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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to cool people who did stuff that

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Speaker 2: is cool. I feel like there'd be a better way

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Speaker 2: to I like, just did cool stuff. Thing that'd be better.

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Speaker 2: I'm Margaret Kiljoy and I'm usually your host, but I'm

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Speaker 2: not today because today is another episode of Reren Explains

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Speaker 2: Things to Me the pun that some tiny percentage of

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Speaker 2: the guests, guests, listeners, listeners will find funny. It's an

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Speaker 2: even smaller portion of the percentage of listeners who get

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Speaker 2: the joke will be the ones who actually find it funny.

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Speaker 2: Wren is explaining things to me Ren or I Hi, Ren,

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Speaker 2: how are you please? Say?

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Speaker 3: How are you doing? I you know you're the podcaster here,

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Speaker 3: so that's embarrassing, okay, And Wren is our guest host.

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Speaker 3: This is part two of a two parter. Although if

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Speaker 3: you only care about food co ops and you don't

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Speaker 3: care about free bread, then I guess you could start here.

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Speaker 3: But you couldn't start until we introduce Sophie. Hey, Hi, Sophie, Hi, Hi, Rian, Hi,

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Speaker 3: how's it going is?

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Speaker 1: Everything's Everything's going very very well. I'm so excited for

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Speaker 1: a part two.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and feeling better about food co ops, which is

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Speaker 2: the spoiler. I mean it's not spoiler for anything.

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Speaker 3: This might make you feel more interested in food co

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Speaker 3: op history, but it won't make you feel better about

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Speaker 3: food co ops.

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Speaker 4: I hate to oh, okay to admit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well it will make me feel better about it

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Speaker 2: won't make change how I feel about Ian. It's already

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Speaker 2: very positive. Ian is our audio engineer. Hi, Ian Hey,

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Speaker 2: Ian Hey? Ian? Hello? This is Ian.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sad Ian's not here right now.

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Speaker 2: What we just heard him, I'm making it sound like

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Speaker 2: I'm lying when I said I said last time that

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Speaker 2: I don't drink effeine, and it sounds like I'm lying

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Speaker 2: right now. Ian is our audio engineer. I already said

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Speaker 2: that un Woman did our theme music and today food

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Speaker 2: co ops.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so food co ops so similar to the last one.

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Speaker 3: What comes to mind when you think about food.

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Speaker 4: Co ops.

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Speaker 2: Overpriced food? M h, there goes the neighborhood, but also

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Speaker 2: the place that has the vegan food and also the

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Speaker 2: place where people argue about the ethics of shoplifting from.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, all of these things. So that's it nailed, Sophie. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that's all the things. So I definitely think of co ops, right,

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Speaker 3: it's these really fancy independent grocery stores that regular people

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Speaker 3: can't afford to shop at. I feel incredibly privileged to

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Speaker 3: be able to afford groceries on a regular basis, and

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Speaker 3: I cannot afford to shop at the Tucson Food co Op.

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Speaker 3: So I was surprised when while looking into the co

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Speaker 3: op here in Tucson, which completely fits that stereo type, now,

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Speaker 3: I discovered that it actually has this really radical history

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Speaker 3: and that actually most food co ops in the United

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Speaker 3: States do as well.

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Speaker 2: Because the concept of it seems really yeah, right, like,

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Speaker 2: let's all pitch in together to buy food in bulk,

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Speaker 2: isn't that the that's to give you the what I

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Speaker 2: think I know. I think a bunch of people, probably

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Speaker 2: Finns and Swedes because they're in Minnesota, and shit, we're like,

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Speaker 2: what if we all pitch in together and or Wisconsin,

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Speaker 2: and what if we all pitch in together and buy

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Speaker 2: food and bulk together as if we are the store.

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Speaker 2: That's like, that's what I think I know about food

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Speaker 2: co op history.

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Speaker 3: So there might be a tie in with Wisconsin Finns

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Speaker 3: and Swedes, but I don't know it. No, we will

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Speaker 3: be in Minnesota in in a little bit in this episode.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, but what I know of sort of the

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Speaker 3: roots of co ops. I'm going to focus on the

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Speaker 3: ones that emerge out of the counterculture of the sixties

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Speaker 3: and seventies, but of course there were other co ops

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Speaker 3: right that started long before then. And I should say, obviously,

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Speaker 3: people have been pulling resources to secure food all over

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Speaker 3: the world since time immemorial. Just because some folks are

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Speaker 3: now calling it a food co op doesn't mean that

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Speaker 3: it's a new thing. But an early example of a

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Speaker 3: consumer cooperative that people often point to was founded in

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Speaker 3: I think it's Roachdale or Rochdale, England in eighteen forty four.

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Speaker 3: A group of weavers who had just lost to strike

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Speaker 3: for better wages pulled their money to open a store

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Speaker 3: and they sold basic food stuffs stuff like flour, oat, sugar,

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Speaker 3: and butter. They also created a set of Roachdale principles

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Speaker 3: ideals that their co op would run on, and these

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Speaker 3: included things like voluntary and open membership, democratic member control,

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Speaker 3: autonomy and independence and cooperation among cooperatives. And the Roachdale

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Speaker 3: movement inspired thousands of consumer cooperatives to open across the

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Speaker 3: United States, although most of these didn't last very long,

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Speaker 3: and there was also a second wave of consumer cooperatives

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Speaker 3: that arose from the Great Depression but waned during World

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Speaker 3: War Two. And the exception was that some of the

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Speaker 3: farmers cooperatives have sort of lingered on. And one of

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Speaker 3: the ones that and I don't know how, you know,

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Speaker 3: they're a big company. I'm not going to like claim

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Speaker 3: that they're like super cool or radical in any way.

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Speaker 3: But one of the farmers cooperatives that still exists is Tillamook,

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Speaker 3: which is my cheese and ice cream brand of choice.

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Speaker 2: Okay, do you want to like when you keep saying

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Speaker 2: like consumer cooperative and I know what that means. Do

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Speaker 2: you want to talk about like that versus a worker

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Speaker 2: cooperative or something?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is mostly focusing on consumer cooperatives, right,

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Speaker 3: so people aren't like pooling their labor to achieve something instead.

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Speaker 2: Of the Yeah, it's owned by the people who shop there,

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Speaker 2: rather than owned by the workers.

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Speaker 3: By the workers. Yeah, so it's not like a bunch

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Speaker 3: of people, you know, working together too. Although it gets

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Speaker 3: really blurry when we go into the early history of

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Speaker 3: like the countercultural food co ops, because they were kind

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Speaker 3: of like both workers and consumers cooperatives. And I think

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Speaker 3: that the farmers cooperatives, were workers cooperatives and are workers cooperative?

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Speaker 3: Blurring that a little bit.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I just wanted to, like because you were saying that,

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Speaker 2: and I was like, wanted to, Yeah, clarify totally.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really great clarification, thank you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So this is mostly consumer cooperatives. It's people pooling money

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Speaker 3: and resources to be able to get products at a

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Speaker 3: cheaper rate for the most part. Then there's also this

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Speaker 3: extensive history of black lead farming and grocery cooperatives that

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Speaker 3: emerges out of the Civil rights movement, and most famously, yeah,

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Speaker 3: this is another like could do a whole episode on this,

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Speaker 3: but most famously Fanny Lou Hamer, the twentieth child of

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Speaker 3: sharecroppers who became a really important civil rights organizer, led

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Speaker 3: the effort to create the Freedom Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi.

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Speaker 3: It was founded on forty acres and sixty seven. It

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Speaker 3: grew to seven hundred acres at its peak, and it

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Speaker 3: was farmed cooperatively by around fifteen hundred families. It included

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Speaker 3: community gardens, absistant farms, a catfish cooperative, there was land

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Speaker 3: for cattle pig cooperative. There crops that were raised to

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Speaker 3: pay the mortgage on the land. There was also a

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Speaker 3: tool bank and many many other things. And while the

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Speaker 3: cooperative had black leadership, and while because of the demographics

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Speaker 3: of the county and the impacts of racism, it primarily

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Speaker 3: served black families, the resources were available to poor white

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Speaker 3: families as well, and there were some that were part

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Speaker 3: of the Freedom Farm or they were available to anyone,

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Speaker 3: but demographically that that other contingent usually meant poor white families.

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Speaker 2: And we talked a little bit about her. I think

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Speaker 2: in the episode that we did about birth control people

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Speaker 2: being able to choose whether or not to have children.

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Speaker 2: I think it was her who was forced to not

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Speaker 2: be able to have children by the state as part

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Speaker 2: of a racist eugenesis policy.

