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Speaker 1: your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know, this is a compilation episode, So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. This is it could happen
Speaker 1: here a podcast that I opened perfectly as a professional,
Speaker 1: as a man who makes all of his money from
Speaker 1: the podcasts uh no, notes, How was syphilis doing these days?
Speaker 1: You don't hear a lot from syphilis? Is it? Is
Speaker 1: it holding up? Okay, yeah, it's around. It's fine. Thank
Speaker 1: you for asking it. I didn't know that. It's not
Speaker 1: the same thread it used to be. It comes back
Speaker 1: in waves every now and then. It has had a
Speaker 1: good run for a couple of It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Star Trek, right, yeah, yeah, there's a well, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's like new versions of it. I think it's
Speaker 1: like the same, good old syphilis pretty much. I don't
Speaker 1: think it changes drastically, So it's like Star Trek on Netflix. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: good to hear from syphilis. This has been your syphilis update.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it for us this week until next week.
Speaker 1: I've been Robert Evans, Dr. Cavajota, and of course Garrison Davis.
Speaker 1: All Right, everyone by, It would be pretty funny to
Speaker 1: just do that, Sophie, to just drop a one and
Speaker 1: a half minute episode on, But only if we put
Speaker 1: in ads. M Yeah, we really like every word. We
Speaker 1: have a full ad break in between. Yeah, then then
Speaker 1: people would probably complain lest about the nine ads that
Speaker 1: are in our episodes. Right now, I can talk about
Speaker 1: syphili What are we what are we doing right now?
Speaker 1: What is this episode about? What's going on? I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you guys want to talk about the coronavirus or I
Speaker 1: don't know. I can talk about whatever you want, but
Speaker 1: I think that's probably what you guys brought me on for.
Speaker 1: All right, what do we what is this coronavirus? Is
Speaker 1: this a problem? It's a little problem. It's not good
Speaker 1: to hear it's it's it's not great. So why didn't
Speaker 1: you give me a heads up on this? So? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's me not giving you heads up on the plankue.
Speaker 1: The thing's talking about hear anything about this? This is
Speaker 1: the mask thing. That's why you got those two jabs
Speaker 1: in your arms and that random parking lot. Oh I
Speaker 1: thought that was heroin. Sorry. First of all, can can
Speaker 1: we talk about the use of the word jab. I
Speaker 1: don't love it. It's I mean, you're not James Bond,
Speaker 1: you don't. Let's not use jab. Prefer it's fair. I
Speaker 1: prefer what I think is the proper medical term vain fucked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not really your vein either. It's really just
Speaker 1: intramuscular fucked. Oh right, muscle fucked. Yeah. I mean, what
Speaker 1: what are the cool kids calling it? Is it a poke?
Speaker 1: What do we want? What are the teens call it?
Speaker 1: Is it? Are they calling it the TikTok's? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: called it's called the TikTok. I don't know. I've I've
Speaker 1: been been working on I've been working on a all
Speaker 1: day Today've been working to find this proud boy who's
Speaker 1: pretending to take COVID vaccines but it's actually steroids. Um.
Speaker 1: He calls the critical support, he calls the extracurriculars. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that honestly rules, that's extremely funny. I'm hoping an
Speaker 1: article will be out by the time this podcast airs so, uh,
Speaker 1: who's the article for. I'm not sure yet. I'm talking
Speaker 1: with Opossum Press. Okay, cool, Well that's funny, Garrison. What
Speaker 1: is today's episode about? Well, we we want to talk
Speaker 1: to We wanted to talk to Cava about both what
Speaker 1: the current plagues had situation is because a lot of
Speaker 1: people seem to think it's over, a lot of people
Speaker 1: seem to think it's not over. Um. And then also,
Speaker 1: how is COVID and all the stuff still affecting our
Speaker 1: hospital and medical system? Um? Is there supply shortages for
Speaker 1: medical supplies? What's going on in different areas? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: all of that, all that kind of stuff got you.
Speaker 1: Yes is the answer? Yes, the answer, it's the answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's still a problem. I don't think. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't listen to anyone who tells you that it's not um.
Speaker 1: Don't listen to anyone who gives you too Sonny of
Speaker 1: forecast on it. But it you know, it's different in
Speaker 1: different places, is the long the short of it. In
Speaker 1: places where the vaccinations are higher and where there's mandates
Speaker 1: and there's reasonable laws about things, the rates are going
Speaker 1: down California, but also like Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont.
