn't. It's
Speaker 1: always like neutered. It's always like and I like, I've
Speaker 1: I've seen versions of it pop up in Portland and
Speaker 1: it never does anything. Yeah, And that's I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: the whole the question of is to what extent can
Speaker 1: increasing civilian oversight uh solve problems? To what extent is
Speaker 1: it like papering over them? Those are all things worth discussing. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I want to kind of keep us focused
Speaker 1: on the mindset that that inclcates, because that that's the
Speaker 1: thing that I don't think people get in part because
Speaker 1: like most people who are part of these abolitionous movements,
Speaker 1: most people who are are on the sides that we
Speaker 1: are on this um either probably don't know a police
Speaker 1: officer very well apart and certainly almost most of them
Speaker 1: have not been police officers. And I'm kind of wondering,
Speaker 1: what are you actually scared of doing as a police officer,
Speaker 1: Like what what what are you actually scared of in
Speaker 1: terms of like the blowback, the fault, Like what what
Speaker 1: is it you actually get worried about if it's not
Speaker 1: pissing off everyone else in the city who wasn't a cop,
Speaker 1: you know it? So, Yeah, what it comes down to is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that the the Church of law, the Church
Speaker 1: of criminal justice, and what they're scared of is so
Speaker 1: if I get a dirty cop who's not blatantly doing
Speaker 1: something bad, like he just he hit a guy too
Speaker 1: hard or something. It's something that hasn't hit the news yet. Um,
Speaker 1: but I have to morally, like ethically, on paper, I'm
Speaker 1: required to have an I A division investigate these people.
Speaker 1: The reason that in my head when I was there
Speaker 1: and being interviewed for these things, it's because you have
Speaker 1: to hold up the infallibility of the law. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what really happened. All that matters is what's in
Speaker 1: black and white on paper in our files. If we
Speaker 1: ever get audited by a federal body and we can say, look,
Speaker 1: a bad thing happened, Yes, we investigated it, here's what
Speaker 1: Here were the results. And it's all about holding up
Speaker 1: the infallibility of the law, because if it really gets
Speaker 1: out and cops really get in trouble for stuff like
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that's been happening where cops are
Speaker 1: actually being convicted finally for doing terrible things, it erodes
Speaker 1: the blind faith that the masses have in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Because I've heard people here in Utah, which is a
Speaker 1: very conservative place, look at some of those shootings that
Speaker 1: have happened where the cops have actually been found guilty
Speaker 1: and they've actually been like, oh wow, like I never
Speaker 1: once thought a cop would do this, And it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like much, but in their head, that's that's a
Speaker 1: seed that's setting in their consciousness. And that's that's the
Speaker 1: whole point of the blue wall of silence and keeping
Speaker 1: everything in the house is if everybody realizes that we're
Speaker 1: just a little weird man behind a curtain, you know,
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz doesn't work anymore. We have to
Speaker 1: maintain this false image that we are infallible and we
Speaker 1: know we know exactly what we're doing, and we are
Speaker 1: taking care of you. You have to believe that, so
Speaker 1: they'll do anything to maintain the lie. Wow. Yeah that
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's bleak, but it makes sense. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: felt bleak being in there. This ties into kind of
Speaker 1: the the role of like lying right and and and
Speaker 1: the kind of the cult thing you're tying this into
Speaker 1: is that like colts will often talk about how the
Speaker 1: things the cult is doing are so important that you
Speaker 1: can do terrible things to achieve them, right. You see
Speaker 1: this in the Church of Scientology and their Dirty Tricks programs.
Speaker 1: Sent and On had its its version of this um
Speaker 1: and you you've written here. We are taught to lie
Speaker 1: to get what we need. It's only true if it's
Speaker 1: on tape or written down. As long as it looks good,
Speaker 1: it is good. Um and I uh, I mean it.
Speaker 1: It made me think, among other things, of a guy
Speaker 1: I used to know who became a local prosecutor um,
Speaker 1: and eventually quit because he kept being assured by police
Speaker 1: officers that like something that they had put in, like
Speaker 1: the charging document was true, and then being unable to
Speaker 1: prove it in court. Um. And it it pissed him
Speaker 1: off after a period of time. Um. And I'm interested,
Speaker 1: like in the I'm sure like obviously some fraction of
Speaker 1: people doing it are just like just literally don't give
Speaker 1: a ship. But how does someone who actually does have
Speaker 1: a moral compass and believe in the law. How does
Speaker 1: someone who really believes justify lying to screw somebody over. Um.
Speaker 1: So as the guy who was there, who had morals,
Speaker 1: which is why I'm not there anymore, I couldn't all right,
Speaker 1: And I actually got in trouble on a couple of
Speaker 1: instances of everybody was going one way on a story
Speaker 1: and I was going in the opposite direction. And without
Speaker 1: using blatant terms they use all the like the little
Speaker 1: you know, legal legal fuckory terms to not say what
Speaker 1: they're trying to say, but implying and getting it across
Speaker 1: to you of like you need to get on the
Speaker 1: same page, you need to tow the line, you need
Speaker 1: to you need to get in here. And I could
Speaker 1: never do it. I just I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: my moral fiber won't let me do that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I once was told by a lieutenant that I had
Speaker 1: my moral fiber was too high, Like he literally told me,
Speaker 1: because you can't expect everyone else to live up to
Speaker 1: your moral standards. And I'm like, dude, we're we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be like a little bit above the typical moral standard.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be the example of how you know,
Speaker 1: our civilians, our citizens are supposed to act. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't the truth. Yeah, I mean, my first I think
Speaker 1: kind of radicalizing thing very early on was just like
Speaker 1: the fake drug scandal in Dallas was realizing that like
Speaker 1: on a significant scale, uh, local police had been planting
Speaker 1: ship on people in order to charge them. People have
Speaker 1: gone to prison, which happens other places too, but like, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm the bulk of the work making something like
Speaker 1: that happen, isn't the people who are planting the fake drugs,
Speaker 1: the people who realize that the department will look bad
Speaker 1: if it gets out, and then dedicate themselves to stopping
Speaker 1: it from getting out even beyond because you have you know,
Speaker 1: X number of people are willing to plant plant fake
Speaker 1: drugs on a guy, but a much larger number of
Speaker 1: people are willing to try to cover that up, So
Speaker 1: it's not a problem. That's That's the thing I really
Speaker 1: appreciate about, Alex. You're framing of this in terms of
Speaker 1: like their main or not one of the main motivations
Speaker 1: is not, you know, actually doing the job itself. It's
Speaker 1: about it's about making sure that their reality and by extension,
Speaker 1: what they want everyone else as a reality to be,
Speaker 1: to stay the same. Like they all of the effort
Speaker 1: into whether that be lying for supposedly in their view,
Speaker 1: like moral reasons and all that kind of work. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's to maintain the specific verse s of reality.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not actually for like like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not for like actually promoting what is like the
Speaker 1: law and the books by any means it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the it's the thing like in hot Fuzz, it's
Speaker 1: for the greater good. That's that's what that is. That
Speaker 1: is what they're trying to That's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: So even if they like, as long as their reality
Speaker 1: is maintained, then you know, we have some semblance of
Speaker 1: like order in the world, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: this nostalgic, semi like proto militaristic nationalist version of order.
Speaker 1: But that's that's that's the thing that wants to be maintained.
Speaker 1: So every every task, everything that they're doing isn't just
Speaker 1: a simple task. It's all in the overall effort of
Speaker 1: maintaining this like this perception. Um. And and that's a
Speaker 1: a much more I think interesting way to think about police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. Uh, these guys in like in Bill talk,
Speaker 1: these guys would take the loopill in a heartbeat. Then
Speaker 1: they don't rest Morpheus for trying to deal drugs. Like
Speaker 1: that's how dedicated these guys are too, staying inside this
Speaker 1: version of their reality. Now, um, I kind of let's
Speaker 1: move on next to um the next kind of cult aspect.
Speaker 1: The leadership induces feelings of shame and or guilt in
Speaker 1: order to influence and control members. And you're talking you've
Speaker 1: lotten down here toxic masculinity and the warrior mindset. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have any kind of like case examples of
Speaker 1: how that that actually looks of like kind of using
Speaker 1: shame or guilt to people who aren't kind of in
Speaker 1: the this quote quote unquote warrior mindset. Uh? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it happened a lot. Um. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of Monday night quarterbacking that would happen, especially with the
Speaker 1: advent of like cameras and things becoming more popular. Uh.
Speaker 1: I love my body camera. That was my little best friend.
Speaker 1: But we would go you know, you go back and
Speaker 1: you'd watch videos of incidents and things, and if somebody
Speaker 1: wasn't like engaging fast enough, they would get roasted hard
Speaker 1: like haze and you know, made fun of and mocked it.
Speaker 1: And when you were in this, you know, we're a
Speaker 1: family mindset, and you're you know, we're we got each
Speaker 1: other's backs and we only understand each other. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you're on the outside because you
Speaker 1: dared to have even a remotely moderate to liberal position
Speaker 1: on anything, or you didn't jump in on the you know,
Speaker 1: the the ass beating on something you fast enough, they
Speaker 1: turn on you fast. Like. The only thing I could
Speaker 1: compare it to is like you know every eighties and
Speaker 1: like nineties military movie or or you know Nerds movie
Speaker 1: where people just hate the ship out of each other,
Speaker 1: and it's that that dude brow everyone's got a our
Speaker 1: wire sun tattoo on their bicep, just rampant everywhere. I mean,
Speaker 1: it permeated the whole place. That drove me that that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that really drove me next,
Speaker 1: because I've never been that kind of guy. I've always
Speaker 1: been a a more of a a de escalation person
Speaker 1: and a book reader. And then I think it helps
Speaker 1: explain a lot why you see some of these videos
Speaker 1: where it's just like why did they go to zero
Speaker 1: to ten from zero to tend so fast with well,
Speaker 1: because somebody's gonna make fun of them and call them
Speaker 1: names if they don't go hard enough, fast enough on
Speaker 1: somebody when they do certain things like and yeah, the
Speaker 1: zero to a hundred thing also ties into that whole,
Speaker 1: that whole hyper vigilance thing, that always being um a
Speaker 1: compressed spring, and then it ties back into that warrior
Speaker 1: mindset of like they tell you flat out like if
Speaker 1: anyone ever attacks you, they're trying to kill you. It's
Speaker 1: it's there's there's no offens or, but you need to
Speaker 1: act like they're trying to kill you, because it goes
Speaker 1: back to the whole I'm going home at the end
Speaker 1: of the shift kind of thing. And once once that's
Speaker 1: ingrained itself into like your muscle memory, and that becomes
Speaker 1: the reflex, that becomes the thought that passes in front
Speaker 1: of your mind when a critical incident happens, then that's
Speaker 1: how you're gonna act, and you're gonna do and you're
Speaker 1: gonna go from zero to a hundred because you're going
Speaker 1: to assume that any little furtive movement movement which god,
Speaker 1: there's that language, furtive movement, um, any little movement that
Speaker 1: someone makes, like that's that's a green light. That's an
Speaker 1: excuse that I can end whatever interaction I'm having with
Speaker 1: this person with violence because they flinched enough where I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got this. Yeah Jesus. Now. One of the next
Speaker 1: ones you have here is talking about recruitment, which obviously
Speaker 1: coult STU, but also like it's a job and jobs
Speaker 1: do this constantly recruiting. I'm kind of wondering because you've
Speaker 1: you've listed here things like Explorer programs, which are like
Speaker 1: r OTC or the Boy Scouts kind of these different
Speaker 1: one of which Kyle Rittenhouse did like ways in which
Speaker 1: kind of people get onboarded. I'm wondering sort of what
Speaker 1: how you see how you see police recruitment as kind
Speaker 1: of different in a fundamentally cult your way. Then you know,
Speaker 1: every job has to bring in new people, right like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it didn't used to be this way. But
Speaker 1: I think in the in the two thousand's, especially when numbers,
Speaker 1: staffing numbers really started to drop because it's I don't
Speaker 1: know if they've just realized it wasn't worth it or
Speaker 1: they found somewhere better to get paid. But employment's gone
Speaker 1: down for law enforcement, and so recruitment goes up in response.
Speaker 1: But now they have a more active role in most
Speaker 1: places where it's almost on part of the military. They'll
Speaker 1: go to job fairs, they go to high school career days. Um,
Speaker 1: they didn't used to do that stuff, and when they do,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll find someone to like pull stuff out of
Speaker 1: the pulp cultures that geist what we know what cool? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what can we what can we cash in on to
Speaker 1: try and draw these kids in, because just like the military,
Speaker 1: cops are looking to pull in disenfranchised kids who probably
Speaker 1: aren't going to go to college, don't think it's an option.
Speaker 1: And here's this job. All you need is a high
Speaker 1: school diploma. Here's the health insurance. Here's the retirement package,
Speaker 1: which is trash. But you're seventeen. You don't know that,
Speaker 1: you don't know how to read all this. But it
Speaker 1: looks real coal. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they or stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean you're familiar with that. So but yeah, they
Speaker 1: get little kids to go out and you know, the
Speaker 1: little baby cops, and it's I mean, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things, like some of this is so much
Speaker 1: deeper than even the the individual departments or any choice
Speaker 1: made by the police, because like as a kid, some
Speaker 1: of the first toys I had were cop toys, right,
Speaker 1: like everything every boy I think, like, yes, some of
Speaker 1: the first what you're gonna get badge, a gun, You're
Speaker 1: gonna play detective, You're gonna be watching cops shows, You're
Speaker 1: gonna be watching movies where cops are the and that's
Speaker 1: I mean that that's a bigger subject than today. But like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is, like what the one of the most prevalent
Speaker 1: forms of media that's instilled in young uh boys? I
Speaker 1: guess yeah. You know what else is instilled in young
Speaker 1: boys the love of capitalism and products and specifically products
Speaker 1: and services. Find a child and whisper the names of
Speaker 1: our sponsor into their ears, preferably a child that's yours.
Speaker 1: Hopefully know any child, any child throw something so their
Speaker 1: parents look away, and then lean down and whisper better.
Speaker 1: You only counts if you get caught. We're back, um.