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Speaker 3: She was yeah, she was absolutely.

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Speaker 2: And then there's like all of this, I actually know

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Speaker 2: a little bit more about this part where there's like,

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Speaker 2: for example, there's the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which is

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Speaker 2: an organization that works to keep farming land in black

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Speaker 2: hands because you have a lot of basically, over the

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Speaker 2: past hundred years, the amount of land owned by black

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Speaker 2: people in the South and US South has like dropped

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Speaker 2: dramatically as a result of all these racist practices, and

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Speaker 2: so cooperatives are coming together to try and like preserve

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Speaker 2: all of that. And I've been doing it for a

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Speaker 2: long time anyway, I got really excited about this. Please continue.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they have for a really long time. And

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Speaker 3: the Southern wait, the Southern Federation of Cooperatives?

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Speaker 4: Is that what you just are?

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Speaker 2: A federation of Southern cooperatives.

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Speaker 3: Federation of Southern Cooperatives.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that gets me covered, right.

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Speaker 2: Oh sick. Cool.

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Speaker 3: Also, not in my scripts, but also in this book

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Speaker 3: that I learned a lot about the Freedom Farm in

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Speaker 3: which is Monica M. White's Freedom Farmers. And that's a

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Speaker 3: really cool thing to check out if you want to

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Speaker 3: learn more about this stuff. And so, unfortunately, for many

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Speaker 3: of the above mentioned reasons, the Freedom Farm shut down

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Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy six, just a year before Hamer's death.

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Speaker 3: But it achieved a great deal in the nine years

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Speaker 3: of its existence. And I have a quote here from

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Speaker 3: Monica and White who wrote that book, Freedom Farmers, where

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Speaker 3: she talked about the importance of the Freedom Firm. She says, well,

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Speaker 3: it is important to analyze the problems that ultimately led

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Speaker 3: to the demise of the organization in nineteen seventy five.

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Speaker 3: We should not undervalue its successes given its time, scope

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Speaker 3: and tension and liberatory vision, as well as the fact

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Speaker 3: that this vision was enacted within a pervasively oppressive and

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Speaker 3: racially hostile environment. The movement, while relatively short lived, was

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Speaker 3: a manifestation of self reliance and the capacity of a

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Speaker 3: community to come together for the provision of food, housing, shelter, education, healthcare.

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Speaker 4: And employment.

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Speaker 3: Yeah so super super important and other civil rights organizers

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Speaker 3: such as Bob Moses and Stokely Carmichael also encouraged black

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Speaker 3: communities to start cooperative food buying clubs to establish economic

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Speaker 3: independence and a white supremacist society. Like previous grocery store

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Speaker 3: co op waves. A lot of these buying clubs were

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Speaker 3: short lived and there's not a ton of records on

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Speaker 3: how many were formed. And then other buying clubs were

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Speaker 3: also started during the War on Poverty, which was a

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Speaker 3: program of the national government in the mid sixties that

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Speaker 3: attempted to resp onto a poverty rate of nineteen percent.

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Speaker 3: These included, for example, a co op started by Pedro

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Speaker 3: Otero at the puert Riquino Center on New York's Lower

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Speaker 3: East Side, among others.

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Speaker 1: Is Bob Moses the same person as Robert Moses, because

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Speaker 1: Robert Moses was the guy who fucking fucked up the

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Speaker 1: urban planning in New York. So that okay, because I

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Speaker 1: was like, I was totally different. I was like, these

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Speaker 1: are two very different people. Yeah, the same name, okay, cool?

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Speaker 2: Cool coo cool.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: No, Bob Moses is a sub arts organizer. Robert Moses,

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Speaker 3: I mean, that's just unfassionate. Not a friend of the pod.

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Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, no, he's he's a friend of Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards. Listen to those episodes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So so there were you know, there were precedents, right,

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Speaker 3: These countercultural co ops don't just spring out of nowhere,

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Speaker 3: and I want to make sure to kind of emphasize that.

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Speaker 3: But you do have this interest in organic food, which

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Speaker 3: is growing during the late sixties and early seventies. You know,

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Speaker 3: we touched on this in the first part of this

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Speaker 3: with the Diggers and the Whole week Bread. This interest

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Speaker 3: was driven by a lot of different things, but one

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Speaker 3: important one is the skepticism of additives and pesticides, especially

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Speaker 3: in the wake of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a book

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Speaker 3: I have not read, but according to things I've read

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Speaker 3: about it. It called out indiscriminate pesticide use, specifically the

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Speaker 3: use of DDT for its impact on the environment, and.

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Speaker 2: It also started the modern environmental movement.

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Speaker 3: I think sort of yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's what.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read people say that. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure there's like more more detail and nuance there,

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Speaker 3: but I don't.

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Speaker 4: Know what it is. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, DDT had health effects, including cancer.

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Speaker 3: There was also like a general contracultural distrust of US

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Speaker 3: processed foods, which were pretty much all that was available

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Speaker 3: at mainstream supermarkets. So the political left belief that hardy

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Speaker 3: natural foods like a whole weat read or granola would

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Speaker 3: actually like sustain people longer during revolutionary activity. They're all like,

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Speaker 3: bring your whole bread and granola to the building occupation,

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Speaker 3: you know. So there's this whole idea about this kind

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Speaker 3: of food that's so sweet, I know. And the commune

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Speaker 3: movement had also started, right, so hippies are moving from

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Speaker 3: cities to rural land where they're growing their own food

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Speaker 3: or they're driving an interest in organic produce and like

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Speaker 3: creating excess produce that you know, maybe could do well

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Speaker 3: to be sold somewhere.

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Speaker 2: I find it really interesting because we talk about, well,

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Speaker 2: you don't a lot of people talk about food as

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Speaker 2: if it's sort of like tangential, like revolutionary stuff, you know,

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Speaker 2: And I think about, like, I mean, obviously dietary choices

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Speaker 2: is complicated and things like that. But I remember I

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Speaker 2: had been vegan for about a year before I became

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Speaker 2: an anarchist and I got headled in New York City

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Speaker 2: by a bunch of cops and I was like, and

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Speaker 2: people were sharing food and I was like, oh no,

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Speaker 2: I'm good because I I didn't know any vegans those

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Speaker 2: two thousand and two and someone was like, oh no,

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Speaker 2: it's vegan, and then gave me food and I was like,

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Speaker 2: I found my people, you know, and like ways of

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Speaker 2: choosing how to eat and like reading about my My

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Speaker 2: interest in my knowledge has been more like vegetarians and

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Speaker 2: stuff like that, right.

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Speaker 4: But like, like I we.

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Speaker 2: Just did a bunch of episodes about you know, these

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Speaker 2: like revolutionaries in Argentina one hundred years ago and like

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Speaker 2: and they were like straight edge vegan, like they were

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Speaker 2: you know, and I'm like, or they were vegetarian, but

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Speaker 2: there were vegan whatever. And it's just so interesting that

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Speaker 2: this stuff, like even the like oh we all eat

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Speaker 2: whole we eat bread, or we eat granola, or like

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Speaker 2: you know, let's go eat sprouts so we have more

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Speaker 2: energy to overthrow the government, or like refined sugar is

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Speaker 2: going to just drain all your energy or whatever. Like

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Speaker 2: it's it's cool to me that this stuff is part

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Speaker 2: of it and that people see it as part of it.

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Speaker 2: Obviously it gets I'm almost done this rent, but like

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Speaker 2: it obviously gets recuperated and all this like weird stuff

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Speaker 2: where like all the right wing people are like you know,

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Speaker 2: talking about sometimes very similar things but anyway, sorry.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's like a whole other threat of inquiry

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Speaker 3: with this stuff where they it is really about looking

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Speaker 3: at the foods and the foods that people were choosing

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Speaker 3: to eat and the recipes that were being created, both

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Speaker 3: in the sense that you're talking about, but then also

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Speaker 3: sort of like this weird reoccurring of or not weird

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Speaker 3: but complicated recurring of peasant food and cultural appropriation and

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Speaker 3: all this stuff, and that this won't that won't be

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Speaker 3: covered as much, but it is very fascinating and it's

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Speaker 3: something that I've always thought that if I were going

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Speaker 3: to go back into food co ops and look at

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Speaker 3: them more. Looking at that angle would be really really cool.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So, but this is going to be more about like

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Speaker 3: the structure of trying to create this like anti capitalist

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Speaker 3: food buying system that then, of course, spoiler alert, we'll

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Speaker 3: get co opted in the end.