Speaker 1: These are places with high vaccination rates. The rates of
Speaker 1: cases are going down in those places. Places like Mississippi,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, Idaho, Alabama, these are places where like it's
Speaker 1: vaccination rates and the cases are going way up. You
Speaker 1: guys might have heard of a couple of things happening,
Speaker 1: Like there was that forty six year old guy named
Speaker 1: Daniel Wilkinson. He's like a vet who developed something called
Speaker 1: gallstone pancreatitis, which I could talk to you guys about
Speaker 1: for hours. I won't, don't worry, but I could. I'm
Speaker 1: just like you know, I could. I mean the Idaho
Speaker 1: they have been cleared. It's not a total DNR, but
Speaker 1: like anyone who has um cardiac arrest is on a
Speaker 1: DNR now in Idaho because they just don't have the
Speaker 1: resources to be well, that's not entire I mean what
Speaker 1: am I? Okay? So that's not your fault. You got
Speaker 1: it wrong, because there were there were doctors that were
Speaker 1: sort of spreading that story about now they are and
Speaker 1: what's called the crisis standard of care. But and in
Speaker 1: part of that means that hospitals could go to putting
Speaker 1: everyone on DNR, which means do not resuscitate, which means
Speaker 1: if you have a cardiac arrest, they won't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. That's that's not what's actually happening. It could happen.
Speaker 1: What what when they institute this crisis standard of care.
Speaker 1: What it means is that if a hospital gets so
Speaker 1: short on their ventilators and they just don't have any
Speaker 1: more room, then they could implement that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I even't heard of anyone. I was I
Speaker 1: was asking around uh to see if any doctors in
Speaker 1: Idaho could tell me of a hospital that's actually doing it.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen or heard of one that's actually doing
Speaker 1: it yet, but they could. The point is, it's it's
Speaker 1: that bad where that's a reasonable discussion where doctors have
Speaker 1: to discuss kind of like they were back in the
Speaker 1: day in New York, where they have to be like, okay,
Speaker 1: does this person do we put the you know, the
Speaker 1: young lady on the mental lator or the old guy?
Speaker 1: You know? Then we have to decide and they make
Speaker 1: those decisions. It's really awful. It's a position no doctor
Speaker 1: wants to be in, and now that's becoming a reality.
Speaker 1: It's brutal. It's brutal out there and and that's bleeding
Speaker 1: into other states nearby, you know, So is that what
Speaker 1: you mean by the Welkerson situation because his doctor like
Speaker 1: couldn't find uh an ICU bed for him. Is that
Speaker 1: that is that the story you're talking about? That's the story.
Speaker 1: So he's this guy who had a problem that can
Speaker 1: be fixed. I mean, it's a procedure called an e
Speaker 1: RCP that he can get done at specialty centers. And
Speaker 1: he didn't live far from Houston. Houston has plenty of
Speaker 1: the specialty centers that can do it. They have great
Speaker 1: guests from urologists like myself, not as good, but you know,
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing. And they could do it
Speaker 1: if they if they, you know, if they had the
Speaker 1: availability to get him in. But they didn't, and so
Speaker 1: he died. Is something that he shouldn't love. It's basically
Speaker 1: the example. And I'm sure there's more examples of that.