Speaker 1: And your next point was the group is preoccupied with
Speaker 1: making money, which is a huge thing for cults. Um,
Speaker 1: not all of them. There are some, like you know,
Speaker 1: there there are some cults that were shall we say
Speaker 1: pure um, but they're nearly We're like, hey man Manson,
Speaker 1: just it was all about the music and the Heaven's
Speaker 1: Gate was a pure cult. Yeah, yeah, Heaven's Gate. It
Speaker 1: certainly wasn't just the money for Heaven's But yes, cops,
Speaker 1: cops have civil acids forfeiture, which they just took a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars from someone in Dallas. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: person did not get charged with anything, um, which is
Speaker 1: usually the case. Yeah, but but I mean, yeah, like
Speaker 1: you have written here that like the main the main
Speaker 1: way is just increasing their budget as much as possible,
Speaker 1: which you have. Most police departments right now have the
Speaker 1: biggest budget they've ever had. UM specifically in like main
Speaker 1: cities we have, they're they're the most funded department, UM
Speaker 1: in in for the whole city that there's there's this
Speaker 1: there's this great gag in the opening episode of a
Speaker 1: show called Ugly Americans that's about trying to rere financialize
Speaker 1: the city's budget. And they have like like a social
Speaker 1: spending and cop budget and they take like all of
Speaker 1: social spending and move it over and leave this one
Speaker 1: tiny sliver and they're like, oh there, that's better. That
Speaker 1: will solve all the problems. Um. It's it is a
Speaker 1: better sketch than what I explaining it just like this
Speaker 1: sounds not funny, but the sketch is actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: But yes, and and it is, and it is relatively
Speaker 1: accurate in terms of just moving all the funding from
Speaker 1: social programs over into law enforcement. Yeah. So there's uh there,
Speaker 1: you know, there's everyone gets their financing different ways. There's county,
Speaker 1: there's stayed there's their city. But a common thing that
Speaker 1: would happen was, uh, law enforcement agencies woul try to
Speaker 1: take anything that they could under the umbrella of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: So if it was like, hey, we want to have more,
Speaker 1: you know, security equipment at the high school, and then
Speaker 1: the cops will be like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: give us that money. We'll give you another another officer
Speaker 1: on campus. Or they want to hire something for the part,
Speaker 1: you know, and we want to install lights the city
Speaker 1: park to increase security. No no, no, no, no no no,
Speaker 1: you just give us that money. We'll make sure our
Speaker 1: guys patrol it more. Mm hmm. So they actively try
Speaker 1: to just like coach money from everybody else. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: and you you can see this in a lot of
Speaker 1: towns where like the number one use of public funds
Speaker 1: is the police. I mean, it's it's all over the
Speaker 1: country at this point. Um, yeah, that makes sense. Uh.
Speaker 1: So members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time
Speaker 1: to the group and group related activities. Um. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you have written here four years with no days off,
Speaker 1: but scored a satisfactor, I was told to put in
Speaker 1: more time outside of work. Yeah, So, like I said,
Speaker 1: our emails were always sounds so much like MLM ship
Speaker 1: it is. It is they they every time you're going
Speaker 1: for an email, they negg you, like, no matter what
Speaker 1: are Our scoring system was one to ten. Um, nobody
Speaker 1: ever got higher than a six. Maybe I think I
Speaker 1: saw like one or two sevens in my entire time there.
Speaker 1: And when I became a supervisor, I asked the brass
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, I want to give this guy this
Speaker 1: this upper grade of like an eight or nine, and
Speaker 1: he told me flat, because no, we don't do that. Like,
Speaker 1: no one's allowed to get higher than a seven. And
Speaker 1: if you want a seven, you're gonna have to like
Speaker 1: write a novel about how great this person is to
Speaker 1: get them this rating. Um, it was just yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was consistently just pinning you down. The four years
Speaker 1: no dated off. So yeah, I did h four years
Speaker 1: straight without calling in sick once, like I took vacations.
Speaker 1: But um, when I went in from my email and
Speaker 1: he slides me a thing that says it says attendance
Speaker 1: satisfactory and I was like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 1: I was like, I haven't taken a day a sick
Speaker 1: day and four you know what? I have three kids.
Speaker 1: How do you think I managed that? Like, I've sacrificed
Speaker 1: to be here that much. And his response was, well, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I never see you at barbecues, I never see
Speaker 1: you at the union meetings. I never see you at
Speaker 1: the fundraisers for the sheriff's reelection, even though it's blatantly
Speaker 1: against policy and illegal to do. And I told him
Speaker 1: that in his response was, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Tell on me? Are you're gonna tell Jesus? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I mean who are you going
Speaker 1: to tell that? Who are you to? Yeah? And it is.
Speaker 1: It's also just like this. It isolates you from other people.
Speaker 1: It stops you from knowing folks that aren't cops. And
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's a lot like what your up line
Speaker 1: is gonna tell you if you're selling mary kay that
Speaker 1: that that that ties into the that ties into the
Speaker 1: next point. Members are encouraged or required to live and
Speaker 1: or socialize only with other group of members. Um. And
Speaker 1: you say, this is like part of the hyper vigilance, isolate,
Speaker 1: isolation cycle. But I also see this in terms of
Speaker 1: like something I get into for fun, is I join
Speaker 1: like a wife of cops? Um? Facebook groups just because
Speaker 1: it's fast just to have all of just to have
Speaker 1: all of these like cops spouses in a Facebook group
Speaker 1: and it's super yeah, Like it's it's a really interesting
Speaker 1: like culture of like just associating with other people on
Speaker 1: the job. You know, there's like cop barbecues like you
Speaker 1: mentioned and all this kind of stuff where it's like
Speaker 1: we're the only ones that can understand you. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna build like this like you know, force field around
Speaker 1: all of us and we can be together as a
Speaker 1: family and keep out everyone else because we're the ones
Speaker 1: that really know what's up. Um. Yeah, it seems uh,
Speaker 1: I mean for some people who are really into it,
Speaker 1: I guess that is you know, that's how humans socialize
Speaker 1: in some ways. So like you know, for people who
Speaker 1: think being cops are good and quote unquote enjoy it,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they have a decent time hanging out with
Speaker 1: their cop buddies, right, Um. And I'm sure are the
Speaker 1: cops spouse Facebook groups, I'm sure they have a good
Speaker 1: time laughing about whatever viral video there is of someone
Speaker 1: using too much force you know who who knows what?
Speaker 1: Like how how they actually think about those types of
Speaker 1: very isolated environments because you know, it's it's about fend
Speaker 1: find you know, it's it's almost like it's it's extending
Speaker 1: out into like fandom rules where you're associating with other
Speaker 1: people the same way fandoms work, which is very just
Speaker 1: very similar to to how cults work. Um so, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an armed, militant fandom. And your last point here,
Speaker 1: the most loyal members, the true believers, feel there can
Speaker 1: be no life outside the context of the group. They
Speaker 1: believe there is no other way to be, and often
Speaker 1: fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave or
Speaker 1: even consider leaving the group. Yeah, so I put in
Speaker 1: the note of just self expantiory. But yeah, it's me
Speaker 1: quitting was we eared. I knew I needed to do it,
Speaker 1: but I I had a massive existential crisis of identity
Speaker 1: and of of logistical things, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: was it was tied to my identity, and it was
Speaker 1: it was letting go of something that was like a
Speaker 1: core pillar of my personality and it really freaked me out.
Speaker 1: And I think that if I was more inside the group,
Speaker 1: and I was more like one of the guys, a
Speaker 1: golden boy or something like, I probably would have never
Speaker 1: left if I was. If I was getting that constant
Speaker 1: reinforcement of the good boy feelings, I don't think I
Speaker 1: would have quit. Um. But after I did quit, that
Speaker 1: actually kicked off a cascade of people around my same
Speaker 1: age and within my same seniority level in looking at
Speaker 1: their job and looking at what it was doing to
Speaker 1: them psychologically and physically and with their families, and thinking
Speaker 1: to themselves, Oh, I can leave that. That is how
Speaker 1: called how that is how leaving cults work. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so once I left, a bunch of other guys
Speaker 1: were like, oh, I don't have to do this until
Speaker 1: I'm fifty five. I can I can go start another
Speaker 1: career somewhere else. I can go start another retirement plan
Speaker 1: at a different place. And I just it felt great
Speaker 1: to see other people tear away and do that. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I know for some ofe that
Speaker 1: it hurt mhm really bad to leave that behind, because
Speaker 1: once you're once you are out. Um, you are kind
Speaker 1: of out. Even if you leave amicably, like hey, I
Speaker 1: just want to go do something else with my life,
Speaker 1: you're no longer in those people's minds anymore, because you're
Speaker 1: not part of the team. You're not in the club,
Speaker 1: you're not in the family anymore. You're that guy that
Speaker 1: used to be here. And I guess kind of at
Speaker 1: the conclusion of this and this is you know, when
Speaker 1: you when the question is like, how do you de
Speaker 1: radicalize get people out of colts? How do you like,
Speaker 1: no one has a good answer to that. So I
Speaker 1: don't think we should expect you to suddenly have like
Speaker 1: here's how to here's how to convince everybody to stop
Speaker 1: doing this, because we can't do that for fucking Q
Speaker 1: and on, like de radicalization of the people who say
Speaker 1: they're involved in it are fucking drifting like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a big mess of a of a fucking field
Speaker 1: in the first place. But I am wondering, do you
Speaker 1: have some insights into like, yeah, how then do we
Speaker 1: de radicalize these people? Uh? Like I don't think there
Speaker 1: is Like I don't think there is a cookie cutter
Speaker 1: answer for like pulling people out. Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: can't bag them in a white vand and take them
Speaker 1: to a hotel. Uh. The only thing I can think
Speaker 1: of that would actually change the culture is a huge
Speaker 1: shift in our national culture around like mental health and
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity and you know, wrapping your identity into into
Speaker 1: your job. Because it's not just cops that do this.
Speaker 1: There's it's it's it's it's like that is that is
Speaker 1: America now? Is that is like hustle culture. That is
Speaker 1: what the idea of a rear is. My name is
Speaker 1: blank and I am a blank. Like career. Career comes
Speaker 1: from the word that means like careening, like you are
Speaker 1: going full force into this thing that is that is
Speaker 1: what you are doing now. That is your existence, is
Speaker 1: your career. You're going at it um. That is that
Speaker 1: is what this whole country is built on. Uh So
Speaker 1: getting out of that for a lot of people, for
Speaker 1: just regular jobs, it's difficult. Now adding on the idea
Speaker 1: that you are the thing that holds society together, that
Speaker 1: is that that has a whole other level of complexity,
Speaker 1: like psychologically for the person inside it um because I'm sure,
Speaker 1: like telemarketers, if you can get really into it and
Speaker 1: make money, sure that can be a career. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're not holding society together, and like that's not that's
Speaker 1: not that's not a delusion that you have and nobody
Speaker 1: outside shares has There's there there is, there is no
Speaker 1: thin telemarketing line of supporting you. So it is it
Speaker 1: is different for like police specifically, even more so than
Speaker 1: like firefighters or like E. M. T. S. UM. This
Speaker 1: particular fandom that's developed around police and and and like
Speaker 1: the the incredible self importance that they is that is
Speaker 1: cultivated um to. Yeah, like the idea of I'm doing
Speaker 1: this to maintain reality is like a very like big
Speaker 1: thing to tell yourself and get getting out of that
Speaker 1: seems uh challenging. Yeah, it really is. It's like it's
Speaker 1: almost it's almost worse than most like churches in a
Speaker 1: sense because in this version it's so it's so materialized.
Speaker 1: It's it's it is, Yeah, it's it's it's right in
Speaker 1: front of you. I can reach out and touch it
Speaker 1: because I'm part of society. But if I'm not here
Speaker 1: and we're not here, you know, anarchy the bad guy
Speaker 1: that the way people think the word means, you know,
Speaker 1: everything's gonna catch fire. And the only reason people are
Speaker 1: good to each other is because the law makes them
Speaker 1: me that way and all that kind of toxic bs.
Speaker 1: So the only thing I can think of to be
Speaker 1: like to help de radicalize people is it's almost like
Speaker 1: treating someone in your family that listens to too much
Speaker 1: Q and on is to you know, if you know
Speaker 1: a cop or you have a friend that used to
Speaker 1: be a cop, and he ever like reaches out to you,
Speaker 1: maybe with like kid gloves, kind of be like, hey,
Speaker 1: how you doing just small things because that could maybe
Speaker 1: lead to him putting them putting something on their shelf.
Speaker 1: Just like when people get out of religions and things,
Speaker 1: they'll often reach out to people and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is such a fucking it kind of means something
Speaker 1: if he's going outside of the group, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe recognize that, Like, you have an opportunity. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: if a cop reaches out to you, it's just like
Speaker 1: someone in a religious institution. They're reaching out to you
Speaker 1: because they feel safe talking to you because you're not
Speaker 1: going to turn them in. You it's not gonna have
Speaker 1: any h immediate impact on their life right now. Yeah
Speaker 1: that makes sense? Um, all right, well, Alexander, anything else
Speaker 1: you wanted to get into. I mean I could talk
Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff for days and days and
Speaker 1: hours and hours, the whole hyper vigilance cycle. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I've read a bunch of books on it.
Speaker 1: I really tried to get training on just the hyper
Speaker 1: vigilance cycle. Like, well, if you ask most cops about
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance, they would just look at you and be like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is why I used to I used to give
Speaker 1: this book the Emotional Survival Bout for law enforcement. I would.
Speaker 1: I gave it to new hires, and some of those
Speaker 1: new hires didn't come back, and I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's good. Yeah, some of them looked at it
Speaker 1: and we're like, no, I'm not signing up for this
Speaker 1: because you you really don't know what you're signing up
Speaker 1: for the real stuff that you're signing up for until
Speaker 1: you're in it. Yeah yeah, I mean also a cult
Speaker 1: um Yeah yeah, well all right, uh Alexander, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on and for sharing this with us.
Speaker 1: I think it's a useful look behind the curtain um
Speaker 1: that that folks need um and this has been it
Speaker 1: could happen here. You can find Garrison on the internet.
Speaker 1: Go go go track down Garrison's fake Facebook account. You
Speaker 1: know what goes do that you can't you can? I
Speaker 1: I have I have made up possible specifically For this reason,
Speaker 1: a cop wife group with Harrison joined me and Vanessa
Speaker 1: so we could discuss our husband's careers. Hey, for all
Speaker 1: you know, you may cause the de radicalization of the
Speaker 1: cop Yeah. That or Garrison just gets really weirdly into
Speaker 1: role playing as the wife of Like a career episode
Speaker 1: is over, we are done. This is I am pulling
Speaker 1: the luck. Hi, I'm Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And where the hosts of the science podcast Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, where every week we get to explore
Speaker 1: some of the weirdest questions in the universe, Like if
Speaker 1: sci fi teleportation was possible, how would it square with
Speaker 1: the multitudes of organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can
Speaker 1: we find evidence of emotions in animals like bees, ants,
Speaker 1: and crayfish? How would it interplanetary civilization function just free
Speaker 1: will exist? Stuff to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries,
Speaker 1: cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and the wonders of techno history. Basically,
Speaker 1: this show is the altar where we worship the weirdness
Speaker 1: of reality. If anybody ever told you you ask the
Speaker 1: weirdest questions, it is time to come join us in
Speaker 1: the place where you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday, with
Speaker 1: bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. After thirty years, it's time
Speaker 1: to return to the halls of West Beverly High and
Speaker 1: hang out at the peach pit on the podcast. Nine
Speaker 1: O two one o MG joined Jenny Garth and Tori
Speaker 1: Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: nine O two one oh. From the very beginning, we
Speaker 1: get to tell the fans all of the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what happened
Speaker 1: on camera obviously, but we can tell them all the
Speaker 1: good stuff that happened off camera. Get all the juicy
Speaker 1: details of every episode that you've been wondering about for decades.