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Speaker 2: Co opted.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, co ops getting co opted.

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Speaker 2: That's where the word co opted comes from. It's like

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Speaker 2: what happened to the co ops? This is actual etymology. Okay,

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Speaker 2: so you're saying.

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Speaker 3: To us countercultural co ops were reaction to mainstream There

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Speaker 3: were mainstream health food stores. They had products at hippies

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Speaker 3: and leftists wanted to eat, but they were too expensive

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Speaker 3: to shop. And they were also a reaction to old

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Speaker 3: school consumer co ops, which, to quote Warren belasco author

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Speaker 3: of Appetite for Change amazing food historian, were designed to supplement,

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Speaker 3: not subvert capitalism, and didn't really stock organic or whole

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Speaker 3: grain foods. Right, So you have the fancy health food

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Speaker 3: store that has your organic and whole grain foods, and

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Speaker 3: then you have your old school consumer cooperatives where you

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Speaker 3: could just get the big box foods that you could

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Speaker 3: get anywhere else just buying on a cooperative model.

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Speaker 2: Okay, you know what else people can buy. This is

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Speaker 2: my ad transition.

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Speaker 1: I liked it.

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Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah, there's some stuff that if you want to

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Speaker 2: it would be really funny if like we actually got

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Speaker 2: ads for a decent funny it'd be really nice if

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Speaker 2: we adds for decent things. But some co here, Okay,

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Speaker 2: here's my sponsored buy. Some food cooperatives in some cities

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Speaker 2: still actually practice a model of trying to make food

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Speaker 2: accessible and offer discounts to people who low income and

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Speaker 2: like do all kinds of work to subvert this. And

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Speaker 2: so this is sponsored by but not that they gave

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Speaker 2: us money, but I just think are cool. I'm going

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Speaker 2: to call them the actual co ops.

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Speaker 3: Very fair, Okay, sponsored by actual co ops.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're back.

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Speaker 3: We're talking about food co ops. So the first of

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Speaker 3: these co ops, these countercultural co ops, started as buying clubs.

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Speaker 3: Buying clubs often refer to themselves as conspiracies. And while

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Speaker 3: food conspiracy may have been like a comment on the

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Speaker 3: conspiracy of the US government to cover up harmful chemicals

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Speaker 3: and food, some of these buying clubs were inspired by

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Speaker 3: how households or groups of friends would actually buy marijuana

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Speaker 3: and other drugs in bulk to get a lower price.

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Speaker 3: Hell yeah, so the name conspiracy also gestures at that

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Speaker 3: kind of like extra legal buying that was happening, and

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Speaker 3: they shifted that skill set towards getting bulk grains, produce,

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Speaker 3: and other food items instead of simply drugs.

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Speaker 2: They hit thirty and they were like, what if we

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Speaker 2: get food instead?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems very possible. And yeah, now I'm curious.

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Speaker 3: I wonder what the age range was, because that didn't Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that didn't come up too much in my research. But

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Speaker 3: most of these buying clubs actually didn't last more than

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Speaker 3: two years. And this doesn't sound familiar to anyone who's

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Speaker 3: done anti capitalist organizing at all, but they too often

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Speaker 3: depended on a key organizer. If that person moved or

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Speaker 3: burned out, the buying club would fizzle out. Yeah, And

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Speaker 3: that said, some of them did successfully transition into brick

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Speaker 3: and mortar stores, which is what would become food co ops.

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Speaker 3: And between five and ten thousand buying clubs and cooperative

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Speaker 3: grocery stores combined opened across the US during the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 3: And I'm going to be referring to two sound a

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Speaker 3: lot because I did some research with some of the

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Speaker 3: archives that like the special collections at the University has

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Speaker 3: with food co ops are about our food co op

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Speaker 3: here in town. And so I'm going to refer to

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Speaker 3: Tucson because I've done research, like primary source research about

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Speaker 3: the Chucson Food co Op. But a lot of the

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Speaker 3: stuff I'm going to say, actually just like applies to

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Speaker 3: lots of food co ops. Okay, So yeah, if I'm

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Speaker 3: talking about Tucson, it's mostly just because it's like an

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Speaker 3: example I have that I think is like pretty applicable

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Speaker 3: to other places as well. Okay, So in Tucson, a

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Speaker 3: buying club founded by the Marxist Leninist John Brown Party

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Speaker 3: opened a storefront in nineteen seventy one where they sold

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Speaker 3: things like grains and greens to shoppers at, according to

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Speaker 3: their first by laws, the lowest possible prices. And they

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Speaker 3: called themselves the Food Conspiracy, named after this idea, right

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Speaker 3: of the food conspiracy, which is hilarious because it's fancy

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Speaker 3: and not radical. Now it's still the Chuson food co

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Speaker 3: ops named today.

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Speaker 2: Wait it's still called Oh that's why it's unfamiliar.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called the food Conspiracy.

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Speaker 1: Ah.

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Speaker 2: Now it just feels like a conspiracy to charge people

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Speaker 2: too much money for free. Now, yeah, unless you're listening

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Speaker 2: and work there, in which case we're talking about something else.

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Speaker 2: Don't get mad at it, totally, don't get mad at us.

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Speaker 2: Lower your prices or offer free memberships to people who

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Speaker 2: are low income. Maybe they already do. I don't.

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Speaker 3: Maybe they I haven't sound information that they do, but

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Speaker 3: I don't want to. Things are changing all the time,

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Speaker 3: so I don't want to say they don't.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we believe in you to be better. We do,

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Speaker 2: so we're inviting you.

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Speaker 3: At first, these co ops ran on a participatory democracy model,

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Speaker 3: so to become a member, you typically had to take

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Speaker 3: on a certain amount of volunteer shifts. Some co ops

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Speaker 3: did have staff, and they'd often be paid a flat

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Speaker 3: rate called a people's wage.

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Speaker 2: Was this a shitty wage or a good wage?

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Speaker 3: I'm sure it was shitty, yeah, but it was like

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Speaker 3: everybody was getting paid shitty.

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Speaker 2: I'll take a living wage instead of a people's wage

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Speaker 2: any day of the week.

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Speaker 3: Staff and members would make decisions about the co op

395
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Speaker 3: clib actively in meetings, and of course, because the patriarchy

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00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:05,560
Speaker 3: was and is everywhere, it's probably not surprising that male

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00:20:05,640 --> 00:20:09,159
Speaker 3: voices often dominated these meetings. So there was like a

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Speaker 3: lot of frustration among female and non sistued members. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and I know about some of this because a lot

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Speaker 3: of food cops published newsletters, and so I've spent a

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Speaker 3: bunch of time looking at the Tucson Food Cop newsletters

402
00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:22,480
Speaker 3: from the seventies and eighties, and it's where I've gotten

403
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Speaker 3: a lot of this info. And in their newsletters, minutes

404
00:20:25,760 --> 00:20:28,400
Speaker 3: from the meetings were printed in each issue and often

405
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Speaker 3: included a by name summary of what those present committed

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Speaker 3: to doing before the next meeting.

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Speaker 2: So this is like public, like dam like the whole

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Speaker 2: town knows that you said you would call call in

409
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Speaker 2: the sugar order.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I found like going through these like part

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Speaker 3: of what was so amusing to me about them was

412
00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:52,920
Speaker 3: like how much sort of the problems that they bring

413
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Speaker 3: up into personally trying to run these co ops just

414
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Speaker 3: reflect collective projects today, right, And I can't imagine doing

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Speaker 3: that like pblishing a newsletter being like Margaret said she

416
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Speaker 3: would type up notes from the meeting or you know, at.

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Speaker 2: One point when I lived in Amsterdam and the squat

418
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Speaker 2: the squatter scene had a i want to say, like

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Speaker 2: weekly or monthly or something. They had a fucking zine

420
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Speaker 2: they put out that was just all of the gossip.

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Speaker 2: It was like who's dating who, and like who's mad

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Speaker 2: and what happened whoa. It was terrifying that that existed.

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Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I don't want to do anything

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Speaker 2: because I don't want to end up in this yeah zcene.

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Speaker 3: These weren't quite like that. They mostly stuck to like

426
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Speaker 3: who said as you would say put who would put

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Speaker 3: in the sugar order, who would make sure that.

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Speaker 4: Like something was staffed.

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Speaker 2: I hope that every now and then the notes were

430
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Speaker 2: like and then John went on too long?

431
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Speaker 3: You know, occasionally they are yeah and they're yeah they do.