Speaker 1: And what really worries me is the examples that you're
Speaker 1: not hearing yet, like cases they're delayed now, cancer screening,
Speaker 1: things that are being delayed now in these hospitals that
Speaker 1: we're gonna be paying down the road. That's that's the
Speaker 1: ship that really scares me great, like just people not
Speaker 1: going in for things in general. Yeah exactly, I have
Speaker 1: friends other than you who work in E R s
Speaker 1: and stuff, um, nurses and the doctor um, and it's
Speaker 1: up in the pm W. But the ship they're saying,
Speaker 1: it's like in the day's crap, like like I they
Speaker 1: are working on like building capacity and making sure they
Speaker 1: have things to like treat their friends because it's they're
Speaker 1: like the advices do not go to the hospital like
Speaker 1: if if, if at all possible, because there's just not
Speaker 1: capacity for you unless it's like literally an immediate life
Speaker 1: and death thing. It's it's almost uh not worth like
Speaker 1: trying because there's just nothing. There's no slack the system
Speaker 1: is and it's it's it's starting to turn. It looks
Speaker 1: like here in in in the Portland area, but like
Speaker 1: it's it's frightening, like these are not people who would
Speaker 1: be bullshitting or or are are are prone to panic,
Speaker 1: you know, they're e er professionals. But it's it's it's
Speaker 1: fucked up, like it's it's it it's this thing where
Speaker 1: like the scary thing to me is not even necessarily
Speaker 1: where we are right now, because it does like there
Speaker 1: is some kind of broadly positive news in a lot
Speaker 1: of areas about like where the pandemic is going. It's
Speaker 1: just like this situation won't be fixed when case numbers
Speaker 1: go down. It's it's it's going to be permanent damage
Speaker 1: has been done to this system. And I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, first off, like from what you're seeing, like,
Speaker 1: what what is the extent of the permanent damage done
Speaker 1: to our our emergency medical system in particular and our
Speaker 1: our ability to even like get care at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good question. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: It kind of goes back to I think what Garrison
Speaker 1: want to talk about, which is like the collapse of
Speaker 1: the medical system. I think we talk about it a
Speaker 1: lot in terms of we're on the edge of collapse,
Speaker 1: we're near collapse. I think there are places in this
Speaker 1: country where or he has collapsed. I think that's pretty evident.
Speaker 1: It's really it's not homogeneous in any way across this country.
Speaker 1: There are certainly places that are better than others, and
Speaker 1: there's certainly places that have a lot more uh leeway
Speaker 1: and flexibility, but everywhere is strained right now. And in
Speaker 1: regards to your question about permanent damage. I'll answer that
Speaker 1: in regards to just the personnel. You know, because um,
Speaker 1: because of the show that I have, the House of
Speaker 1: Pod follow us on Twitter at the House of Pod,
Speaker 1: and I talked to a lot of doctors and nurses
Speaker 1: from all over the country, talk to them a lot.
Speaker 1: And it's bad. I mean, the stress that they're under,
Speaker 1: the pts D that they're that they're dealing with, the burnout.
Speaker 1: The level of burnout is just intense. It's intense and
Speaker 1: and it's I think we were talking about moral injury
Speaker 1: and burnout before all this started, and now it is
Speaker 1: to a point where I don't know what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to the medical system, just in ms of the
Speaker 1: personnel when this is all over. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are getting out of medicine, getting out
Speaker 1: clinical medicine. I mean out of like I would I
Speaker 1: would say, out of just my immediate friend group. I
Speaker 1: can think of a couple off hand excellent doctors, really
Speaker 1: great I c u e er doctors who are already
Speaker 1: planning their exit. And when I don't know, I mean
Speaker 1: in the next coming years, that's gonna be a major issue.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how we're going to address that.
Speaker 1: And our nurses in the I c U. S. Man,
Speaker 1: the stuff they have to put up with is and
Speaker 1: is insane. You just see it in their eyes. Eyes
Speaker 1: are broken, like I was. I volunteered on the wards
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, and people, they're the doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses taking care of these CODE patients day in
Speaker 1: day out, like they there's like a little bit of
Speaker 1: their soul that's been broken, And just see it in
Speaker 1: their eyes like I was there for like just a week,
Speaker 1: and it's terrifying. You know, you're going into a room
Speaker 1: with a patient with COVID. It's scary. You know, even
Speaker 1: no matter how much ppe protective equipment you have on,
Speaker 1: you're always a little scared. And I just think years
Speaker 1: of that that way is on a person in a
Speaker 1: way I don't I mean, I am worried about. I
Speaker 1: don't know how we're going to address that. M h yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Yeah, And it's frustrating because like from the
Speaker 1: perspective of people listening, right, the thing you want to
Speaker 1: ask is like, well, how can I help, And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you can't because you're already if you're listening to the
Speaker 1: show I assume you're masking. I assume you've gotten vaccinated.
Speaker 1: If you don't have like a condition that that renders
Speaker 1: you unable to get the vaccine, you're you're I. I
Speaker 1: think our listeners tend to be pretty responsible people. It's
Speaker 1: just not enough because of the country decided to like
Speaker 1: Leroy Jenkins a plague and um god, Garrison, do you
Speaker 1: know that reference? Is that? Get that reference? I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with Leroy Jenkins. That's good. Were you born when Leroy
Speaker 1: Jenkins became a thing, I don't know, you would have
Speaker 1: been like three, would have been. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was deadpool that them to your attention, isn't it? No? No,
Speaker 1: I it came to my attention just doing general Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of the first. It was the first
Speaker 1: meme that you could show your parents pretty much. I
Speaker 1: guess they were like Badger Badger, Mushroom, a couple of
Speaker 1: others in that category, but like, it was one of
Speaker 1: the first memes that wasn't a man's gaping asshole prolapsed.