Speaker 1: As nine O two one oh, super fan and radio
Speaker 1: host Sissany sits in with Jenny and Tory, two reminisce,
Speaker 1: reflect and relive each moment, from Brandon and Kelly's first
Speaker 1: kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates, you have an amazing memory.
Speaker 1: You remember everything about the entire tenure is that we
Speaker 1: filmed that show, and you remember absolutely nothing of the
Speaker 1: ten years that we filmed that show. Listen to nine
Speaker 1: O two one OMG on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Harrison starts
Speaker 1: the episode. I don't trust Robbert to me. You want
Speaker 1: me to start? I don't trust Rowbert to this. It's time, Garrison,
Speaker 1: it's time for you to learn. Wow, my advice is
Speaker 1: a tonal shrieking. I am not doing that. Everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh, Garrison's just copying Robert's tone and cadence.
Speaker 1: You mean you mean they're making sounds with my mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's how. That's how, that's how communication works. Start
Speaker 1: the episode with that and trigger everybody like me. You
Speaker 1: use a microphone, it's very real. Yeah, you stieve we're recording.
Speaker 1: Let's let's do this. Hey, it's time for stories. We
Speaker 1: love we love stories here Attika had happen here pod
Speaker 1: the podcast about how things are kind of falling apart
Speaker 1: and too maybe some ways to put them back together. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison, I'm starting this episode today. I'm not sure why.
Speaker 1: Hungover Robert is real hungry because I didn't trust Robert
Speaker 1: to do his job today. But I trust you, Garrison.
Speaker 1: You didn't really not trust me to do my job.
Speaker 1: I know. That's that's fun. Um. We also we also
Speaker 1: Christopher here hey, and and we have uh writer Rebecca Campbell. Hello, hey,
Speaker 1: and uh what why don't you briefly explain who who
Speaker 1: you are and what what's what's going on today? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a Canadian writer and sometimes I'm a teacher, but
Speaker 1: mostly I just write really sad stories about climate change
Speaker 1: and coasts and aies and near future stuff like that. Um.
Speaker 1: This story I'm reading it is called Thank You from
Speaker 1: Your Patients. It came out and reckoning for I guess
Speaker 1: last year. And uh. It's based on my partner's time
Speaker 1: when he was working in a call center and the
Speaker 1: kind of nightmares stories that I heard from him every
Speaker 1: time he came home from work. But it's also about
Speaker 1: me being on the other side of the country from
Speaker 1: the part of the world that I love the most,
Speaker 1: which is the Pacific Northwest. Um. And you know, watching
Speaker 1: Fukushima a few years ago and watching wildfires a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and um, being separated from the things that
Speaker 1: are important to you. Um as they're all falling apart. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just excited that this podcast is now two fifths Canadian,
Speaker 1: so that's that's the main thing I'm excited about. Oh no,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I just Tim Horton's cup just appeared
Speaker 1: next to me. It's terrible donut I have. I do
Speaker 1: have a Tim Horton's kept in my kitchen. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's let's let's start this, start this, start
Speaker 1: this reading, Let's eat this popsicle stand as they say
Speaker 1: a thing, let's continue, Let's let's eat this. Okay, thank
Speaker 1: you for your patients. I'm lucky because they replaced a
Speaker 1: bunch of chairs last month and I got a new one.
Speaker 1: A good chair is important when you spend ten hours
Speaker 1: a day in a cubicle talking to strangers about their problems.
Speaker 1: I've been here three years and worked on most of
Speaker 1: Western Morgan's services, which means I can, with no thought,
Speaker 1: help grandma set up her WiFi or troublesheet banking software,
Speaker 1: or set up your cell phone plan, or help you
Speaker 1: with some app designed to find your soulmate that nevertheless
Speaker 1: fills you with hopelessness. I can't help you with the hopelessness.
Speaker 1: It's nonstandard. But I'm Western Morgan's floater, and Jordi or
Speaker 1: Kirsty just dropped me where the calls are heavy or
Speaker 1: turnover as high. On Twitter, I can answer questions within
Speaker 1: five seconds of some asshole in Toronto saying what the
Speaker 1: fuck my TV doesn't see the house network, and I respond,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that Toronto asshole. Let's see if
Speaker 1: I can help. I'm impossible to rile because I've heard everything,
Speaker 1: every possible stupid question, every strange request regarding lapsed policies
Speaker 1: and misspayments, every paranoid rand, every sort of impotent rage.
Speaker 1: The management is shitty and the customers are irritable, but
Speaker 1: there's beauty and problem solving. The really bad stuff started
Speaker 1: at the end of last month, when I had to
Speaker 1: do on one on one majority team lead for the floor.
Speaker 1: I've been fielding a bunch of questions regarding a recent
Speaker 1: patch that had broken everything. I had this rhythm, hitting
Speaker 1: my thirty second age and typing without thinking, mark here,
Speaker 1: how can I help you? But one on one is
Speaker 1: mandated interruptions. So I listened to Geordy brainstorm about improving morale.
Speaker 1: They stopped having barbecues because it was too expensive, even
Speaker 1: when the burgers were sawdust and soy. Also, no one
Speaker 1: wanted to be outside because Detroit was still burning and
Speaker 1: the PPM up to something like Beijing. Listen to this
Speaker 1: Western Morrigan idle Jordi told me, we judge three of
Speaker 1: the top right calls, and we have a thing and
Speaker 1: someone walks away with a Timmy's gift card like fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: Jordy said that like it was a good thing. What
Speaker 1: about a key, fop, I asked, we can't get out
Speaker 1: with what without one? After hours? But only management could
Speaker 1: hold or the winner gets to wear Jane's or keep
Speaker 1: their phone for a shift. That didn't rate an answer.
Speaker 1: The most frustrating thing about Western Morgan is that team
Speaker 1: leads have to hold your phone like you're an untrusted
Speaker 1: teenager who's been grounded. I feel like I'm lost in
Speaker 1: a cave or a space station. When I do a
Speaker 1: lot of overtime. I arrived when it's dark, and I
Speaker 1: leave when it's dark. And while sometimes I go around
Speaker 1: the corner for coffee or McNuggets, it always feels like
Speaker 1: I'm just visiting the world. I don't know what's happened
Speaker 1: if a government's fall on, or if an ice shelf
Speaker 1: has collapsed, if Detroit is burning again, or maybe California
Speaker 1: or the Great Lakes are dying at a slightly faster
Speaker 1: rate than they were before I left for work, never
Speaker 1: knowing what's going on outside. I sit in my good
Speaker 1: chair and say that sounds frustrating to everyone, no matter
Speaker 1: who's talking or what they want. Let me see if
Speaker 1: I understand your problem. You could judge Geordie, Stead said,
Speaker 1: still talking about Morrel. You're impartial. You hate everyone. I
Speaker 1: don't hate everyone, Georgy, I said reflexively, though, to be fair,
Speaker 1: I hate a lot of people here. After my mandated
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes with Gejority, I saw that Misty had a
Speaker 1: problem with my documentation, which has been rough since they
Speaker 1: changed policy on me. She's in the Philippines, where most
Speaker 1: of the real work happens. Upper management is all in India.
Speaker 1: They only have us because they need Canadian accents on
Speaker 1: the phones and they get tax breaks. Bringing jobs to
Speaker 1: one of the more desolate parts of the country downwind
Speaker 1: from Detroit, rampant West Nile and of the province's heavy
Speaker 1: metals processed at the plant out by the ball of
Speaker 1: the baby is born. Here are girls something to do
Speaker 1: with residual b p A Misty is on the other
Speaker 1: side of the Pacific in Lagazpi. But you think she
Speaker 1: was right here considering how aggressively she organizes us. Your
Speaker 1: ship at filling out forms mark the right up is
Speaker 1: going to kill your rank. We're stack ranked. Every shift
Speaker 1: it gets you points you can redeem. You can redeem,
Speaker 1: which honestly is worth it for the grocery store gift cards.
Speaker 1: Just tell me what I did wrong. Lagazpi. We were
Speaker 1: in the middle of a rough month. The flu hit
Speaker 1: everywhere at once, and no one could afford to lose
Speaker 1: the work, So we had a bunch of people come
Speaker 1: in sick coughs and juicy sneezes all over the floor,
Speaker 1: and half the time you got on the elevator and
Speaker 1: everyone was gray faced and weaving. I came in over
Speaker 1: the weekend to cover mobile because they lost half their staff.
Speaker 1: So I'd been on for eight days by Monday, when
Speaker 1: Jordy was manic trying to call people in so he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to go on the phones. He always says
Speaker 1: when we're smoking outside, and he's pointedly not looking at
Speaker 1: the place where the GAM building used to be. It's
Speaker 1: not the extra fifty cents an hour. It's the fact
Speaker 1: I don't have to deal with people. He hated taking calls.
Speaker 1: He offered me overtime, so I started coming in at
Speaker 1: six and leaving at ten, and I didn't even notice
Speaker 1: the weekend. I do remember going home those nights and
Speaker 1: thinking how hollow my room felt with my roommates playing
Speaker 1: Call of Duty in the living room, and how my
Speaker 1: body seemed to vibrate caffeine maybe your pseudophedan. I heard
Speaker 1: phantom time warnings and chimes, and when I closed my eyes,
Speaker 1: I could see the screen and call after call flooding
Speaker 1: the queue. By Saturday, Western Morgan was a haunted house,
Speaker 1: but I still wasn't sick. That sounds frustrating. Let me
Speaker 1: see if I can help. I was dealing with this
Speaker 1: woman on Vancouver Islands who couldn't generate invoices. We've been
Speaker 1: at it for two hours, and I could feel her
Speaker 1: getting upset when I told her to wipe the whole
Speaker 1: system and start again. I could help her with that,
Speaker 1: but she was like, no, we'll lose two weeks of work.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can say to that, so we keep
Speaker 1: troubleshooting even though it's pointless. Okay, I said, you can
Speaker 1: go back to your root invoice and try. Oh, she
Speaker 1: said what? And that was it. I didn't hear anything
Speaker 1: but the line itself, which just went dead, that kind
Speaker 1: of absence you get when someone hangs up on you.
Speaker 1: Are you there, ma'am? I called back, but I got
Speaker 1: a reorder tone, not voice mail or an old fashioned
Speaker 1: busy signal, but the one that means the whole system
Speaker 1: is busier, blocked or down. I dropped out of the
Speaker 1: queue then, which you're not supposed to do, obviously, and
Speaker 1: went looking for Jordy, who was chatting with Kirsty about
Speaker 1: Western Morgan idol. I asked if they knew anything, but
Speaker 1: of course they didn't. And when I asked if I
Speaker 1: could at least grab my phone to see what was happening,
Speaker 1: Kirsty did a kind of elementary school teacher sigh. Documentation
Speaker 1: for three eight zero your overdue mark call you dropped.
Speaker 1: I saw that explanation happening across the board. Looks like
Speaker 1: the problems at their end. I didn't find out until
Speaker 1: Moe came back from break streeked wet in the way
Speaker 1: you are if you run out into that rain blowing
Speaker 1: in from to for it because you don't want it
Speaker 1: to touch your skin, saying earthquake on the West coast,
Speaker 1: You know anyone out there? I thought about the woman
Speaker 1: trying to get the invoice together for a tiny order
Speaker 1: of sea salts from some equally tiny place on Vancouver Island.
Speaker 1: Her business so miniscule it's still fit into our cheapest subscription.
Speaker 1: In my unsubmitted documentation for Misty, I had written that
Speaker 1: her voice sounded like a hopeful but slightly overwhelmed great
Speaker 1: aunt trying to make the remote control work. No one,
Speaker 1: how bad like nine point six, the worst since forever,
Speaker 1: like for hundreds of years, Jesus, I said, Jesus, Jesus,
Speaker 1: I've had similar moments on calls. When the shooting happened
Speaker 1: in Montreal, not View ma Real, but the one with
Speaker 1: the kids ran downtown from McGill and the photographer caught
Speaker 1: the girl as the bullet tour at her right kneecap.
Speaker 1: I was on the line with this dick wad in
Speaker 1: a coworking place on Maisonneuve, who was talking, who was
Speaker 1: asking to talk to my supervisor then midwine, he stopped talking,
Speaker 1: like he suddenly didn't care about my attitude. I could
Speaker 1: hear his phone pinging, sir, are you there? Can you
Speaker 1: hear that it's happening on the street. I can see
Speaker 1: a faint popping voice raised and doors slammed. Then he
Speaker 1: cut the call. I kept in the queue, helped someone update.
Speaker 1: I did a subscription renewal. The next person, though, needed
Speaker 1: a backup, and that took forever, so we chatted about
Speaker 1: hockey until she said, did you hear about Montreal? No, ma'am,
Speaker 1: I said, thinking about the sound I maybe heard before
Speaker 1: his phone cut. Firecrackers, backfires. Some guy shot up the
Speaker 1: whole downtown. I think it was terrorists, who knows FLQ
Speaker 1: or Muslims, maybe Red Power fifty dead, but it was
Speaker 1: going up every single time ever fresh the page. She
Speaker 1: kept going on like this while we did a backup,
Speaker 1: and then I made sure everything worked. And it had
Speaker 1: been like three hours at that point, and I kept
Speaker 1: thinking of the guy and his silence and what was
Speaker 1: going on in the streets WHI we talked about his
Speaker 1: log in and how unprofessional I was. I don't have
Speaker 1: any friends in Montreal. I went there once to drink
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen. But that's it. I just had
Speaker 1: that guy and the thump of footsteps fleeing the coworking space.
Speaker 1: When I took my break, the rain was falling again,
Speaker 1: the faintly gray kind that runs down the sidewalks and
Speaker 1: the gutters, and when it builds up enough, you can
Speaker 1: see it's a little milky because it's full of ash.
Speaker 1: If you think too hard about what's running into your
Speaker 1: eyes as you stand outside smoking until your pack is empty,
Speaker 1: you go eat a twenty four box of tim Bits
Speaker 1: or six Big Max, or you stop for one beer
Speaker 1: on the way home and only leave when they push
Speaker 1: you out the door. Jordy was outside. I gave him
Speaker 1: a cigarette, even though he doesn't smoke either, and he said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be getting cleaner. Wasn't it supposed
Speaker 1: to get cleaner. He grew up in Detroit, though he
Speaker 1: was already over here when it burned last year. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's safer. The ham is worse. I thought the ham
Speaker 1: was supposed to go away. When they send in the
Speaker 1: cleanup cruise, we watched the warm, ash colored water run
Speaker 1: down the gutters until it was ankle deep. This city
Speaker 1: is a wetland, and there isn't far for water to go,
Speaker 1: so it ends up in people's basements. All that ashy,
Speaker 1: bony water running through foundations and drains, a constant trickle
Speaker 1: in the background, sort of like the fate pop you
Speaker 1: might hear while you're on the phone with a guy
Speaker 1: from Montreal who wants to talk to your manager. Does
Speaker 1: it feel Jordy said, and lit another cigarette. What Jordy,
Speaker 1: I hate how often he doesn't finish his sentences. Does
Speaker 1: it feel like it's happening more now? The sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I dropped my smoke into the rain water and I shrugged.