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Speaker 3: They do have stuff like that. And there are also

433
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Speaker 3: like debates on how the cops should be run in

434
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Speaker 3: the newsletter itself. The newsletter really was like this I

435
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:01,600
Speaker 3: don't know, dialogue about the co ops, from how much

436
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 3: markup should be for non members to whether or not

437
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,919
Speaker 3: it was acceptable to purchase white sugar. There is like

438
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:10,119
Speaker 3: this series of debates about white sugar that goes on

439
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 3: four years in the newsletters. And I haven't read them

440
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,520
Speaker 3: all in detail, all of these articles, but I would

441
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:18,600
Speaker 3: love to go back and do so.

442
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:21,400
Speaker 2: Was there like an overall like did one side win.

443
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I think they stock white sugar now,

444
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 3: so I would say probably that side one. But yeah,

445
00:22:29,560 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 3: so these newsletters, alongside bulletin boards in the stores, were

446
00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 3: a major way that food cops were sort of like

447
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:38,159
Speaker 3: a communications hub for the counterculture and radicals. So in

448
00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 3: the Food Conspiracy newsletter, you see them do things like

449
00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:44,080
Speaker 3: reprint articles from social movements occurring at the time, and

450
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:46,159
Speaker 3: some of them, like a movement that seemed to be

451
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 3: about like reclaiming the American Revolutionist People's history, were definitely

452
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:53,479
Speaker 3: pretty cringey, but there are also pieces about the nineteen

453
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:57,359
Speaker 3: seventy one Attica Prison Uprising, the American Indian Movement, an

454
00:22:57,480 --> 00:23:00,840
Speaker 3: arc of feminism, queer issues, and a lot of these

455
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:04,800
Speaker 3: articles were accompanied by calls for tangible solidarity, including some

456
00:23:04,840 --> 00:23:07,440
Speaker 3: calls for funds to support the Attica Defense Committee and

457
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy three aim occupation of Wounded me Nice.

458
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,160
Speaker 3: So yeah, so there was like some pretty radical solidarity

459
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 3: based stuff going on, especially in these early newsletters, and

460
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:20,840
Speaker 3: it also included a lot of information about what was

461
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:23,679
Speaker 3: happening locally. So the second issue of the newsletter includes

462
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:27,200
Speaker 3: information about an upcoming march against the Vietnam War, an

463
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 3: invitation to a down home feast and strategy meeting at

464
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:33,199
Speaker 3: a park under the headline let's eat again like we

465
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:36,480
Speaker 3: did last summer. There is also a connection between this

466
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 3: phrase that a friend found and a golf course occupation.

467
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:44,200
Speaker 3: The golf course, which still exists, is on Tucson's West Side,

468
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 3: and in nineteen seventy one, a coalition of predominantly Mexican

469
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:50,920
Speaker 3: American neighbors and supporters protested the absence of a community

470
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:53,120
Speaker 3: center in the neighborhood, and they turned the golf course

471
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 3: into a people's park for an afternoon so they like

472
00:23:55,840 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 3: played games, hung out, eight food nice. Think that's cool,

473
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 3: is like right, Like every single town or city has

474
00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 3: these histories that are just you know, we don't remember

475
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:09,399
Speaker 3: that are you know, covered up in some way. And

476
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 3: so going through these newsletters, which I think most co

477
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,399
Speaker 3: ops printed newsletters, and there's a lot of archives that

478
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 3: have them, it's like a cool way to start to

479
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,720
Speaker 3: learn about some of this stuff. And then another piece

480
00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 3: decries the criminalization of vagrancy in the city. In it,

481
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 3: contributor Elizabeth Basquet and Nouarez cited an incident which a

482
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 3: sixty five year old was thrown into jail because, as

483
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:32,360
Speaker 3: she writes, he had no job, adding, it seems here

484
00:24:32,359 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 3: that the authorities want to hide the poor, which shows

485
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:36,679
Speaker 3: that the streets do not belong to the people.

486
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 2: I would bet that the way that you can track

487
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,440
Speaker 2: when a co op has gone from good co op

488
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,359
Speaker 2: to bad co op isn't even related to the prices.

489
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 2: It's how they respond to vagrancy. I feel like that

490
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:53,800
Speaker 2: would be the like do they lock their dumpsters or

491
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 2: do they put all of the food that could possibly

492
00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:01,680
Speaker 2: be eaten on top? You know, like this is where yeah, yeah, I.

493
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 3: Agree, I actually very much agree with you. And the

494
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 3: newsletters also tracked the proliferation of other food co ops

495
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 3: and other cooperative businesses. So in Tucson, several other food

496
00:25:10,480 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 3: co ops opened in nineteen seventy three. They banded together

497
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:16,879
Speaker 3: to pool orders, and they started a distribution center called

498
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 3: the People's Warehouse. They grew to serve co ops are

499
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 3: at Arizona and New Mexico, and it included a trucking

500
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:25,640
Speaker 3: collective of folks they would go kick up food from

501
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 3: places in the Southwest, but also as far away as

502
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 3: Minneapolis and Arkansas. There was also a cooperative bakery, cooperative, bookstore,

503
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 3: soybean guild, and a bike co op, so all sorts

504
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 3: of other cooperative projects happening at this time.

505
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you could, like, I mean, at that point

506
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 2: you start, that's when you actually start like supplanting the

507
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 2: existing economy. That's where it gets interesting.

508
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. And so they put out a few issues

509
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:50,440
Speaker 3: that were like cooperative projects in Tucson, and there were

510
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:52,880
Speaker 3: just like so many things happening, which was very cool

511
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 3: to see and very inspiring.

512
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

513
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 3: And then another thing that food co ops, including but

514
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 3: very much not limited to the Tucson one, offered was

515
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:04,240
Speaker 3: an alternative for shoppers who wanted to support the United

516
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:07,920
Speaker 3: farm Workers boycotts. Since most grocery stores and the old

517
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 3: style consumer cooperatives bought non union lettuce and.

518
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:17,280
Speaker 2: Grapes, Yeah, so you can buy your like non scab food, yep.

519
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it became a place to buy non scab food.

520
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 3: The Chusan newsletter urged shoppers to avoid Safeway and Amp

521
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 3: as well as to avoid certain wine companies, and they

522
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:31,919
Speaker 3: stock boycott Safeway buttons. And then also when lettuce workers

523
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 3: in central Arizona went on strike in April nineteen seventy three,

524
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:38,919
Speaker 3: The Food Conspiracy provided food and a donation of one

525
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 3: hundred dollars a week, but there was some strife because

526
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,159
Speaker 3: co op members failed to turn out in force on

527
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 3: the picket line. So a co op member in the

528
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 3: newsletter admonishes everyone else by writing, the farm workers came

529
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 3: to us looking for bodies to pick it for one day.

530
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 3: Out of the thousands to shop and work at the conspiracy,

531
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,479
Speaker 3: only two of us were present. And when we arrived

532
00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 3: and they heard we were from the co op, they

533
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:01,399
Speaker 3: asked everyone else, was where were you?

534
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:07,439
Speaker 2: That rules the salt newsletter. Uh huh, yeah, just everyone

535
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 2: being salty totally.

536
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 3: And then yeah. While for most cops only selling union

537
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 3: lettuce and grapes was a given, there were a lot

538
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:18,439
Speaker 3: of debates around what other foods were okay to carry,

539
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 3: so white flower and sugar were big nosed for most

540
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 3: co ops at this time. Coffee and bananas were controversial

541
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 3: because they were grown under exploitative labor conditions in the

542
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 3: Global South. Because of things like colonialism, there were also

543
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:36,679
Speaker 3: debates around carrying meat, so Francis Moore Lapsed Diet for

544
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 3: a Small Planet was a book that made an ecological

545
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 3: argument for vegetarianism which was popular, but it wasn't ubiquitous,

546
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 3: and it was also more common in California in the

547
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 3: West versus the quote unquote Marxist East, which I find

548
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 3: hilarious as an East Coaster living in the western half

549
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 3: of the country.

550
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 4: Uh huh.

551
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 3: I'm not even a Marxist, but I kind of am like, yeah,

552
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 3: I'm from the Marxist East, Like.

553
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 2: Why are they over here? Get rid of them? But

554
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 2: I don't know.

555
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 3: Yeahah, I think I think I have a little bit

556
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 3: of it. Need to be a tough guy that probably

557
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:12,400
Speaker 3: I need to work through.

558
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 2: But well, it's also probably it's probably because you eat

559
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 2: meat and I don't.

560
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:17,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.

561
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 2: That's probably. That's why I'm like, well, I'm with the

562
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 2: West Coast on this one.

563
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 3: We need a flip flop ourselves.

564
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, or force the entire rest of the country to

565
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 2: flip flop.

566
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 4: Yeah.

567
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

568
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 3: A lot of people fell in the middle. They believe

569
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 3: that the issue is factory farmed meat and being so

570
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 3: disconnected from the butchering process that meat was taken for granted,

571
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 3: which I am not great. I'm being careful about what

572
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 3: meat I eat. I don't need a lot of meat,

573
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 3: but this is I think where I fall philosophically, And

574
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 3: one of the biggest debates was this whole good food

575
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 3: versus cheap food divide. So the good food contingent often hippies.

576
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 3: I felt that it was the food co ops choptor

577
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 3: fed an alternative to mass produce junk food and to

578
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 3: keep what they carried natural and organic. But some people,

579
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 3: especially Marxists, felt that this hardline stance was the elitist

580
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:07,479
Speaker 3: and isolated co ops from the communities around them.

581
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 2: Oh no, I've become more of a Marxist in this.

582
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 3: While these debates happened in co ops all across the country,

583
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 3: including here in Tucson. In Minneapolis, this debate erupted into

584
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 3: what is called the co op wars. Oh are you

585
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 3: ready to talk about the co op wars?

586
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 2: I mean, all I can think of is there was

587
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 2: a vegan place that was expensive both called food fight.

588
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 2: That's what I'm imagining about to happen, not the store,

589
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 2: but that there's going to be a food fight.

590
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 3: Oh, there will be a food fight, but it takes

591
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:40,840
Speaker 3: a while to get there. Actually, Okay, so this story

592
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 3: is really wild. It contains lots of moving parts, and

593
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 3: it's very like he said, she said, they said. So

594
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 3: I'm going to do my best to summarize it without

595
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 3: leaving out the juicy bits. Okay, And a lot of

596
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 3: this info comes from the Minnesota PBS documentary that hilariously

597
00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 3: is narrated by Peter Coyote, the Digger Whoa. But I'm

598
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 3: bringing in some other sources as well, including from a

599
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 3: book by Jonathan Kaufman called Hippie Food.

600
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 2: Wait, which side was Peter? Did Peter try to be

601
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 2: neutral or was Peter on like one side or the other?

602
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 3: He literally just narrated the documentary.

603
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:16,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I don't know what the Diggers were on

604
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 2: this cheap versus good I.

605
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 3: Don't think they cared. You know, they were in California.

606
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 2: We don't even have meat here.

607
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, apologies to Peter if you have the Diggers actually

608
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 3: did serve.

609
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 2: Meat, oh right now, But I would say in your

610
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 2: West coast East coast thing that the dichotomy were Yeah anyway.

611
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 3: But yeah, apologies if you do have a side. But

612
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 3: I Peter Coyote, but I.

613
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 4: Don't know what it is.

614
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 3: So the seventies cop movement was super prolific in Minnesota,

615
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 3: which makes me wonder if you're weird comment about Swedes

616
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 3: and finn starting co ops has some truth to it. Now,

617
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 3: I want to figure this out.

618
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 2: I'm under the impression that the previous the like Turn

619
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 2: of the century co ops a lot of them. I'm

620
00:30:57,320 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 2: under the impression of that movement largely started in the

621
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: Upper Midwest and Wisconsin, and I think Minnesota being a

622
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 2: fairly central part of it. And I actually was totally

623
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 2: going off on a pure guest when I just know

624
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 2: that a lot of the European immigrants to that area

625
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 2: are from Scandinavian countries and Finland.

626
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I should clarify when I say weird, I

627
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 3: mean unusual.

628
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:22,520
Speaker 4: Not bad. Weird.

629
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 3: No, yeah, no, Now I'm really curious about it.

630
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 2: Yeah.

631
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 3: But at the time of the co op Wars, which

632
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 3: started around nineteen seventy five, there were two dozen co

633
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 3: ops in Minneapolis, alongside their own People's warehouse, which distributed

634
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 3: food not just to that city, but also to greater Minnesota, Wisconsin,

635
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 3: and as far away as South Dakota. The Twin Cities

636
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 3: actually had more food co ops in the Bay Area,

637
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 3: which is where the countercultural co op movement, like so

638
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:49,920
Speaker 3: many other things of this era, got its start.

639
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 2: Yeah. But you know what, else got a start somewhere.

640
00:31:57,520 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 3: Is it ads?

641
00:31:58,600 --> 00:32:04,200
Speaker 2: It is they? They probably started a long time ago. Yeah,

642
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 2: it just continues. It's just an onward force throughout history

643
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 2: trying to shape the way that we make decisions.

644
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 3: And there were ads. There were ads in the food

645
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 3: co op newsletters too.

646
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 2: So all right, yeah, I'm sure they sold Reagan gold

647
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 2: just like us, or a brand new car. Here's the

648
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 2: ads and we're back.

649
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 3: So in the mid seventies, some of these co op

650
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 3: organizers from Minnesota moved out to a farm called Winding

651
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 3: Road where they got really into reading MAO, which was

652
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 3: a whole trend in the seventies that I did not

653
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 3: back up. And as they were in the process of

654
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 3: becoming state communists, this figure named Smitty shows up. That

655
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 3: was a pseudonym, and he was underground. No one knows

656
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 3: who he really was, and there aren't any surviving pictures

657
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 3: of him.

658
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 2: WHOA. He was a.

659
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 3: Former member of the Student Unviolent Coordinating Committee in the

660
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 3: South and the Dodge Revolutionary Union movement in Detroit. The

661
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 3: documentary tends to do this thing where it emphasizes that

662
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 3: he provoked a lot of what happened, but watching it

663
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 3: does kind of feel a bit like mostly white folks

664
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 3: displacing blame on a black organizer. So I don't really know.

665
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 3: I'm just going to leave bit there, Smitty. The folks

666
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 3: at Winding Road Farm and some other sorted group called

667
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:26,440
Speaker 3: the Cooperative Organization or the COO, which was Marxist Leninist,

668
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 3: and their hope was to sell mainstream food to working

669
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,720
Speaker 3: class people and recruit them for the revolution. So the

670
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 3: first thing they did was take over a failing Minneapolis

671
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 3: cooperative called the Beanery. They spoke to the surrounding neighborhood

672
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 3: about what people wanted and started selling things like whitebread,

673
00:33:41,400 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 3: pepsi can goods, and sugar. And at one point a

674
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 3: Cooperative Organization member wrote and distributed a position paper, which

675
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 3: seemed to be very common in those days, like sharing

676
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 3: thoughts and ideas through these papers about what changes had

677
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 3: happened at the Beanery and why, And this included a

678
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 3: condemnation of what the CEO saw as an elitist and

679
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 3: bourgeoisie counterculture. So this sets off a flurry of debate

680
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 3: between the CEO and the other contingent, who were referred

681
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 3: to as both hippies and anarchists. And what I've read

682
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 3: and watched, and who had a much stronger critique of

683
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 3: big agribusiness and more interest in natural foods. Okay, it

684
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 3: is true that the co op movement in Minneapolis was

685
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 3: largely white, and in an attempt to rectify this, the

686
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 3: CEO collaborated with Moe Burton. He was a community organizer

687
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:29,319
Speaker 3: in the Bryant Central neighborhood. He was a former of

688
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 3: Black Panther, He had started community gardens in the neighborhood,

689
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 3: and Burton, working with other community members in the CEO,

690
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 3: opened the Bryant Central co Op to serve that neighborhood.

691
00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:43,400
Speaker 3: Even though the CEO helped start Bryant Central, the co

692
00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 3: op was community controlled, not controlled by the CEO, and

693
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 3: Gary Cunningham, who was Mowburton's nephew and was involved at

694
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,759
Speaker 3: this time and is interviewed in the documentary, emphasizes this.

695
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 3: The big move for the CEO, however, was when they

696
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,760
Speaker 3: decided to take over the People's Warehouse at their Policy

697
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 3: Review Board meeting in April nineteen seventy five.

698
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 2: Is this through like entryism or like what is the

699
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 2: way that they're taking over these places? So maybe you're

700
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 2: about to tell.