Speaker 1: Then I said I wish I knew what to tell you,
Speaker 1: which wasn't a real answer, and I used my tech
Speaker 1: support voice when I said it, because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to have that conversation. On my first break after the earthquake,
Speaker 1: I smoked and watched the rain and videos on my phone.
Speaker 1: Someone live streaming the moment it hit bored talk about
Speaker 1: food or weather, than a strange look on their face.
Speaker 1: Their eyes dart upward, then the phone falls overhead Footage
Speaker 1: from helicopters a downtown Vancouver, all those green towers swaying
Speaker 1: and falling and the bridge swinging until the cable snap
Speaker 1: like rubber bands, the worst in recorded history, worse probably
Speaker 1: than the last Mega thrust in seventeen hundred. I just
Speaker 1: kept thinking of that woman and the sort of quiet shock,
Speaker 1: and her voice, her, oh is that? And then nothing,
Speaker 1: And I was standing out in the rain, still warm,
Speaker 1: when it occurred to me that I might have heard
Speaker 1: her last words. I kept thinking about the texture of
Speaker 1: the silence after the call dropped, and what had happened
Speaker 1: the moment after that, if that had been the worst
Speaker 1: of it, the shock of the whole world rumbling, or
Speaker 1: if it had been worse for her after that or
Speaker 1: right now or tomorrow. I only had ten minutes because
Speaker 1: call volume was increasing. My throat started to tickle in
Speaker 1: the world just suddenly out of nowhere, started to look glassy.
Speaker 1: The light thick from the ceiling squares, and my skin
Speaker 1: prickled when I ran my hands over my arms, which
Speaker 1: were covered with goose bumps. The floor was nearly empty
Speaker 1: except for Jority running around supervising and not taking calls,
Speaker 1: and the you was packed. My first call was around
Speaker 1: way north along the coast Prince Rupert, a woman calling
Speaker 1: about a password reset. I want Mark, She said he
Speaker 1: helped me before. Can I talk to Mark? While I
Speaker 1: was documenting, I thought, fuck it, I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: Missy what the old woman told me while we were
Speaker 1: waiting for the password reset email, about how when you're
Speaker 1: that far north you don't notice time passing, and you
Speaker 1: feel good in an unimaginable way in summer, luminous and hopeful,
Speaker 1: and how in winter all you want to do is
Speaker 1: die and drink yourself into a coma, so you know
Speaker 1: it balances out. After that, I reopened three zero. An
Speaker 1: elderly woman, I wrote on a phone, trying to print
Speaker 1: invoices for locally produced sea salt, looks over at the
Speaker 1: rack of glass jars in which she keeps her stock
Speaker 1: because she hears a rattle, then another. Then she says, oh,
Speaker 1: is that and nothing else, because at that moment, the
Speaker 1: force of rashimas lit the Cascadius abduction zone, on which
Speaker 1: Vancouver Island rests like a cork in a bottle. Centuries
Speaker 1: of continental tension released. I typed that, then I hit send.
Speaker 1: Then I added a secondary note on her file. At
Speaker 1: eight thirty two p s t A nine point eight
Speaker 1: hit the Cascadia subduction zone, and Misty was right there
Speaker 1: on chad Hive, not telling me it was inappropriate. She
Speaker 1: wrote rest their souls, and I was comforted by those
Speaker 1: temporary words, which surprised me. My grandparents were on minda
Speaker 1: now in the nineteen seventy six earthquake, you got anyone there? No,
Speaker 1: I heard the hum from Detroit. It was somehow a
Speaker 1: relief to know that across the world, Misty was in
Speaker 1: a similar room among people evaluating documentation for apps and
Speaker 1: I s p s and accounting software, people saying that
Speaker 1: must be frustrating. Let's see if I can help. Something
Speaker 1: occurred to me. Do you hear anything about tsunamis no
Speaker 1: word so far? Do you have your phones? You can
Speaker 1: get the alerts. They'll let us know we're so bad.
Speaker 1: I'm taking call so I won't be fixing your dog
Speaker 1: until tomorrow. I wondered if Kirsty would let us know,
Speaker 1: or if she would dither about it until all we
Speaker 1: could do was climbed to the top floor of the
Speaker 1: building and watch a way consume what was left of
Speaker 1: Detroit before it swamped us to five more calls and
Speaker 1: I refilled my water bottle, the one with the slogan
Speaker 1: on it, fueling small business with the tools to succeed
Speaker 1: that some now lost Western Morgan contract brought in. And
Speaker 1: I was looking at my skin reflected in the sink,
Speaker 1: which was the color of those pale, lumpy smokers you
Speaker 1: see outside the entrance, the color of a raw filet
Speaker 1: of fish. I felt adrenalized, like a moment before it'd
Speaker 1: been terrified, but I could not remember how or why.
Speaker 1: I wondered what it was doing to me inside. All
Speaker 1: those cells now remade into virus factories, turning to goog
Speaker 1: and mah and sloughing off while the virus proliferated through
Speaker 1: my system, and I left traces of it on everything
Speaker 1: I touched. The water ran over the top of the
Speaker 1: bottle clear. So far the ash hasn't worked its way
Speaker 1: in through the city's water system, or maybe it has,
Speaker 1: and it was invisible like the microlo sticks in the lake.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna judge it was, Jordy, We're gonna do
Speaker 1: it next week. I was thinking that set a time limit,
Speaker 1: like five minutes, you and me and Kirsty judge it.
Speaker 1: I'll grab a fifty for the Jimmy's card too, man,
Speaker 1: I said, Georgie just stared at me. You're getting sick.
Speaker 1: You know what you need to do. He went on
Speaker 1: about ekenesia and flu effects. And I thought about the
Speaker 1: tsunami that was or was not traveling across the Pacific,
Speaker 1: or just hammer your system with antioxidants to take a
Speaker 1: double dose of night quill. Without thinking, I pulled my
Speaker 1: phone out of my pocket. You know you can't have
Speaker 1: that anywhere on the floor. I was already googling Pacific
Speaker 1: tsunami alert and it was rolling rainbows and I stared
Speaker 1: at it so hard that it seemed to take over
Speaker 1: the whole world. And then I shivered. But Jority was
Speaker 1: still talking. Don't make me write you up. I don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with it, okay, I said. It's about
Speaker 1: privacy for our users. They need to know that they
Speaker 1: can trust our integrity, our word, and our system. The
Speaker 1: poster on the far side of the brake room said integrity,
Speaker 1: word and system. I saw that the alert had been
Speaker 1: issued for Japan. That's when he took my phone. You
Speaker 1: fucked the dog. I have to write you up. I
Speaker 1: don't want to write you up Japan in six hours,
Speaker 1: eight pm, I'd still be on then. While very far away,
Speaker 1: a wave crested on the sea coast, filling the river
Speaker 1: basins and the car parks. I know you don't have
Speaker 1: to surrender your phone, even if they can require you
Speaker 1: to leave it at home. I know they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to lock you in either, or let you smoke within
Speaker 1: three ms of the door, even when the ashes falling.
Speaker 1: They're not supposed to pay you in points. You can
Speaker 1: then exchange for grocery store gift cards, which you need
Speaker 1: because the new minimum wage wasn't even covering rent. But
Speaker 1: I needed a job. The next call I got was
Speaker 1: farther south, closer to the epicenter. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did was asked about the earthquake. Oh, we felt it,
Speaker 1: and there's a tsunami warning. But we're far enough inland
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be tsunami warning. So when I go try
Speaker 1: to log in tsunami, I keep getting the same error.
Speaker 1: It's a my accounts frozen. What does that mean? I
Speaker 1: need to do some invoices? And yeah, I just got
Speaker 1: the text like half an hour ago. Landfall is like
Speaker 1: an hour. The account was frozen due to miss payments.
Speaker 1: So I pointed that out and the guy insisted no,
Speaker 1: he set up an automated transfer, and he kept me
Speaker 1: on the line while he chatted with the bank's tech
Speaker 1: support on another line to sort out the direct deposit,
Speaker 1: and then I reactivated his account. All this time, the
Speaker 1: tsunami traveling towards the coast or the shallower bottom would
Speaker 1: raise the waves height by narrowing its length, because the
Speaker 1: last time I'd been outside, I'd looked at a gift
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia that demonstrated how tsunami's crest as they traveled
Speaker 1: through shallow waters. The last thing he said wasn't thanks,
Speaker 1: it was there. It is. The tide's going way out.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone's out of downtown. Then he was gone,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine it, the water running away from
Speaker 1: the shore like a huge exhalation and then collecting into
Speaker 1: a rising wave that would destroy them all the tsunami
Speaker 1: warning I wrote in chat hive, hoping Misty was there.
Speaker 1: Kirsty responded instantly that is not appropriate. Chat hive is
Speaker 1: for important work stuff. We haven't heard anything, but we
Speaker 1: were swamps, so who knows what's going on outside. Chat
Speaker 1: Hi channel will only be used for appropriate business related business.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should get out. Chat hi channel will only
Speaker 1: be used for appropriate business related business. I'd been there
Speaker 1: for sixteen hours, and I couldn't remember the last time
Speaker 1: I slept a full night at home when I hadn't
Speaker 1: been buzzed on cold pills in exhaustion and the sound
Speaker 1: of call of duty from the living room. That week,
Speaker 1: when I did sleep, I kept saying, this is Mark
Speaker 1: from Magnicore, or this is Mark from wherever I am
Speaker 1: right now, and heard explosions and the way voices carry
Speaker 1: over for the river from Detroit, the screams and the
Speaker 1: crowds and the gunshots. Or maybe I was never actually asleep.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was just off my head. I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: washed the pills down with beer. But there's that thing
Speaker 1: that happens when you stop in for a beer after work,
Speaker 1: and the inertia of the whole thing, the job, the
Speaker 1: shitty beer, and the fact that a person brings you
Speaker 1: food even if you can't afford it. It sticks you
Speaker 1: to your seat. It was bad last summer when we
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to run the a C. But the bar
Speaker 1: on the way home could, and it was full of
Speaker 1: familiar guys, broke and lonely and trying to avoid looking
Speaker 1: at what was left of the Detroit skyline, or the
Speaker 1: gray green clouds boiling to the north, and the hail
Speaker 1: and the lightning storms every afternoon like clockwork. The summers
Speaker 1: are definitely hotter, and the mosquitoes are definitely worse. And
Speaker 1: the last summer I noticed that the birds don't sing anymore.
Speaker 1: All their whistles and like video game lasers. I stepped
Speaker 1: outside for another cigarette and realized the door had been locked.
Speaker 1: And I don't have a fall because I don't rate
Speaker 1: a fob. Jordy was there too, setting up his stupid
Speaker 1: Western Morgan idol piles a bright pink and green and
Speaker 1: blue post it. Now it's all over his desk. I
Speaker 1: need to go out. The doors are locked for the night.
Speaker 1: I need to go out. We lost another girl from online.
Speaker 1: You'll have to take over social media if we lose
Speaker 1: anyone else. Take your break here. I just kind of
Speaker 1: stared at him, and my skin prickled, like all the
Speaker 1: suit of apedron I had taken had rushed to the
Speaker 1: surface and was blasting every single nerve ending in my body.
Speaker 1: I need to go outside. You can't, like you physically can't.
Speaker 1: I kind of stood there, and I'm ashamed to say
Speaker 1: I wanted to cry, like a little kid who isn't
Speaker 1: allowed to use the bathroom, who just wants to sit
Speaker 1: with his dad but keeps getting dragged away by unfamiliar relatives.
Speaker 1: The kind of crying you see on the bus at
Speaker 1: rush hour when some little kid coming back from the
Speaker 1: mall loses it and lies in the aisle wailing, cramming
Speaker 1: road salt in his mouth, and you just think you
Speaker 1: and me both. I didn't actually cry. I hate myself
Speaker 1: because I just said begging, can I please have my
Speaker 1: phone back? Please? Jordy looked at me like I was
Speaker 1: an idiot him in the middle of all the post
Speaker 1: it notes that read congratulations and You're a winner and
Speaker 1: Western Morgan idol. I didn't say anything. I left at first.
Speaker 1: I just sat in the lunch room, shivering and nauseated,
Speaker 1: staring at the plastic solo cup left over from the
Speaker 1: barbecues they used to give before the ash. There will
Speaker 1: be worse moments in my life, no doubt, more pain,
Speaker 1: more sadness, but I can't imagine anything so wide ranging
Speaker 1: in its desolation as that moment. The only thing I
Speaker 1: could focus on was telling miss Ty to get her
Speaker 1: phone back and watch the horizon and be ready to escape.
Speaker 1: A girl from online staggered through, sweaty and pale, and
Speaker 1: I knew that Georgy would be there in a minute
Speaker 1: to ask for another eight hours overnight answering stranger's questions
Speaker 1: so perfectly that they treat me like a shitty customer
Speaker 1: service AI built to serve. There aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: choices in life, are there. You can choose to have
Speaker 1: kids or not, to leave your hometown or not, or
Speaker 1: to stay in a terrible job you are, for some reason,
Speaker 1: very good at. But other than that, what is there?
Speaker 1: Just a lot of compliance and non compliance. This moment
Speaker 1: didn't feel like a choice. I said to the girl,
Speaker 1: we need to get out of here, and she nodded.
Speaker 1: Then we headed down to the lobby. The doors were
Speaker 1: locked and no one caring a key was in the building,
Speaker 1: and the girl just looked bad. But when I went
Speaker 1: to the fire escape, she still said, no, no, we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to. We need to get out. They'll fire us.
Speaker 1: And I could hear the fear in her voice, and
Speaker 1: I wont heard how badly she needed this job, that
Speaker 1: she was here in the middle of the night, so
Speaker 1: sick she could hardly stand. Tell them I did it,
Speaker 1: I said, and hit the bar, only it didn't move
Speaker 1: because the fire escape was locked too. The next thing
Speaker 1: I did was stupid, but I don't know what else
Speaker 1: I could have done. I walked back to the lobby
Speaker 1: and picked up a garbage can and began slamming it
Speaker 1: into the glass door behind me. She was coughing and
Speaker 1: coughing and said maybe stop, stop, but so faintly I
Speaker 1: could ignore it. Then we were out, and she was
Speaker 1: staggering towards the emergency room on wilette and I was
Speaker 1: alone in the rain water the same temperature as my blood.
Speaker 1: Then I went looking for a pay phone, because the
Speaker 1: only way to sort this out was to call in.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't remember which of Western Morgan's departments Misty
Speaker 1: was assigned to. So when I finally found the city's
Speaker 1: last pay phone in the bus depot, I called them all,
Speaker 1: all the sad voices of men and women here and
Speaker 1: on the other side of the world. Welcome to Kyphus
Speaker 1: Business Systems. Jane speaking, Can I help you? Welcome to
Speaker 1: Tesla Mobility. Can I help you? Welcome to ross Common
Speaker 1: Account Services. Welcome to Lighthouse Mobility. I'm looking for Misty.
Speaker 1: She helped me before. I'm sure I can help you.
Speaker 1: What's your user number, Misty, Misty knows, I said, my voice,
Speaker 1: queer less and elderly, put on Misty. I could hear
Speaker 1: the exhaustion in his silence than the compliance. One moment,
Speaker 1: I'll transfer you, Hey, Misty, I said, Misty, Misty, you
Speaker 1: need to get to high ground. What who is this?
Speaker 1: Just promise, Kay, there's no tsunami warning. It's on its way.
Speaker 1: It's passing Japan and Hawaii. It hit the Allusians California.
Speaker 1: I hope she didn't mistake me for what I felt
Speaker 1: like right then, a crazy old man mad with loneliness,
Speaker 1: longing to hear a voice in the void, even if
Speaker 1: it was only to harangue them for the weakness of
Speaker 1: their service and the terrible nature of their product. Mark,
Speaker 1: another six hours to landfall. I know you'll still be
Speaker 1: on shift, promise. I waited for her to disconnect, which
Speaker 1: was okay, because at least I told her then. I
Speaker 1: think maybe she said thank you, Mark, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was just the noise in my head. I held the
Speaker 1: line another moment that hung up. I felt okay because
Speaker 1: I got through, Because I wasn't in a cubicle anymore,
Speaker 1: because I could walk home and enjoy the silence before
Speaker 1: call of duty, marathons in the living room, enjoy the
Speaker 1: ashy rain falling across my slowly cooking skin. I walked home, Misty.
Speaker 1: I walked home, hoping. Misty said, thank you, Mark. It
Speaker 1: felt like I was slipping through a gap in the
Speaker 1: world between noises, a kind of silent passage, the way
Speaker 1: kids slip along the abandoned rail easements in town below grade,
Speaker 1: the corridors of grass and rats and squirrels and birds,
Speaker 1: between the noise of the phones and call of duty,
Speaker 1: between heartbeats, between crusting waves, the silence you hang onto
Speaker 1: for just a moment when someone hangs up, before you
Speaker 1: go on to the next call, because there is to
Speaker 1: primarily a respect from the tyranny of the queue, the
Speaker 1: silence after a bullet connects or a wave hits on
Speaker 1: the other side of the world. I just hope harder
Speaker 1: and harder and harder that Misty would insist they unlocked
Speaker 1: the doors and break the windows, and they would escape
Speaker 1: before the wave arrived to wash the rest of us away.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to add a clapping sound effect
Speaker 1: without it just sounding horrible in the audio airhorns you
Speaker 1: know what, danial um already straight seconds of air horns
Speaker 1: or or or not? Um. I think with the air
Speaker 1: horns are good. It was beautiful. Yeah, that was wonderful.
Speaker 1: It's really incredible, Thank you so much, and particularly relevant
Speaker 1: now Yeah yeah, unfortunately yeah, yeah, it's with what happened Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is extra extra the whole time, what happened in
Speaker 1: the past week. Yeah, yeah, that is a it sucks mhm.
Speaker 1: If people want to find more of your work, or
Speaker 1: if there's anything you'd like to plug, now is the time, okay. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a website. It's called where is here dot
Speaker 1: c a UM and I have jeez links to a
Speaker 1: bunch of my different short stories there. I have a
Speaker 1: novella coming out next year. A few years ago I
Speaker 1: put relished a novel UM. But if you're interested in
Speaker 1: the climate change stuff, there's probably one I'd recommend called
Speaker 1: UM an Important Failure that was in Clark's World. It's
Speaker 1: available to read online. It's been translated into Polish. It's
Speaker 1: in a couple of different collections. UM. And if I'm
Speaker 1: allowed to brag, which it won the the the Sturgeon
Speaker 1: Award last year, which is a science fiction award handed
Speaker 1: out by UM, an academic organization in the US. SO
Speaker 1: and it's about it's about climate change. It's all set
Speaker 1: on Vancouver Island. In Vancouver. I've heard you. I've heard
Speaker 1: you also have stories about ghosts. Yes, I have a
Speaker 1: genre I'm trying to establish that I call obstetrical horror
Speaker 1: that I started writing when I was pregnant. Yeah, giving
Speaker 1: birth is just such body horror. So ghosts, childbirth, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, I read a lot about ghosts as well.
Speaker 1: You can find, like I say, a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuffs on my website and links to anything that's available
Speaker 1: for free online. So yeah, where is here? Dot c
Speaker 1: A and I'm on Twitter a um at Canadianist, but
Speaker 1: I don't really use it that much. So I am
Speaker 1: excited for the combination of climate change fiction with horror fiction. UM.
Speaker 1: And by excited, it's like half half actually excited, half
Speaker 1: dreading because a lot of it's gonna probably be horrible
Speaker 1: in terms of people being like, you know, what's scary
Speaker 1: climates change and you're like, okay, but yeah, but oh sorry,
Speaker 1: go on. I don't know, but I think there definitely
Speaker 1: is a good way to combine the the exsential elements
Speaker 1: of both of those things to something that actually is
Speaker 1: really impactful, that plays on human fears and emotions and
Speaker 1: how we can get over those fears and move towards
Speaker 1: something useful. Yeah. And it's also that horror going back
Speaker 1: for well, however long you want to, we've been telling
Speaker 1: stories has given us a series of structures to kind
Speaker 1: of process that. UM. And I think that's really valuable
Speaker 1: that their patterns we can use to work through. And
Speaker 1: I mean writing climate change fiction for me, I just
Speaker 1: finished another novella UM that's specifically about like near future
Speaker 1: stuff and about the wildfires a lot um. But you know,
Speaker 1: having a story to tell about it as a way
Speaker 1: of processing all the research I was doing, UM was
Speaker 1: really valuables. It's super useful. Yeah, and just um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can call it therapeutic if you want, But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that. I think it's organizing information in
Speaker 1: your head that is just simply too large for you
Speaker 1: to actually grasp. I mean, I can't actually grasp this stuff.
Speaker 1: But no, you can't. It's it's too bad. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: exactly trying to mean, Yeah, horror does that probably better
Speaker 1: than almost any other genre. Yeah. I mean, look what
Speaker 1: it horror does with adolescent anxieties or um, you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of different the fear of dying, the fear
Speaker 1: of aging, if your illness, and stuff like that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we have structures in place with horror fiction,
Speaker 1: um and with sort of science fiction horror that kind
Speaker 1: of are gonna let us start to process things that
Speaker 1: are otherwise just too intellectual or not intellectual. But to
Speaker 1: abstract it's too it's too. Yeah, abstractors, I think is
Speaker 1: the right term, because I mean, like, I guess my
Speaker 1: fear of that is that, like climate change fiction is
Speaker 1: just gonna resort to like the disaster story and it
Speaker 1: has very like glamorized weird versions of like apocalypses and
Speaker 1: disasters and like collapse and very like big ways that
Speaker 1: impact everything around you. When in actuality, the effects that
Speaker 1: they have are very localized and small and are still horrifying,
Speaker 1: but the way that they're framed is always frustrating. In films,
Speaker 1: and you look at like, you know, a typical like
Speaker 1: you know, like apocalypse themed movie, I think is I'm
Speaker 1: afraid that the bigger you know, if you turn turn
Speaker 1: talking about like big movies, how it's going to frame
Speaker 1: it that way instead of these more kind of personal
Speaker 1: stories of like the horror of being trapped inside a
Speaker 1: warehouse as a tornado comes and you're not allowed to leave,
Speaker 1: which is a way more horrifying than Oh, look, all
Speaker 1: of New York City is crumbling because of this pseudami,
Speaker 1: which is so big and like possible, I guess, but
Speaker 1: like that's so big you can't feel that. And what's
Speaker 1: more like going to happen is people getting trapped in
Speaker 1: buildings and not being allowed to leave. And that's that's like,
Speaker 1: that's actual horner. Yeah, and it's intimate too, write like
Speaker 1: it's not it's not in distant idea. It's intimate. It's
Speaker 1: the particular consequence of something for a community, for an individual,
Speaker 1: for relationships. And if I can go on on this um,
Speaker 1: there's an entire genre of apocalyptic fiction that kind of
Speaker 1: comes out of the early Cold War, and they're always
Speaker 1: these weirdly cozy apocalypse is where one white guy survives
Speaker 1: and in the new world he builds this kind of
Speaker 1: feudal fantasy. So I've actually this one fills the last
Speaker 1: Babylon where a character says, of these two spinster ladies
Speaker 1: that were miserable before the nuclear war, after the nuclear war,
Speaker 1: they're really happy because their lives have meaning now. And
Speaker 1: it's this, it's those are the apocalyptic stories that we've had.
Speaker 1: We need a new kind of story, a new kind
Speaker 1: of horror that I think, um that does exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, that doesn't default to that weird heroism
Speaker 1: and one guy surviving kind of thing. There's a wonderful
Speaker 1: Corey doctor short story that that I think pivots off
Speaker 1: that idea nicely. Um in his his book, uh, what
Speaker 1: is Unauthorized Toast? I think Bread an authorized Bread is
Speaker 1: one of the stories in it. But the book is
Speaker 1: as a different it's a collection of his short stories.
Speaker 1: But there's um a post apocalyptic story that kind of
Speaker 1: follows a bunch of tech bros trying to do the
Speaker 1: traditional like survive the The apocalypse makes everything you know
Speaker 1: better for me, I get to be a cool warlord
Speaker 1: thing and it's it's good. It doesn't end well for them. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think the I think the thing that is
Speaker 1: important to do is like focus on the horror of
Speaker 1: the little things, like the little things on like a
Speaker 1: global scale, Like, like the thing that is so frightening
Speaker 1: about climate change is that all of these the terrible
Speaker 1: things it's bringing are going to hit the same way
Speaker 1: mash shootings do, where it is a calamity for a
Speaker 1: community and people fifty miles away try to pretend it
Speaker 1: didn't happen and get to doing like their their daily stuff.
Speaker 1: Like that's what's that's what's so scary about it. It's
Speaker 1: not like you said, it's not the buildings in New
Speaker 1: York collapsing from a tidal wave. It's the birds stop
Speaker 1: singing and you still have to go to work. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm writing a script right now for probably the
Speaker 1: show about how climate change is hard to think about
Speaker 1: because it's because how how big it is. And one
Speaker 1: of like the models that I'm trying to draw a
Speaker 1: comparison from this, Like it's almost like climate changes is
Speaker 1: like a type is like a type of Cathulhu in
Speaker 1: terms of the way it affects you, but you'll probably
Speaker 1: get by it's it can affect your neighbors, and you
Speaker 1: can watch it and you can watch it have other people,
Speaker 1: but like it doesn't mean that your life is going
Speaker 1: to end this way because it's so it's so big
Speaker 1: and uncaring. It can attack so many places at once,
Speaker 1: but you don't know how like how big this effects
Speaker 1: are and how and what what what what the scale
Speaker 1: of them will be on your local area. So it's
Speaker 1: like this, it's this thing that is way more existential
Speaker 1: than anything else because it it does not, it does
Speaker 1: not care, it has it has no morality. It's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not out to get you specifically. It's this weird,
Speaker 1: this weird thing that's just getting imposed upon us now.
Speaker 1: And that type of horror in fiction, I think is
Speaker 1: something that at least I want to explore in my
Speaker 1: next few years of writing. And I'm excited to read
Speaker 1: other people's work who kind of covered that similar side
Speaker 1: of horror and combining with like climate change and the
Speaker 1: small ways it's going to start affecting us in places
Speaker 1: around the world. I think, Um, that what you said
Speaker 1: and isn't isn't there someone who talks about the Catholic scene,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, that's Donna Harroway. Donna Harroway, that's it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But but also just how weak some of our previous narratives,
Speaker 1: like you can't you can't bring in you new Judeo
Speaker 1: Christian apocalypse is to this kind of thing, because we can't.
Speaker 1: There's not you can't. We can't have that kind of
Speaker 1: moralizing in it um that we need. And that's honestly,
Speaker 1: Cathulo is really handy for that cosmic horror because it
Speaker 1: forces you to, as you say, face something on an
Speaker 1: existential level. Um that how you feel and who you
Speaker 1: are and your individual experience does not matter. So it's
Speaker 1: like a lot of people, like you know us, we're
Speaker 1: watching what's happening in Kansas right now, and like, I'm
Speaker 1: not in Kansas. I don't know anyone in Kansas. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this calamity and it's so distant from me,
Speaker 1: but yet it's also very close. And that's a weird
Speaker 1: feeling to deal with. UM. And I can see, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: corporations are contributing to this specifically like climate change as
Speaker 1: in general, but like like Amazon trapping people inside inside
Speaker 1: inside these warehouses. It's like, I can there's ways to
Speaker 1: fight extensions of this, but you can't fight it. You
Speaker 1: can only fight its extensions. And that's and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a super it's a super interesting thing that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think, Yeah, we we are going to
Speaker 1: see you know this, this idea get dealt with more
Speaker 1: and more as these things start happening more and more.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, I mean climate change, cosmic corps maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the way to go. Yeah, yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: I think that's a good line to end on, or
Speaker 1: at least a good thought to end on. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Rebecca for coming on and sharing your story.
Speaker 1: Would you mind plugging your website one last time since
Speaker 1: we extra like fifteen minutes. Oh no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's the reason people may not have noted it
Speaker 1: last time before the conversation. We should give him another chance. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the website is where is here dot c A
Speaker 1: so w H E er I s H e r
Speaker 1: E dot c A excellent. All right, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, Rebecca. Um, until next time, everybody lose your
Speaker 1: mind with the cosmic horror, something something, anything, any kind
Speaker 1: of cosmic harror that cons to to your your mind
Speaker 1: to scramble and you to begin worshiping in the dark
Speaker 1: corners of the world. Any anything that does that is good.
Speaker 1: So well, thank you so much for having me. It's
Speaker 1: an absolute pleasure, very very happy to have you. When P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, what rose from its ashes would change the world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Grim and Mild Presents, an ongoing journey into
Speaker 1: the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. Where our inaugural season,
Speaker 1: we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the always
Speaker 1: complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American
Speaker 1: Side Show. So come along as we visit the shadowy
Speaker 1: corners of the stage and learn about the people who
Speaker 1: were at the center of it all in a place
Speaker 1: where spectacle was king. We will soon discover there's always
Speaker 1: more to the story than meets the eye, So step
Speaker 1: right up and get in line. Listen to Grim and
Speaker 1: Mile Presents now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild dot com Slash presents It could happen
Speaker 1: here to Welcome the Evans Robert podcast. End of the
Speaker 1: World at the beginning of news. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: did it right. Evans Evans, Evans Robert, who's here with us? Uh?
Speaker 1: That would be kill Joy, Margaret and Victorman Sophie. I
Speaker 1: like this MS Keeping Victim and Comma Sophie kill Joy,
Speaker 1: Comma Margaret, Um Margaret Commas. I could also Attorney's general
Speaker 1: you kill Joy's Margaret. One of my hobbies is anytime
Speaker 1: I pluralize something, attorneys generally it Um, Margaret, how are you?