701
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 3: Me, Yeah, So the first co op was like a

702
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 3: failing co op. And because the CEO had been involved

703
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,879
Speaker 3: in this earlier or you know a lot of people

704
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 3: in the CEO had been part of starting co ops,

705
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 3: they they were like, oh, buddies, we're willing to help

706
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,160
Speaker 3: run this failing co op. And so they kind of

707
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 3: like snuck in that way. But this I'm about to

708
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 3: tell you what happens. Right, So, when they decided to

709
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 3: take over the People's warehouse, so the idea was to

710
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 3: claim that the warehouse was poorly managed and use that

711
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 3: as an excuse at the meeting to seize control. How

712
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 3: they did that was in the middle of the meeting,

713
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 3: members of the CEO walked in and announced they were

714
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 3: taking over because the warehouse wasn't an effective organization. The

715
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 3: hippies responded by having people in a building.

716
00:35:57,840 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: I know.

717
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 3: These respond by having people in the building around the

718
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 3: clock to make sure the CEO couldn't take over. But

719
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 3: the CEO returned that night brandishing steel pipes. Ultimately, the

720
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 3: CEO expelled the hippies, who camped out in the yard

721
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what to do. And then there

722
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 3: was this interesting detail where a CEO member was trying

723
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 3: to break the windows of the warehouse, and since the

724
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,320
Speaker 3: hippie anarchists were ideologically opposed to calling the cops, instead

725
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 3: of doing so, they sat on him so he couldn't

726
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 3: get up and keep smashing the windows in.

727
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, that's practice again. We've come back to practice for.

728
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:38,839
Speaker 3: Hours, like for hours and hours and hours. Finally there's

729
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 3: a city council member aligned with the CEOs. Could you

730
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 3: you want to say fucking marxist again?

731
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, yeah, okay, Marxist.

732
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:46,919
Speaker 4: H yeah.

733
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 3: So a city council member aligned with the CEO calls

734
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 3: the cops, and the cops facilitate doing their weird cop

735
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 3: shit getting people out, and in two or three days time,

736
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:05,720
Speaker 3: the CEO had taken over the warehouse. Finally, funnily enough,

737
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 3: the hippie started an alternative distribution warehouse that was much

738
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 3: more successful and better run. They called it Dance Distributing

739
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:16,840
Speaker 3: Alliance of North County, et cetera, and use the Emma

740
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:19,280
Speaker 3: Goldman quote if I can't dance, it's not my revolution

741
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 3: as a tagline.

742
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.

743
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 3: And they also started a legal challenge for the People's Warehouse,

744
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 3: which they ultimately won.

745
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 2: Hell yes. And now they have bothhouses.

746
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 3: It's like this that, you know, the CEO comes in

747
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 3: with this like excuse that they're poorly run, but then

748
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 3: the alternative that the hippie start is actually like better run,

749
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 3: sonny to me. Yeah, And the co op wars have

750
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 3: also been described as a war of ideas right where

751
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 3: people would write these position papers. It'd be printed and

752
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 3: distributed throughout the co ops and others would sit and

753
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:52,359
Speaker 3: read them. It was definitely a time when people were

754
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 3: really thinking about politics very deeply and exchanging ideas within

755
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 3: Minneapolis and also elsewhere.

756
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 2: And what years are you talking about right now? So

757
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 2: roughly the mid seventies okay, yeah, I wasn't sure if

758
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 2: we were into the eighties yet or not.

759
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 4: Okay, no, not yet.

760
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 3: And so the CEO after all of this, continues to

761
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 3: target the hippies. They spread a rumor that one opponent

762
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 3: was a drug dealer, and they kicked in another one's door,

763
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 3: so doing like pretty vicious things to try to like

764
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 3: destroy the hippie anarchist co ops. And there were other

765
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 3: CEO at I.

766
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 2: Mean they thought that the ends justified the means.

767
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 3: They thought that the end justified the means.

768
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, shocked.

769
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 3: And then there were also CEO attempts to take over

770
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 3: different co ops in that similar style of like barging in,

771
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 3: and in one case, about fifty COO members tried to

772
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 3: enter a co op and they were rebuked by anarchists

773
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 3: throwing sticks of butter at them. Hell yeah, we have

774
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:52,839
Speaker 3: our food fight, all right. I Also, you know, there's

775
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 3: always the like media spin of anarchists like throwing poop

776
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 3: or something, and yeah, but these these anarchists were just

777
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:02,160
Speaker 3: throwing better.

778
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just overall better overall. Yeah, it's a general rule.

779
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 2: You're like, what should I throw?

780
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 4: Yeah.

781
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 3: The CEO ultimately turned against mow Burton and the black

782
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 3: led Bryant Central co op surprise surprise, and their whole

783
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 3: end justify the means thing, and Bryant Central broke off

784
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 3: from the CEO because the CEO wanted full control and

785
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:29,879
Speaker 3: Bryant Central was like really committed to being community run

786
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 3: and they started buying from the Dance warehouse. So the

787
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 3: CEO spread rumors that mow Burton was an opportunist, and

788
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:38,880
Speaker 3: they actually attacked the co op and they blew up

789
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:43,800
Speaker 3: his truck jesus, I know, escalated, YEP, and members of

790
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:47,240
Speaker 3: the Bryant Central community, including Gary Cunningham had to defend

791
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 3: the co op from the CEO, so in the end

792
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 3: the CEO dispersed, a lot of them went to Chicago.

793
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:55,760
Speaker 3: But the co op wars had a big ideological impact,

794
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 3: not just in Minneapolis but across the US co op movement.

795
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 4: These debates really came to the four Yeah.

796
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 2: But who secretly won was a third secret party capitalism?

797
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:12,839
Speaker 3: I know, capitalism wins surprise, and that.

798
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 2: Would have been a good ad transition, I.

799
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:20,839
Speaker 3: Know, speaking of capitalism at the same time. Right at

800
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:22,879
Speaker 3: the same time that all this is happening in Minneapolis,

801
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 3: co ops in the US and general are struggling financially,

802
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 3: and another split starts to emerge. On one side, where

803
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 3: these pragmatists who wanted to keep the stores open even

804
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 3: if it meant compromising on ideals and who felt that

805
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 3: moves needed to be made to draw in mainstream shoppers.

806
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 3: On the other hand, were the purists, who were committed

807
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 3: to loose collective process and carrying all natural foods. In Austin,

808
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 3: which is one of the places that Jonathan Kaufman writes

809
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 3: quite a bit about in his book, the pragmatists called

810
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 3: themselves the Wheelies, a shortening of wheeler dealers, and the

811
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:59,240
Speaker 3: purists called themselves the Feelies, and.

812
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:01,720
Speaker 2: They called them or were these what they got accused

813
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 2: by the others.

814
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 3: No, they seriously called themselves the Wheelies and the Feelies

815
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:11,400
Speaker 3: M yeah, all right, yeah, And the Wheelies opened to

816
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,040
Speaker 3: food co op Wheatsville, which became the last food co

817
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 3: op at the Hippie Air in Austin. It's still open,

818
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 3: and in nineteen seventy nine they replaced their consensus based,

819
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 3: non hierarchical decision making structure with a manager. And to

820
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 3: quote Jonathan Kaffman who's writing about Wheatsville, this shift towards

821
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 3: hierarchy and professionalization meant that Wheatsville was owned by its members,

822
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,799
Speaker 3: but it was no longer run by them. And you

823
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 3: see this happening at co ops all across the country.

824
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

825
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 3: And there's also in addition to this, like financial struggle

826
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 3: that people running co ops were trying to figure out,

827
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 3: there's also this larger cultural and political shift happening that

828
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 3: made co op members more comfortable with these changes. Right,

829
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,400
Speaker 3: So we have the collapse of the Nixon administration and

830
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 3: the end of the Vietnam War, and we see many

831
00:41:57,719 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 3: of the white and upwardly mobile young people who made

832
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 3: up a significant contingent of a food couant movement start

833
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 3: to feel less alienated from formal political institutions, right, They

834
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 3: start to get more drawn into.

835
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:09,840
Speaker 4: Electoral politics, right.

836
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 3: And you also see them getting older and drifting towards

837
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:18,280
Speaker 3: the mainstream, which is totally a stereotype but also sometimes happens.