Speaker 1: How are you doing on this beautiful December day. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I just got my booster shot and the negative effects
Speaker 1: haven't kicked in yet. That's good. Um. How does it
Speaker 1: feel to have, like as your internet sped up now
Speaker 1: that I have a boost? Yeah, I'm making the same
Speaker 1: fighting that everybody makes, because it's easier than thinking about
Speaker 1: the fact that, oh, Macron looks like it's going to
Speaker 1: be a real, real nightmare and the world's never going
Speaker 1: to go back to you know, it's not going back
Speaker 1: to normal. I miss It's it's being able to walk
Speaker 1: into a bar and not worry that I was going
Speaker 1: to catch a new variant of a plague. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: a yeah. Yeah, how are you doing with the plague?
Speaker 1: I live completely alone and isolated, so which I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this is how I would have built
Speaker 1: my life if I hadn't done it during a plague. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I dream about interacting with humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like hugging a person that that you don't know
Speaker 1: all that well and it not being like involving both
Speaker 1: of you risking your life. It's like a blood pact. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're going, Doug, and if we wind up in how
Speaker 1: we'll scream at Satan together. Come U, you have written
Speaker 1: another story. I mean you wrote this a while ago,
Speaker 1: as you did with the last one. But we're doing
Speaker 1: We decided we one of the things we wanted to
Speaker 1: do to close this year out was a little bit
Speaker 1: more fiction, because fiction, I think plays an underappreciated role
Speaker 1: in revolutionary practice in kind of every aspect of being
Speaker 1: someone who envisions the different world. Um. So we we've
Speaker 1: always I mean, it could happen here. From the beginning,
Speaker 1: there was always a strong kind of um uh focus
Speaker 1: on fiction. Um. And I'm really happy to be presenting
Speaker 1: another one of your stories today. Thanks. You want to
Speaker 1: introduced this piece, sure. This piece is called The Free
Speaker 1: Yorks of Cascadia. It was first published in Fantasy and
Speaker 1: Science Fiction, which is the name of a magazine. And
Speaker 1: this one was also really important to me. Because Fantasy
Speaker 1: and Science Fiction F and s F was one of
Speaker 1: the magazines that my my dad had a subscription to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they go this a while. Yeah, this was a very
Speaker 1: um um and it was a very important piece for
Speaker 1: me that it got published there. Yeah, that's awesome. Um well,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's let's let's take a take a hop
Speaker 1: in a publicly funded bus and roll down to Storytown.
Speaker 1: Speaking of taking one's life in one's hands. The story
Speaker 1: is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia. You all know
Speaker 1: the first part of the story. The song ended in blood.
Speaker 1: It was two years ago in the summer. Rick Green,
Speaker 1: the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his osbornesque voice
Speaker 1: to fifteen thousand Goblin metal fans. A short man wearing
Speaker 1: green body paint and brown leather, stepped out from backstage,
Speaker 1: drew a sword and cut the singer down from behind.
Speaker 1: The last lyrics Green ever sang were take me Back,
Speaker 1: take me Back, take me back to the Misty Mountains.
Speaker 1: The man with the sword, of course, was Golfin Bull,
Speaker 1: the rhythm guitarist for Crumpatool. The opening act. He and
Speaker 1: his bandmates escaped in the ensuing chaos and remain at Large.
Speaker 1: To this day, neither band has released a song or
Speaker 1: played a show since the rest of Goblin Forests decided
Speaker 1: to call it quits. Without Green and crimp Atool, no
Speaker 1: one knew what happened to Crimpatool. Fans deserted the genre
Speaker 1: and droves, and overnight Goblin Medal went from stadium rock
Speaker 1: fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian orc
Speaker 1: cults were originated. It was no longer hip to be Green.
Speaker 1: If Golf and Bull had been trying to take the
Speaker 1: Goblin Medal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly. Rumors
Speaker 1: have flown about motives and locations, but there have been
Speaker 1: no arrests and no public statement from the band. All
Speaker 1: we've had to work with were rumors until now. Earlier
Speaker 1: this month, Orc Folk act Ulsith listed Golf and Bull
Speaker 1: as the harpist in their liner notes of the single
Speaker 1: The Gray Fog of a Ruined Forest lst was as
Speaker 1: obscure as Crimpatool was infamous. The band had never done
Speaker 1: an interview, not even a photo shoot. Like everyone else
Speaker 1: these days in countercultural music, their videos featured only masked performers.
Speaker 1: I've been casually used with post civilization culture ever since
Speaker 1: the Communicate from the Junkyard Rats of the Rust Belt,
Speaker 1: and I've been covering music of pretty much every secessionist
Speaker 1: movement and subculture I could sink my teeth into. Since
Speaker 1: after I saw those liner notes, I put out feelers
Speaker 1: to friends and friends of friends, and I waited, and
Speaker 1: last week I was invited to go to an orc
Speaker 1: village hidden away in the burned forests of Cascadia. I
Speaker 1: was invited to be the first person to tell Golf
Speaker 1: and Bull's story hell Fire Harriet Exclusive. Usually I post
Speaker 1: full interviews for everyone, but reserve my travel diary for
Speaker 1: the patrons of my blog. This time, though, I'm foregoing
Speaker 1: that this story is too important, so I've interspersed to
Speaker 1: the two below. All I knew before I went with
Speaker 1: what everyone else knew. Three years ago, a bunch of
Speaker 1: metal heads and hippies and burners and nerds all decided
Speaker 1: to dress up like orcs and goblins, and some of
Speaker 1: them took it too far and decided to distance themselves
Speaker 1: from the rest of society. They got really famous one summer.
Speaker 1: Then that fame died in a single bloody act, and
Speaker 1: who knows what kind of weird ship they're up to. Now,
Speaker 1: before you get worried, no, I will never offer a
Speaker 1: platform to a fascist fascist. Fascism, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: is the furthest thing from golf and Ball's mind. What
Speaker 1: he's into is a lot weirder than that. Still, it's
Speaker 1: sort of lucky that I survived to write this story.
Speaker 1: So you killed a guy, Yeah, I killed a guy.
Speaker 1: We stared in silence at one another for a while.
Speaker 1: He wore rawhide and fur, and not much of either.
Speaker 1: He wasn't painted up, but his skin was sort of
Speaker 1: natural olive. His lower teeth were filed down to fangs.
Speaker 1: Like any serious works, there was still something unassuming about
Speaker 1: him that I have a hard time describing. You're waiting
Speaker 1: for me to tell you about it, aren't you. The
Speaker 1: interview was not off to a good start. Are you
Speaker 1: worried about how your words will sound in court? I
Speaker 1: killed Rick Green on stage with a sword in front
Speaker 1: of thousands of witnesses. Talking to the media isn't going
Speaker 1: to make anything worse for me at this point, and
Speaker 1: I don't respect the authority of the U. S. Government
Speaker 1: to hold me accountable for my actions. I will not
Speaker 1: go to court, So why do you do it. The
Speaker 1: old world is dying. My world, the Free Orcs of Cascadia.
Speaker 1: We're not going to replace the old world, but we
Speaker 1: will be part of its replacement. In order to do that,
Speaker 1: we have to take ourselves seriously. An element of that
Speaker 1: struggle is the struggle to create meaning, to create a
Speaker 1: new sacred. I killed Rick Green because he was defiling
Speaker 1: something mint to be sacred. How so we share an aesthetic,
Speaker 1: But he didn't understand what it meant to be an orc.
Speaker 1: You killed him because he was a poser. I guess
Speaker 1: you could put it like that. So the lesson here is,
Speaker 1: don't be a poser. Don't be a poser. You heard
Speaker 1: it here first. Kids, don't be opposer, or golf and
Speaker 1: ball will literally murder you. They picked me up in
Speaker 1: the parking lot of grocery outlet in northeast Portland. That's
Speaker 1: a mundane detail, I suppose, but perhaps the single most
Speaker 1: remarkable thing about my trip was the ever present contrast
Speaker 1: between mandanity and bizarre. I bought a case of coconut
Speaker 1: water while we waited. Works might like coconut water. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't like coconut water? They showed up in a mid
Speaker 1: teens Honda Civic sedan, and I've been hoping for something
Speaker 1: out of mad Max. The two women who got out,
Speaker 1: one cis one trans, both white, were dressed in clean
Speaker 1: gray tank tops and leggings, like half the women who
Speaker 1: live in Portland. To be honest, I only noticed them
Speaker 1: in the parking lot at all because the trans woman
Speaker 1: was cute. Hell Fire this, this woman asked. She was
Speaker 1: tall and severe, with the fierce but almost trustworthy look
Speaker 1: of a loan shark or, as it turned out, an
Speaker 1: Orchis enforcer. That's me, I said, Fenrik. This this woman
Speaker 1: offered her name, but no handshake, fist bump or hug.
Speaker 1: I nodded. Norinda, the trans woman said. Like a lot
Speaker 1: of trans women these days, she didn't bother to feminize
Speaker 1: her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it.
Speaker 1: How is this going to work? I asked. We're going
Speaker 1: to drive around back where no one can see us.
Speaker 1: Fenric said, We're going to take your phone and laptop
Speaker 1: in any electronics and put them in a fair day
Speaker 1: in the car. Then we're going to put you in
Speaker 1: the trunk and drive out to the forest. Will provide
Speaker 1: you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive. You'll
Speaker 1: get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded, I'd
Speaker 1: pretty much expected this. Dindi is the bathroom. Nor In asked,
Speaker 1: have any medical conditions we should know about? No, and no,
Speaker 1: I said, either of you want a coconut water? Gobland
Speaker 1: forests sang in English. But Crimptol's lyrics were all in
Speaker 1: Tolkien's Black Speech dark Speech. Our lyrics were in dark Speech.
Speaker 1: Tolkien referred to the language as black speech. Tolkien meant well,
Speaker 1: but he was about the most influential unconsciously racist author
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. All his villains were either Green
Speaker 1: or Middle Eastern. When you engage with the work of
Speaker 1: historical authors, especially when you make derivative works a century later,
Speaker 1: you have to adapt to one's own social context. Calling
Speaker 1: the language black speech today is at best wildly misleading.
Speaker 1: Its name is a translation. Anyway, It's possible that dark
Speaker 1: speech is just as accurate it. Besides, Token didn't write
Speaker 1: the language. He only wrote like sixteen words or something.
Speaker 1: We wrote the rest. Most of us prefer to translate
Speaker 1: the name of it as dark speech. Since where murderers
Speaker 1: pc my status as a person who has ended the
Speaker 1: life of another person carries no implications about my personal
Speaker 1: ethics other than that I clearly believe there are circumstances
Speaker 1: under which it's okay to kill someone. Imagine being at
Speaker 1: the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits and you're stuck
Speaker 1: trying to recreate society, surrounded by swords and minstrels and
Speaker 1: these and thous. You know how that sounds like either
Speaker 1: heaven or hell, depending on who you are and also
Speaker 1: who you're stuck there with. That was my first impression
Speaker 1: of the village of Graymorrow. The fires out west have
Speaker 1: burned forest after forest and small town after small town,
Speaker 1: and no one tries to deny that pretty much every
Speaker 1: bioregion on the planet is going through transformation right now.
Speaker 1: It's in the worst spots, these dat ecologies that the
Speaker 1: post civilization movement has found its roots, like wildflowers growing
Speaker 1: up between paving stones or rat's hiding in the walls,
Speaker 1: I guess, depending on who you ask. Gray Morrow sits
Speaker 1: in the scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir forest, halfway
Speaker 1: up a mountain, occupying the remains of an evacuated town.
Speaker 1: Slab foundations are all that remain of the original structures.
Speaker 1: A seasonal creek runs through what was recently a river
Speaker 1: bed at the edge of the village, and long abandoned
Speaker 1: train tracks skirt the ridge above town. Even armed with
Speaker 1: all of that information, you'd still have at least seventy
Speaker 1: or eighty possible spots to search. Satellite imagery would help,
Speaker 1: of course. I can't imagine that the Big Six texts
Speaker 1: or the U. S Government don't know where Gray Morrow is.
Speaker 1: The residents of Gray Morrow in general, and Golf and
Speaker 1: Bole in particular, had an awful lot to lose by
Speaker 1: letting me write this report. Nourenda let me out of
Speaker 1: the trunk, and she smiled when she saw me. Her
Speaker 1: bottom teeth were filed. That should have been unnerving, but
Speaker 1: I've always been a sucker for face tattoos or anything
Speaker 1: that really shows someone is going for broke. Fenric just
Speaker 1: stared at me severe. Being severe was pretty much her thing,
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell. She took a sip
Speaker 1: from her coconut water. Three other cars filled a makeshift
Speaker 1: parking lot. The village itself was surrounded by a wall
Speaker 1: built from black and logs, set upright and buried in
Speaker 1: the ruins of the road. My escorts had changed clothes
Speaker 1: and route Fenrick looked like a bandit out of Skyrim,
Speaker 1: complete with iron pauldron on one shoulder and a hand
Speaker 1: axe strapped to her belt. I won't lie, it was
Speaker 1: a good look. I'm no fashion reporter, but I figure
Speaker 1: half the magazines in New York would love to get
Speaker 1: someone out here and take pictures of Orcs like her.
Speaker 1: Nornda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool. Imagine
Speaker 1: a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather large
Speaker 1: dagger horizontally on her belt at the small of her back.
Speaker 1: My crushing on her intensified. She handed me a spiral
Speaker 1: notebook in an old fashioned digital recorder, and we walked
Speaker 1: into the village. A lot of people say that you
Speaker 1: killed Rick Green because you're jealous of Goblin Forest's success.
Speaker 1: That the orchi Is code insisted that if you wanted
Speaker 1: the throne, you had to kill the reigning monarch. Golfing
Speaker 1: Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly at me, his dark
Speaker 1: brown eyes boring into me. That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's
Speaker 1: like three layers deep of bullshit. He was still staring
Speaker 1: at me. I was starting to regret this line of questioning. Okay,
Speaker 1: to start, there are pretty much two ways to interpret
Speaker 1: the Orcish Code of Honor. It's not written down anywhere,
Speaker 1: but there's some strong central themes, like an interdependence between
Speaker 1: individual sovereignty and collective identity. We value strength, but the
Speaker 1: idea is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever they
Speaker 1: may be, for the benefit of all. One should be
Speaker 1: as self reliant as one is able to be, both
Speaker 1: for one's own sake and again for the community's sake.
Speaker 1: I cared deeply about this. That same basic idea, though,
Speaker 1: can be interpreted two different ways. So there's a split
Speaker 1: in the orc community. Damn right, there's a split. The
Speaker 1: free Orcs are matriarchal and the or Seene are patriarchal.
Speaker 1: Golfin Bull produced a cigarette from god knows where, consider
Speaker 1: and how little he was wearing, and lit it with
Speaker 1: a lighter from the same mysterious origin. It wasn't tobacco,
Speaker 1: it wasn't weed, maybe mugwart. The matriarchal way of interpreting
Speaker 1: those tenants is roughly anarchist. It's anti authoritarian, an anti nationalist.
Speaker 1: At the very least, we respect the wisdom of elders,
Speaker 1: children and women self identifying women. But the hierarchy is
Speaker 1: anything but rigid, and the guidelines are anything but laws.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, our sense of community or tribe is fluid.
Speaker 1: Gray Morrow is a free orc village. Go fifteen miles
Speaker 1: southeast and you'll find a larger village lonely mountain there.
Speaker 1: Or Seen. The patriarchal way of interpreting Orchish tenants is
Speaker 1: roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute. Rank within the hierarchy effects
Speaker 1: every aspect of one's own life. It's not racialized, but
Speaker 1: it's nationalistic. There are very specific considerations of who is
Speaker 1: and isn't a part of any given social grouping, and
Speaker 1: definitions of strength tend askew toward boring shit like physical
Speaker 1: size and power. So you tell any doubters that you
Speaker 1: weren't trying to claim the goblin throne, because your faction
Speaker 1: of Orcs doesn't work that way. No orci Is culture
Speaker 1: works that way. Even those fascistic ships don't work that way.
Speaker 1: Among the or Seen. If you kill your superior people
Speaker 1: aren't going to just suddenly start kissing your ass. They
Speaker 1: will literally flee you and turn your skin into a
Speaker 1: battle flag. You advance in rank by demonstrating your capacity
Speaker 1: to lead. This isn't some fucking Hollywood bullshit. Evil is
Speaker 1: a lot more banal than that. I didn't have the
Speaker 1: heart or maybe the courage to tell him that to
Speaker 1: me too, pretty much, any outsider Hollywood bullshit is exactly
Speaker 1: what the whole place looked like. When you say battle flag,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Who do they do battle with us?
Speaker 1: The free Orcs? Are you at war for the very
Speaker 1: soul of our culture? How'd that start? When I cut
Speaker 1: down Rick Green the Mountain King? You killed him because
Speaker 1: he was the leader of a rival faction, then, not
Speaker 1: because he was a poser. They weren't a rival faction
Speaker 1: until I killed him, But shure he was a poser
Speaker 1: though all fascists o posers. Did you go on tour
Speaker 1: with Goblin Forest specifically to murder him? Yeah? Probably? What
Speaker 1: do you mean probably? That's a very specific question about
Speaker 1: a very specific intention. I mean, I guess I had
Speaker 1: been thinking about killing him for a while. It was premeditated,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't you know? No, I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I've never killed anyone. So it's like I've known Rick
Speaker 1: Green almost five years. He and I and maybe thirty
Speaker 1: other people. We started this whole thing, Goblin Metal of
Speaker 1: the Orcs. All of that. Rick Green has always been
Speaker 1: a fucking bastard. I figured I'd probably kill him one
Speaker 1: day for being kind of a Nazi or whatever. Then
Speaker 1: we go on tour together and I tell myself, Hey,
Speaker 1: if this goes badly, I can always just kill him
Speaker 1: on stage. You've got to understand, Orcus culture wasn't even
Speaker 1: a year old at that point. We weren't split into
Speaker 1: the Free Orcs in the ore Seene yet. There were
Speaker 1: only maybe five villages total. We were just starting to
Speaker 1: explore what it meant to be ourselves, what kind of
Speaker 1: culture we could build the in. While we were on tour,
Speaker 1: I hear he's got himself crowned the Mountain King. And
Speaker 1: this isn't a game. I don't know how to get
Speaker 1: that through to you or your readers. This is our life.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to put on a silly hat and
Speaker 1: pretend to tell people what to do in some larp somewhere.
Speaker 1: But Rick Green had gotten himself corornated for real dictator
Speaker 1: over actual people. So I killed him. The Free York
Speaker 1: split off, the or Seine closed ranks, and we've been
Speaker 1: at war ever since. Am I safe here? He didn't
Speaker 1: answer me, at least he didn't stare me down again.
Speaker 1: He just looked off into the distance, maybe towards Lonely Mountain.
Speaker 1: I've been to laps before, where when you show up,
Speaker 1: they make you put on garb. That is to say,
Speaker 1: they make you wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird
Speaker 1: interpretation of period appropriate that particular group of Larbers had
Speaker 1: come up with. As I met the denizens of the village,
Speaker 1: they all came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves.
Speaker 1: I realized they didn't insist on anything like that because
Speaker 1: they weren't LARPing. Pretty much, every one of them was
Speaker 1: dressed like either a Viking reenactor or fantasy game villain,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
Speaker 1: kids lived there, running the age gamut from six months
Speaker 1: to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
Speaker 1: About a third told me she, a third he in
Speaker 1: the third day. Many of them were white or past
Speaker 1: as such, but a significant minority were black. Nourenda told
Speaker 1: me later. There are Orc villages with substantially higher proportions
Speaker 1: of people of color. That might be true, but I
Speaker 1: got the impression she said it to convince herself or
Speaker 1: me that the free Orcs aren't a specifically white phenomenon.
Speaker 1: No One, no one decent, likes looking around their community
Speaker 1: or scene and seeing only white faces smiling back. After
Speaker 1: everyone introduced themselves, immediately forgot all their names. There are
Speaker 1: only so many fantasy names like Lazarre and Demlin that
Speaker 1: you can hear before they all just sound the same.
Speaker 1: Nourenda and Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a
Speaker 1: gate in the wall into the village. It's strange to
Speaker 1: say village in America. We don't really have villages here,
Speaker 1: but in some ways Graymorrow isn't the United States. And
Speaker 1: to be certain, it was a village, maybe ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen houses crowded together along either side of a single
Speaker 1: potholed street. Two architectural styles reigned, junkyard shacks built out
Speaker 1: of railroad cars in regular cars, and traditional American log cabins,
Speaker 1: many of them were adorned with solar panels. At the
Speaker 1: end of the street, near the black Palisade, the beginnings
Speaker 1: of a stone tower stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure if I was impressed or not. On one hand,
Speaker 1: the village couldn't have been around longer than three or
Speaker 1: four years, and they had already done so much. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell you everyone looked well fed and happy.
Speaker 1: They didn't. People looked proud, and they didn't look miserable.
Speaker 1: But there was an intensity in everyone's eyes you simply
Speaker 1: could not mistake for happiness. A trash pile needed tending
Speaker 1: near the front gate, and some of the animal hides
Speaker 1: stretched for tanning had begun to rot. Everything looked like
Speaker 1: it was about to fall apart, both physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 1: What now, I asked when we reached the central school air,
Speaker 1: a stone cobbled chunk of what had been once an intersection,
Speaker 1: now decorated with poorly tended gardens and rustic benches of
Speaker 1: dubious quality. You're here to interview golfing Ball or you're not,
Speaker 1: Fendrick asked, I am golf Ball doesn't live here. I
Speaker 1: waited for her to elaborate, golfing Ball lives in the
Speaker 1: forest with the rest of his band. He's on his way.
Speaker 1: You'll meet him a bit outside of town. I'll take
Speaker 1: you to him when he gets there. Someone near the
Speaker 1: gates shouted, and both of my escorts flinched bodily and
Speaker 1: turned to look. It was just a kid chasing another
Speaker 1: kid with a wooden sword. Fenrick and Narindo were on edge.
Speaker 1: Something was about to happen. Tell me about your new band, Ulcre.
Speaker 1: What does the name mean? Alsirith is the dark speech
Speaker 1: word for the phase of the moon on the last
Speaker 1: night before the new moon, the last sliver of light.
Speaker 1: Ulsareth is a holy day, a day of self reflection.
Speaker 1: Our band's music attempts to capture that spirit of self reflection.
Speaker 1: On Alcyreth, we listen to our naysayer and think about
Speaker 1: ourselves and our community your naysayer. Free Orchish villages don't
Speaker 1: have leaders, We have naysayers. Two years ago, we tried
Speaker 1: rotating leadership. It was ineffectual. We didn't need leaders. We
Speaker 1: stuck with it anyway because we felt like we had to,
Speaker 1: because those were the rules we had come up with.
Speaker 1: Then one person said, basically, this is bullshit. We don't
Speaker 1: need someone to tell us what to do. We need
Speaker 1: someone to tell us what to stop doing. We need
Speaker 1: someone to tell us what we're doing wrong. Every new moon,
Speaker 1: every village picks a new naysayer. That person spends the
Speaker 1: month picking up heart group structures, observing what's happening, being
Speaker 1: critical on Alsareth, We fast and listen to the naysayer.
Speaker 1: They don't offer solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems
Speaker 1: to light. Does that work surprisingly well? Except about a
Speaker 1: third of the naysayers end up leaving after their month.
Speaker 1: Some go to other villages, Some go to live in
Speaker 1: the forest, like Narinda Alsareth singer did, but most leave
Speaker 1: the woods. As we put it, most go back to civilization.
Speaker 1: That's why Narenda's name sound of familiar when she didn't.
Speaker 1: She introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name
Speaker 1: list in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention
Speaker 1: to the rest. That's an argument for me to take
Speaker 1: my name off our next release. If there is one,
Speaker 1: why did you put it there in the first place,
Speaker 1: Why did you agree to this interview? And what do
Speaker 1: you mean if there is one? I told you we're
Speaker 1: at war. Yeah, we're losing that war. He took a
Speaker 1: deep breath, trying to keep himself calm. He didn't strike
Speaker 1: me as a man who was afraid to cry, but
Speaker 1: he was clearly trying to keep his composure. There's no
Speaker 1: way that Gray Morrow would have let you talk to
Speaker 1: me here if any of us thought that Gray Morrow
Speaker 1: had a future. There's no way I would have talked
Speaker 1: to you at all if I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to be alive to see another alster. Why are you losing?
Speaker 1: Why are you going to die? It's not a question
Speaker 1: of military efficacy, or of bravery or strength or any
Speaker 1: of that ship. It's just a question of numbers. We're
Speaker 1: seeing society as a military society. Every member fights. As
Speaker 1: far as we can tell, They've got fift hundred warriors,
Speaker 1: We've got five hundred, so use guerrilla tactics. Golf and
Speaker 1: bull shook his head. Striking Rick Green down from behind
Speaker 1: was a cowardly action. I can justify it almost by
Speaker 1: the fact that Green had declared himself my monarch. But
Speaker 1: the Orsine warriors are my peers. They would not stalk
Speaker 1: me in the night. I will not stalk them. That sounds,
Speaker 1: I know how it sounds. So this interview, I want
Speaker 1: to be remembered. I want the free Orcs of Cascadia
Speaker 1: to be remembered. I put my name on the liner
Speaker 1: notes so that someone like you, an anti fascist music blogger,
Speaker 1: would talk to me. I leveraged my own infamy to
Speaker 1: draw attention to what we're doing, what we've done. I
Speaker 1: fucking hate the tragic utopian trope. What like seriously like
Speaker 1: fuck you? Okay, I know I'm here as a journalist,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna write your fucking obituary. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever turned on an interview subject like that before.
Speaker 1: I get it. Hopeless causes are beautiful, but as I
Speaker 1: understand it, the whole goddamn point of holding onto your
Speaker 1: honor more firmly than your life is because the world
Speaker 1: is a better place for everyone if more people did that. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: the world isn't a goddamn better place if you let
Speaker 1: your subculture. And I'm sorry, I know it's very serious
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to downplay it, but that's what
Speaker 1: this is. A musical subculture be taken over by fucking Nazis,
Speaker 1: and I respect that you're going to fight them for it.
Speaker 1: That's cool. But if you consider buying some guns, maybe
Speaker 1: a few drones, they'll come in here with spears, right,
Speaker 1: and you'll fight them off with other spears. It's man,
Speaker 1: there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a
Speaker 1: ship about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot
Speaker 1: the Nazis. We're trying to kill you. You don't understand,
Speaker 1: You're fucking right. I don't, if I'm being honest. Most
Speaker 1: of the time I was waiting, I spent flirting with
Speaker 1: Norenda and avoiding talking to Fenrich Horenda asked me to
Speaker 1: keep our conversation off the record. We didn't talk about
Speaker 1: Gray Morrow or the orc thing much. Anyway. Everything I
Speaker 1: learned about the village and its culture I learned by observation.
Speaker 1: Only An elderly and came by and offered us cold
Speaker 1: tea and wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves sweetened with juice
Speaker 1: from the berries. He said, no caffeine, no other particularly
Speaker 1: strong medicinal effects. The three of us took cups from
Speaker 1: his bladder, and he continued down the street passing out drinks.
Speaker 1: No one else approached us. I watched people go about
Speaker 1: their lives, though the tension in the air was thick.
Speaker 1: I saw a few people look at cell phones and
Speaker 1: spent a not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide
Speaker 1: if that was hypocritical and or bad ops sec. Eventually
Speaker 1: I gave up, because frankly, it wasn't my business, and
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting things about all the post
Speaker 1: civilization groups is all the bits and pieces they choose
Speaker 1: to carry over from mainstream culture. Finally, after an hour,
Speaker 1: Fenric stood up come with me. I followed her to
Speaker 1: the other side of town and through a smaller gait.
Speaker 1: On the other side, a box truck that had seen
Speaker 1: better days sat on a road that had to We
Speaker 1: skirted around the truck and up into the black forest.
Speaker 1: The scorched hills looked more like meadows than forests, with
Speaker 1: green grass and undergrowth broken only by black spikes of
Speaker 1: burned trees. We followed the path this way and that,
Speaker 1: and soon I was lost. Soon after fog set in,
Speaker 1: I was further through the looking glass than I had realized.
Speaker 1: I imagined us lost a mile from a town full
Speaker 1: of people who gave a double meaning to the word stranger,
Speaker 1: and probably at least an hour's drive from civilization. My
Speaker 1: guard hadn't shown me much in the way of kindness,
Speaker 1: and I was on my way to meet someone I
Speaker 1: knew to be a murderer. It's the kind of shift
Speaker 1: I live for. If I'm being honest, I love my stupid,
Speaker 1: fucking weird job in the stupid fucking weird world we
Speaker 1: live in. Thank you, my readers for making that possible
Speaker 1: for me. Be sure to check out my Patreon page
Speaker 1: if this is the first thing you've read by me.
Speaker 1: Lots of members only content over there, including a few
Speaker 1: snippets of orc song from Narinda. The only thing I
Speaker 1: saw in the distance was a single black spire, thicker
Speaker 1: than the dead snags around me. As we approached, it
Speaker 1: came into focus as a boulder jutting up into the
Speaker 1: sky like an angry finger. Sitting at the base of
Speaker 1: it was a short man with a sword across his lap,
Speaker 1: golfing bull. I'll leave you too to it, Fenrick said.