838
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 2: Well, it was, Yeah, it was more true for that

839
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 2: generation than it has been safe for our generation, right,

840
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:27,880
Speaker 2: just literally, because the economy is getting worse instead of

841
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 2: better right now, you know. Yeah, so like it's hard

842
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 2: to sell out when no one's buying or whatever. Yes, okay,

843
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 2: but to think about the wheelies and the feelies really quick, okay,

844
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:39,760
Speaker 2: like one of the reasons it annoys me. But before

845
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 2: I actually before I started podcasting full time, my last

846
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:48,919
Speaker 2: employment was in workers' cooperatives. I worked for a place

847
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 2: called seed Commons that finances worker cooperatives and is a

848
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,080
Speaker 2: really beautiful and interesting structure all on its own. And

849
00:42:56,600 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 2: these are worker cooperatives, not consumer cooperatives. But it's a

850
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,840
Speaker 2: lot of like restaurants, it's a lot of I mostly

851
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,320
Speaker 2: a lot about the restaurants, but a lot of different

852
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 2: places that are forming these worker cooperatis. Baltimore is a

853
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 2: really good example of a city that is becoming kind

854
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,799
Speaker 2: of a cooperative city because of the work that is

855
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 2: being put in by these like really actually still radical cooperatives.

856
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 2: And what's interesting to me, So in my mind, I'm

857
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 2: like making this dichotomy between like wheelies and feelies, like

858
00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 2: this is like part of the problem, right, because then

859
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, well, pragmatism. I guess we should be pragmatists.

860
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,280
Speaker 2: It's like, one of the things that happened in twenty

861
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 2: twenty is that none of the cooperatives we financed through

862
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 2: seat comments had to permanently shut their doors. And these

863
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 2: are restaurants during fucking twenty twenty because actually, workplace democracy,

864
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 2: the idea of not having bosses is a more economically

865
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 2: like a resilient model for crisis than a top down structure.

866
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 2: And so we have all of these, like a lot

867
00:43:56,560 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 2: of our cooperatives are traditional businesses that are bought by

868
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 2: the workers when the owner retires, because the owner of

869
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 2: the workers are like, we know how to run this

870
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 2: better than anyone, you know, And so this idea, I

871
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 2: don't know, it's just so interesting me. I want to

872
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 2: go back and shake them and be like you're both wrong. Yeah, totally,

873
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,719
Speaker 2: and like because like, yeah, you do need to be

874
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:20,359
Speaker 2: able to keep your doors open, and that makes sense, right,

875
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 2: but also like, I don't know, I think you can

876
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 2: do that and be economic whatever. It is easy for

877
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 2: me to say my job is totally.

878
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 3: And one thing that I've seen in some of this

879
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 3: research is people talking about how they think that the

880
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,560
Speaker 3: co op movement, the countercultural co op movement, would have

881
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 3: succeeded better if people had read more deeply and understood

882
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 3: more deeply the history of co ops and that often

883
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 3: people thought that they were inventing this thing, or they

884
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 3: knew they weren't. They knew that there were precedents, but

885
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 3: they didn't actually look at and study those precedents and

886
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,040
Speaker 3: what had gone yeah them, And I think that's a

887
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,280
Speaker 3: great lesson for today too, write where like studying what's

888
00:44:57,320 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 3: happened in the past that's similar and what went right

889
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 3: or wrong like really help do something in the here

890
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:02,959
Speaker 3: and now.

891
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 2: So totally there is a point to having this show,

892
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 2: yeah say yeah, totally, yeah, okay, but continue so they're yeah,

893
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 2: so you.

894
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,919
Speaker 3: Start to see this process of what I might call

895
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:21,800
Speaker 3: like the I don't know middle classification happening in newsletters

896
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 3: from two Son's Food conspiracy co Op in the eighties.

897
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 3: So you do still see articles that are important calls

898
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 3: to action for things like the anti nuclear movement, Central

899
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 3: American solidarity movements, energy extraction struggles, and to Day and

900
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 3: Hope Land take Back the Night Marches, but these pieces

901
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 3: increasingly share space with articles like before You Buy That

902
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 3: Dream Home and a whole recipe feature that uncritically celebrated Thanksgiving,

903
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 3: which goes like way against earlier articles I found that

904
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 3: were like super like you know, deep solidarity with aim

905
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 3: and like critical about some of these things. And at

906
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 3: least one issue of the newsletter from the nineteen eighties

907
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 3: drifted even further right, running a racist and anti indigenous

908
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:11,000
Speaker 3: screen on overpopulation by not Friend of the Pod Edward Abbey.

909
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 2: Oh god, uh huh Sorry, I.

910
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 3: Just decided that Edward Abbey was not a friend of

911
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:15,760
Speaker 3: the Pod.

912
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's you would agree.

913
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 2: A fair assessment. Edward Abbey is an important environmental writer

914
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,320
Speaker 2: who you can actually find a lot of his books

915
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 2: in national parks in the Southwest because he wrote a

916
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 2: lot about deserts and things. He was also very influential

917
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 2: in creating the Earth First movement through his fiction. He

918
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 2: was also in his younger life he was more of

919
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 2: an anarchist. He was also, at least by the end

920
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 2: of his life, deeply misogynist and racist, and specifically like

921
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 2: didn't do a good job about what he thought about

922
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 2: borders and overpopulation. I mean, that's the nicest way I

923
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 2: could possibly say any of this. And so he's very

924
00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 2: influential on some people who actually have some good ideas.

925
00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 2: He's also very influential and some people have some very

926
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:00,799
Speaker 2: bad ideas. And he himself was a piece of shit.

927
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 2: Yes's gonna worry on that.

928
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a fan of Abbey at all. And so

929
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 3: he publishes this article and their reader actually wrote in

930
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 3: Maria Abden, and she refuted his points and reminded Abby

931
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 3: that when the European colonists came here, they wiped out

932
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:18,880
Speaker 3: most of us and drove the rest of us onto

933
00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 3: fertile unfertile for the most part land. And this letter

934
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:24,800
Speaker 3: was printed in the next issue, but it didn't receive

935
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:29,360
Speaker 3: a reply from either Abbey or the editors. Yeah, and

936
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:32,520
Speaker 3: you also see this other thing happening, which is by

937
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 3: the early eighties you start to see regular supermarkets stocking

938
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:39,759
Speaker 3: natural foods like tofu, granola and yogurt, and you see

939
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,720
Speaker 3: big business co opting the language of the natural foods movement.

940
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 3: So Whole Foods actually comes out of the natural food

941
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:49,120
Speaker 3: stores in Austin, and some of its first employees had

942
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 3: previously worked at the Wheatsville co op that I mentioned before.

943
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 3: And this kind of competition meant that the co ops

944
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 3: that survived had to do so basically by catering primarily

945
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:04,839
Speaker 3: to affluent patrons. So today, yeah, yeah, so now all

946
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 3: of a sudden, like they're competing with regularly. They're not

947
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:09,800
Speaker 3: just competing with these like niche health food stores, but

948
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 3: they're competing with regular grocery stores and also these like

949
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:13,720
Speaker 3: big business health food stores.

950
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it'll be so easy to

951
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:20,360
Speaker 2: compete by just having the good food for less money

952
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 2: than whole foods. It just seems like that's just like

953
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 2: the way. I don't know, again, I don't run a

954
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:28,360
Speaker 2: health food store. I'm sure it's complicated, but it just

955
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 2: seems to me just be cheaper than whole foods. How

956
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 2: hard could that be?

957
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:33,960
Speaker 4: Totally?

958
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, And sometimes I think like Whole Food's actually cheaper

959
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:38,280
Speaker 3: than a lot.

960
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 2: Of I know. And now that I say that, I'm like,

961
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:43,239
Speaker 2: when you're owned by fucking Jeff Bezos, you can make

962
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 2: things cheap, you can. I mean that is the way capitalism. Yeah,

963
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 2: I guess I'm like thinking of like hopefully used to

964
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 2: be like very expensive. I don't know, but so are

965
00:48:51,719 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 2: natural food stores. Okay, I don't actually have any answers. Yeah,

966
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 2: I don't have easy answers. I shouldn't come in. You're

967
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 2: trying to tell co ops how to run them. Besides

968
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:04,439
Speaker 2: that they should not run racist articles. I feel pretty

969
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 2: confident about that one.

970
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:09,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like not like criminalized fagrancy or criminalized friendlessness.

971
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.

972
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 2: Yeah.

973
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,040
Speaker 3: So I you know, I, after I had looked at

974
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,240
Speaker 3: all these newsletters from Tucson, I looked into the food

975
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:23,479
Speaker 3: conspiracy co Op today, and it's too expensive for most

976
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 3: twoson ins to shop at. You pay one hundred and

977
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,319
Speaker 3: eighty annually to be an owner. There's no option to

978
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 3: become a member by volunteering, and the payment gets you

979
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 3: discounts rebates. You can attend board meetings to voice your opinion,

980
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:39,880
Speaker 3: to vote for and vote for board members. You can

981
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:41,959
Speaker 3: run for the board, blah blah blah blah blah, the board,

982
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 3: the board, the board. This is really different from how

983
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:47,840
Speaker 3: the co ops started as a non hierarchical, volunteer run organization,

984
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:50,920
Speaker 3: and this is true of co ops across the country.

985
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 3: And what really really made me sad is how this

986
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 3: radical history has been hidden. So if you go on

987
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:59,239
Speaker 3: to the website for the Tucson co Op, it says

988
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 3: that the co op was born in nineteen seventy one

989
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 3: when a group of Tucson residents formed a buying club.

990
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 3: These original members used their collective purchasing power to get

991
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 3: natural food products, which were largely unavailable in stores at

992
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 3: the time, and without mentioning it all, the explicitly anti

993
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 3: capitalist context of the co ops found Yeah, which is

994
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 3: also just to say that I don't like I feel

995
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 3: like the first half ended with me being like the

996
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 3: diggers influenced all these cool things, And by contrast, I

997
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:29,360
Speaker 3: don't actually have something like super neat and tidy to

998
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:31,440
Speaker 3: say about the food co ops of the seventies, Like

999
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 3: I think the people who founded them were trying to

1000
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:36,919
Speaker 3: do a really cool thing, and like so many other

1001
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:40,960
Speaker 3: really cool things, it got co opted and watered down. Yeah,

1002
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 3: but I think it's important to know this history. I

1003
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:45,200
Speaker 3: don't know. I know you shared thoughts earlier, but you

1004
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:46,399
Speaker 3: have any other thoughts about that?

1005
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 2: I mean, I would go back a little bit to

1006
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:52,440
Speaker 2: the sponsor of this pod, real co ops, you know,

1007
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 2: I think about there are places that are still I mean,

1008
00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:00,319
Speaker 2: and some other food's expensive because it's expensive for them

1009
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 2: to get it right and they want to pay living

1010
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 2: wages to their employees and things like that. But if

1011
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 2: you can find cooperatives that actually do things well. I

1012
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:11,600
Speaker 2: haven't been in any of the cities where I would

1013
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,399
Speaker 2: otherwise name in a while, so I don't I don't

1014
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 2: feel one hundred percent confident about naming them. But if

1015
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:17,319
Speaker 2: you have a cooperative in your city, it's like worth

1016
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 2: checking out. It is worth figuring out how how values

1017
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 2: aligned you are with it and then supporting it when

1018
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 2: you can. And I think like one of the ways

1019
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 2: to find out is that if it's like, well, if

1020
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 2: the bougie food is expensive, but then they also have

1021
00:51:29,320 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 2: the food that isn't expensive, and you're like okay, you know,

1022
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:36,840
Speaker 2: and how their food prices compared to other places, and

1023
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 2: then the other thing would be like you can start

1024
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,360
Speaker 2: buying club buying your sclubs with your friends, you know, totally,

1025
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:48,280
Speaker 2: And there's ways to get things in bulk for cheaper

1026
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 2: and distribute them and evade a lot of the large,

1027
00:51:53,600 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 2: crappy systems that people have. And so I don't know,

1028
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 2: I think that I find cooperatives. I find food co

1029
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:07,320
Speaker 2: ops like actually really interesting to me because the different

1030
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 2: gut feeling I have walking into one versus another is

1031
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 2: so different, you know, and it's not even necessarily their

1032
00:52:14,239 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 2: physical size. I've been in some pretty large co ops

1033
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 2: that are like chill, yeah, you know, and I've been

1034
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 2: in some tiny ones that are like not chill. It

1035
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 2: was actually always really easy for me because I was

1036
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 2: like a dirty, filthy crosspunk and so like if I

1037
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 2: walk into a place and they're just like following me

1038
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 2: around to make sure I'm not shoplifting, I'm like, oh,

1039
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:34,840
Speaker 2: you actually suck. Whereas when I would walk into a

1040
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,560
Speaker 2: place where people would kind of like recognize that I

1041
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:39,800
Speaker 2: was sort of a caricature of a certain style of

1042
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:43,239
Speaker 2: anti capitalist organizer, it would be like, hey, what's going on,

1043
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 2: and they would like want to know my name and

1044
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 2: be nice to me. I'm like, okay, Like you're great

1045
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 2: you're fine. I understand that sometimes not all food is

1046
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:53,239
Speaker 2: going to be affordable to all people, which is a

1047
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 2: problem and we should deal with it. But one of

1048
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 2: the ways to do that is to get together and

1049
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:59,120
Speaker 2: buy things in bulk. I don't know, I'm really I'm

1050
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 2: really excited for you share this history moved me though,

1051
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 2: because I didn't know about pretty much any of this.

1052
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 2: I knew about like cooperative starting in one hundred years ago,

1053
00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 2: and I was like, and then it was like question Mark,

1054
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 2: question Mark bougie food in the following town, you know, Yeah.

1055
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: They usually have like the good snacks though for people

1056
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:22,760
Speaker 1: with like dietary fictions or lifestyle food choices and stuff

1057
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 1: like that, which is really kind of great. Yeah.

1058
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:28,879
Speaker 2: Actually, I would say that Portland is a place that

1059
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 2: both of the food co ops I know account is

1060
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:33,239
Speaker 2: real co ops. Yeah, just to go on a limb

1061
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 2: and hope that they haven't changed in the past, like

1062
00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 2: maybe ten years since I went to either. Yeah.

1063
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:41,239
Speaker 3: And I should also say, like, I feel like we

1064
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,839
Speaker 3: see this specifically in the sort of wake of the

1065
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:48,879
Speaker 3: COVID nineteen pandemic, but there are like in Tucson, there's

1066
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 3: a food chair and the food chare pools resources, but

1067
00:53:52,719 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 3: both people who can afford to pay, as well as

1068
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,640
Speaker 3: like donations to be able to distribute groceries. And it

1069
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 3: started during the demic, right driving gershoes to people's houses,

1070
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 3: but it's still going strong. And so there are these

1071
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 3: other models that also exist and that seem to be

1072
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,879
Speaker 3: re emerging that are really exciting and like maybe more

1073
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:13,560
Speaker 3: rooted in like in some ways are buying clubs and

1074
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:15,319
Speaker 3: then in other ways somewhere rooted right in this like

1075
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 3: kind of like digger inspired mutual aid.

1076
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:25,080
Speaker 2: That's cool. Yeah, well, thanks so much for coming on

1077
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 2: and teaching us all this stuff. Okay, well, uh, how

1078
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 2: can people find you or read that book that you

1079
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 2: wrote all by yourself? This is me trying to make

1080
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:35,719
Speaker 2: it because I called you the writer of but you're

1081
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 2: totally yeah.

1082
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,840
Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram at rent Away. I am the editor

1083
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:45,200
Speaker 3: of Nourishing Resistance. I also wanted to make a plug

1084
00:54:45,760 --> 00:54:48,479
Speaker 3: that I wrote an article specifically about those TuS food

1085
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 3: coop newsletters and it's coming out in the first print

1086
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 3: issue of Living and Fighting, which is a journal, radical

1087
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 3: journal based here in the Southwest. And by the time

1088
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 3: this episode airs, you should be able to purchase a

1089
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:00,839
Speaker 3: copy and you can go to Living and Fighting dot

1090
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 3: net to find out more about that. And I also

1091
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:10,239
Speaker 3: have a little a few references as well as things

1092
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,239
Speaker 3: that inspired me that will appear in the show notes

1093
00:55:13,239 --> 00:55:14,040
Speaker 3: of this episode.

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00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 4: So hell yeah, Sophie, you guy.

1095
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:18,920
Speaker 2: Anything to plug.

1096
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 1: Listen to it could happen here now more than ever.

1097
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:27,760
Speaker 4: That's true.

1098
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 2: I want to plug. I don't really want to plug

1099
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 2: them on social media, but I am on social media

1100
00:55:36,360 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 2: mostly Instagram these days, and I have a substack Marder

1101
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 2: Kiljoy dot substack dot probably Calm, I don't know. I

1102
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:48,040
Speaker 2: never type in URLs. I just google things me too,

1103
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:51,160
Speaker 2: and that's a good way to find out what I

1104
00:55:51,200 --> 00:55:55,319
Speaker 2: think about things, besides listening to this or hear me

1105
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 2: every Sunday now on this feed and it could happen

1106
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 2: here feed reading you stories the cool Zone Media see

1107
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 2: you next week.

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00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1109
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,

1110
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:14,959
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

1111
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:18,399
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1112
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:19,239
Speaker 1: your podcasts.