Speaker 1: She left me alone with an arm murderer. I sat
Speaker 1: down across from him, took out the notebook and recorder
Speaker 1: and asked him questions. All right, convince me we can't
Speaker 1: fight them dishonorably, because you can't protect an idea by
Speaker 1: defiling that idea. We don't want them to destroy our
Speaker 1: way of life. But we don't want to destroy our
Speaker 1: way of life ourselves either. The basic problem with your
Speaker 1: scene is that they're interpreting your code of honor to
Speaker 1: mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes. By facing them an
Speaker 1: open battle and nobly dying or whatever your goddamn planet is,
Speaker 1: you're just letting them make m right. You're letting their
Speaker 1: superior numbers dictate what your cultures to look like. It's
Speaker 1: like majority voting, but even dumber because more people die.
Speaker 1: I expected him to double down on his position. Most
Speaker 1: men would. What do you suggest instead, Fuck? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Don't be here when they attack, Go somewhere else, stay
Speaker 1: on the move, build your strength. Oh ship, That's what
Speaker 1: Rick Green was doing, wasn't it. Huh Goblin Forest singing
Speaker 1: in English, a stupid name like Grick Green All. That
Speaker 1: ship was designed to make Goblin metal more palatable to
Speaker 1: the masses, to get fans, to get recruits for his stupid,
Speaker 1: fucking fashy goals. Yep, do that. I mean, don't become
Speaker 1: fascists or change your name or make your music worse.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows Goblin Forest and have shipped on Krimpotzool. Just
Speaker 1: don't be obscure for the sake of being obscure. Fucking
Speaker 1: advertise you have a decent thing going here. People are
Speaker 1: abandoning mainstream society left and right, no political pun intended.
Speaker 1: Make it easier for them to get here. Make it
Speaker 1: so that when you fight the fashion your epics, swords
Speaker 1: and spears, Viking deathmatch, you win better. Yet, make it
Speaker 1: so they don't even want to funk with you because
Speaker 1: they know they'll lose. I don't know whether that would work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but dying doesn't work either. The Eark way of life
Speaker 1: isn't meant to be some revolution. It's not meant to
Speaker 1: supplant the mainstream. It will never appeal to the mainstream,
Speaker 1: not without losing its soul. Would you live like this?
Speaker 1: Would you want to? You're right, I'm obsessed with you
Speaker 1: weird subcultures, but I wouldn't want to live like you.
Speaker 1: We both stared at each other in silence. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable silence. We're both just thinking, okay, scrap that.
Speaker 1: You're never going to get big numbers. You don't need
Speaker 1: big numbers. You don't want big numbers. You don't need recruits,
Speaker 1: you need allies. What would that look like god damn dude,
Speaker 1: all Orcish men note, actually listen to women's ideas. I'm
Speaker 1: used to guys just talking over me and shutting down completely.
Speaker 1: If I get mad free Orkish men, I would hope
Speaker 1: know how to listen. Guns break the spell and the
Speaker 1: spill you're casting here. It's powerful, it's good. So no guns.
Speaker 1: Other people have guns, though, Let those people stand guard
Speaker 1: or make their arm presence. Note outside or seen camps,
Speaker 1: other people have access to, say, dock singe. How many
Speaker 1: recruits are the or Sine going to get if every
Speaker 1: time some want to be forced Nazi dude joins, someone
Speaker 1: tells his mother what they're about for access to the media,
Speaker 1: How many recruits are going to join if everyone knows
Speaker 1: the or Sine or posers putting out substandard, watered down
Speaker 1: goblin metal just to try and lure an impressionable military
Speaker 1: aged men to fight their holy war. You'll write those stories.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna write you any propaganda, but sure I'll
Speaker 1: tell the truth. How do we get allies? But at
Speaker 1: another single, maybe a full length The gray Fog of
Speaker 1: a Ruined Forest was the best ship of hurtin years.
Speaker 1: You're redefining folk music. Just like you redefined metal without
Speaker 1: ship like that, and I'll cover it, talk to more press,
Speaker 1: maybe someone other than you. Not everyone's going to be
Speaker 1: sympathetic to what you did, even if that fucking guy
Speaker 1: was a fucking tree Nazi hunting horn cut through the
Speaker 1: fog and through our conversation, and my subject's face fell
Speaker 1: into despair for a half second before determination took over.
Speaker 1: What's that interviews over? I thought there would be more
Speaker 1: time another day. At least, we have to get you
Speaker 1: out of here. Turns out Fenrik had taken us on
Speaker 1: a purposefully circatuitous route into the woods. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: quarter of a mile straight downhill before golf and bowl
Speaker 1: and I reached the box truck at the back entrance
Speaker 1: to Graymorrow. Noriinda and Fenrick stood there talking with a kid,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen, who was out of breath. She was dressed
Speaker 1: in scraps of fur and leather and cloth, like you
Speaker 1: might imagine a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed
Speaker 1: all the twigs and sticks and moss tangled up in
Speaker 1: the fabrics I recognized it as camouflage. I saw about
Speaker 1: thirty the scout for that's what she was said about
Speaker 1: Fenrick asked, exactly thirty ten with pikes, ten with tower,
Speaker 1: shields and swords. Five archers, two scouts, two command one
Speaker 1: non combatant. I'd guess a surgeon, but I couldn't promise
Speaker 1: how far away I asked. Fenrick glared at me for interrupting.
Speaker 1: Five miles Norenda said, probably three and a half by
Speaker 1: now down hill. We have time to get you out
Speaker 1: with the children and the elders. The scout had just
Speaker 1: run five miles up hill because she was too stubborn
Speaker 1: to use a walkie talkie or a cell phone. We
Speaker 1: should evacuate everyone. Gulfumbule said what Fenrick asked. We've got
Speaker 1: walls and almost even numbers. Fuck them, this is our home.
Speaker 1: I wanted to shout at her, I wanted to shake her,
Speaker 1: to tell her this wasn't a fucking game, that it
Speaker 1: wasn't the twelfth century, and that killing people or dying
Speaker 1: over some squatted chunk of nowhere was somewhere between stupid
Speaker 1: and reprehensible. It didn't. Though I'm a good journalist, this
Speaker 1: isn't the place for us to debate this, Norenda said,
Speaker 1: and all four of them walked through the gate and
Speaker 1: left me standing by the truck. That was why the
Speaker 1: gardens were untended, and with the trash was piled up
Speaker 1: and the hides were left to rot. They were expecting this.
Speaker 1: They'd lost their will to pretend like their lives were
Speaker 1: going to continue to progress forward. I'm not the first
Speaker 1: to suggest that nihilism is the dominant effect of society today,
Speaker 1: with climate change destroying communities and bioregions all over the map,
Speaker 1: with the economic crisis deepening and the wealth gap widening.
Speaker 1: I think all of us are guilty of forgetting to
Speaker 1: tend our gardens. All of us have a hard time
Speaker 1: figuring out why it matters whether or not we deal
Speaker 1: with our trash. All of us have proverbial or literal
Speaker 1: Nazis marching on us. The Nazis the free Orcs of
Speaker 1: Cascadia are dealing with are the literal variety. Some cosplaying
Speaker 1: fascist was about to stick a sword between Norenda's ribs
Speaker 1: by Ale rose in my throat. I don't know I
Speaker 1: believe in love at first sight or any of that ship,
Speaker 1: but I just couldn't handle the idea. I fucking hate honor.
Speaker 1: I will never be an orc. I got lost running
Speaker 1: through solutions to the problem of hypothetical arrows and swords
Speaker 1: that were going to interfere with Nourindo's continued existence. Most
Speaker 1: of those solutions involved assault rifles, which I didn't have
Speaker 1: access to. Cars, though were available. What's thirty warriors of
Speaker 1: medieval armor versus one station wagon driven by an angry
Speaker 1: wound with a lead foot. I put the odds in
Speaker 1: my favor. I wasn't going to do it though. Instead
Speaker 1: I waited to evacuate. I don't think that speaks well
Speaker 1: of me. Individually and in groups, people came out through
Speaker 1: the gate and loaded bags and baskets onto the back
Speaker 1: of the truck. Noarinda returned with a simple backpack sewn
Speaker 1: from raw hide. Most of her belongings were probably wherever
Speaker 1: she Engulfingble and the rest of Alsyreth lived. She handed
Speaker 1: me my phone, I didn't have service. I wondered whether
Speaker 1: or not she engulfing Bule were dating. It wasn't relevant
Speaker 1: to the present moment exactly, But my mind always is
Speaker 1: a way of thinking about bullshit to avoid thinking about
Speaker 1: impending doom. Another important effect of our generation distract ourselves
Speaker 1: with disaster with petty things like love and jealousy. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you said to Golf and Bullnerando said,
Speaker 1: but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to
Speaker 1: evacuate everyone, I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenric
Speaker 1: and Gorn. Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea?
Speaker 1: Do you remember him? He's old as ship, though, I said,
Speaker 1: because I have no fucking manners or common sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's old as ship. He's a linguist by training. His
Speaker 1: main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
Speaker 1: when he can't figure out how to say something, he
Speaker 1: just makes up new words. He developed about a third
Speaker 1: of the language. Did all that ship before orc culture
Speaker 1: was even around. He's also a widower three times over.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
Speaker 1: book was called Soon I will return to the Earth. Oh,
Speaker 1: Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and Fenric,
Speaker 1: they're going to hold the wall as long as they
Speaker 1: can in the fall. Back to the woods and you,
Speaker 1: I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
Speaker 1: Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
Speaker 1: might leave the woods, go back to being a vet tech,
Speaker 1: I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
Speaker 1: life advice. Oh, and golf and Ball said to give
Speaker 1: you this, He said, it's in case he dies. He says,
Speaker 1: you're right. You shouldn't have to write his obituary. So
Speaker 1: we wrote his own. She handed me a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: I piled into the back of the box truck with
Speaker 1: forty other people, many of them in tears, many of
Speaker 1: them in shock, and we drove away from Graymorrow. None
Speaker 1: of the three free orc survived the battle. Goren died
Speaker 1: and paled on a spear while holding the gate. Fedric
Speaker 1: was killed by an arrow that struck her in the
Speaker 1: back of the neck as she and golfing Bull ran
Speaker 1: Golfing Bull. Fenric's lover turned and stood his ground over
Speaker 1: her body. I didn't know any of that yet. I
Speaker 1: found out when Nearinda found out two days later. Maybe
Speaker 1: all three of them would have survived. If I hadn't
Speaker 1: in her ear, and they had all fought with equal numbers,
Speaker 1: maybe more of them would have died. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: forgive myself, Maybe there's nothing to forgive. In the back
Speaker 1: of the truck, by the light coming in through a crack,
Speaker 1: in the steel wall. I read Golf and Bull's Note
Speaker 1: all my life. I didn't give a shit about anything.
Speaker 1: I liked weed and metal in whatever counterculture trend was
Speaker 1: big in a given year, but my heart wasn't in it.
Speaker 1: I just went through the motions until I became an ORC,
Speaker 1: saying I'm an orc and meaning it. Isn't like a
Speaker 1: trans man saying he's a man and meaning it. Gender
Speaker 1: is a social construct that goes back as far as
Speaker 1: I understand, to the beginning of humanity. There has always
Speaker 1: been gender, and there have always been people who transgress
Speaker 1: the roles assigned to them at birth. An orc is
Speaker 1: a social construct that we just fucking made up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the orc is an archetype too, but it's
Speaker 1: a fantasy archetype. We know what's make believe. Make believe
Speaker 1: is what gave my life meaning. I promise you that
Speaker 1: for me. The day we decided we were orcs was
Speaker 1: the first day that the sun shone benevolence upon the world.
Speaker 1: It was the first day that color radiated from everything
Speaker 1: I saw. It was the first day that the rain
Speaker 1: on my roof tapped out codes of meaning. It was
Speaker 1: the first day of my life, my real life, my
Speaker 1: first Also, I fell in love with the world. Everyone
Speaker 1: finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by believing
Speaker 1: in some ship we made up and letting that be real.
Speaker 1: I was born Jason Sanchez. I died gulfing Bull. I'm
Speaker 1: not sorry. That was great that I mean, not my narration,
Speaker 1: the story. The story, not my narration. Mm hmm. The
Speaker 1: second way finished, we all just got that little smirk
Speaker 1: on our face, like that was delightful. Yeah, Margret, you're
Speaker 1: the best. Yeah. I mean, if I were going to
Speaker 1: be an orc, there would be rifles but problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely This is like a really good example
Speaker 1: of what I mean that when I write utopia in
Speaker 1: fiction or like fiction about other societies, I'm not saying, hey,
Speaker 1: everyone go do this, or like this is what people
Speaker 1: should do. No, I mean I liked that. I like
Speaker 1: I like that I've had that experience in other cultures,
Speaker 1: you know, places like slab City and different kind of
Speaker 1: encampments and whatnot that I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: and as a journalist where it's like I'm fascinated by
Speaker 1: and I respect aspects of this, but like, I also
Speaker 1: think some of these things are that you're doing or
Speaker 1: dumb or I don't understand why you do it, or
Speaker 1: this isn't like you know, but you don't. Your notes
Speaker 1: don't matter. You know, that's not your job, although actually
Speaker 1: having an impact in that way is is kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Somebody go, somebody go make an work village. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go out there, I'll report on it. We'll go.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine. Don't take the band name all sort
Speaker 1: though I already stole that. Yeah, there's a number of
Speaker 1: dope band names in here. People should make orc folk.
Speaker 1: I'd be really excited to hear make orc folk abandon
Speaker 1: civilization to live as fantasy creatures. Um, fight fascists, all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like
Speaker 1: to plug? Well? I do have a new book out,
Speaker 1: or a reprint of an older book called A Country
Speaker 1: a Ghost, that is a more directly utopian book. It's
Speaker 1: out from a K Press. Came out last month, and um,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. That's the main thing. Oh, you
Speaker 1: can support me on Patreon, although it's no longer supporting
Speaker 1: me on Patreon, it's supporting a publishing thing that I'm
Speaker 1: starting back up with people called Strangers and Entangled Wilderness
Speaker 1: and it will publish fiction and memoir and like the
Speaker 1: kind of like more culture side of radical politics and
Speaker 1: less the like theory and stuff. What's the patreon patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness? Because why
Speaker 1: would I pick short names for things? Ye do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And we have we have a live show coming up right, Robert, Uh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like us. It's a virtual live show
Speaker 1: of for Behind the Bastards. Put our friend prop that's
Speaker 1: on Thursday, February allegedly moment House dot com slash Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards. I can't confirm or deny that. Okay, you've
Speaker 1: gotta a lawyer on here before you can. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get Moira on the horn and where come on
Speaker 1: the horn and tell us if we're actually doing this thing? That? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are we? Also? Are we alive? That's another question? How
Speaker 1: I texture that most days? Um? All right, well, thank
Speaker 1: you Margaret, and thank you all for tuning in in
Speaker 1: the first year of the rest of the next year. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every leek from
Speaker 1: now until the death of the universe. It could happen
Speaker 1: here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
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Speaker 1: new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob
Speaker 1: run Chicago. He bribed judges and even helped a hit
Speaker 1: man walk free, until one day when he started talking
Speaker 1: with the FBI and promised that he could take the
Speaker 1: mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure
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