Speaker 1: But I showed my parents that all the time. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, there was a beautiful moment back in
Speaker 1: the day with some sea a stadium. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: brought you in the medicine. This is what I saw work.
Speaker 1: They were so proud of me, like, look at look
Speaker 1: at our look at our boy, Look at our boy.
Speaker 1: He can tell us exactly why that man's asshole looks
Speaker 1: that way. I have a weird job, I guess. One
Speaker 1: of my questions is, with the assumption that people are
Speaker 1: taking the actual plague related steps they can to reduce
Speaker 1: their burden to the medical system, what can people realistically do?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think part of that is and this
Speaker 1: is and I'm not gonna have you to like explain
Speaker 1: how you can take care of your own medical treatments
Speaker 1: in an emergency on a podcast. That's not the time
Speaker 1: or the place. Although I do think it's probably a
Speaker 1: good idea for people to read up on first aid
Speaker 1: and basic life saving emergency Like it's always a good
Speaker 1: idea to to have some training there. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have other advice? You know, you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: The people that are listening to this podcast are totally
Speaker 1: on board already, and they're super supportive, and we appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I mean that is not unnoticed. I mean, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's having people like, uh, outside the hospitals every now
Speaker 1: and then, applauding doctors. I know it's cheesy, but it's great.
Speaker 1: I'll take that over the blue angels flying overhead any day,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's that's that stuff is really important,
Speaker 1: and masking and taking care of themselves is is great,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. The the real practical things that people
Speaker 1: can do, I think, uh is help contribute to sites
Speaker 1: that will help get the rest of the world vaccinated.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can definitely talk about that the question
Speaker 1: of boosters here versus you know, vaccines for the first
Speaker 1: time elsewhere. But there That's the one thing I would
Speaker 1: recommend right now if you want to help, um, let's
Speaker 1: put our money into places where we can get vaccines
Speaker 1: to other places. And I think that every little bit
Speaker 1: of that helps in the long run. And and that's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that we could use. Other than that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just hope that people are still going
Speaker 1: into medicine and in nursing. You know. That's the only
Speaker 1: thing I can still hope is that people who haven't
Speaker 1: interest in it, you know, continue to do it. And
Speaker 1: and for those people who are just their training, those
Speaker 1: years of their formative years are during this time. I
Speaker 1: just want to let them know. I swear it gets better.
Speaker 1: It's not always gonna be like this. And if you
Speaker 1: make it through this, you're gonna be an amazing clinician,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be an amazing nurse, You're gonna be an
Speaker 1: amazing doctor. And I really want you guys to keep
Speaker 1: doing it. That's that's one thing I would say to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I I'll certainly add that if you're
Speaker 1: someone who's contemplating a medical career, please please, I mean,
Speaker 1: just from a there's a couple of things on that,
Speaker 1: like just from a perspective of what the world needs.
Speaker 1: It's what the world needs. But also, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about the
Speaker 1: possibility of the collapse, if you're someone who who foresees
Speaker 1: things getting potentially much more difficult in the future, not
Speaker 1: a lot of things more useful in a bad situation
Speaker 1: than somebody with medical training. I don't count on that
Speaker 1: getting me through the apocalypse. I'm I'm soft. I am
Speaker 1: so so. I went camping and I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, I went camping. It was awful.
Speaker 1: There was so much dust. It was an awful experience.
Speaker 1: But I just thought, if the apocalypse comes, I will
Speaker 1: hopefully get placed in a very nice tent because I'm
Speaker 1: a doctor, so I'm counting on that to get me through.
Speaker 1: There are so many dumbass boogaloo type quote unquote preppers
Speaker 1: who focus on the guns and the gear and the
Speaker 1: dried food but thrown in the shirt, throwing knives but
Speaker 1: don't even have a n I fac an individual first
Speaker 1: aid kit or like a tourniquet, and like they talk
Speaker 1: to you, talk to like like I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a little off topic, but like talk to combat marines
Speaker 1: about like their favorite person. It's always the corman. It's
Speaker 1: the guy who knows or the lady who knows how
Speaker 1: to like patch a bullet wound and whatnot. Like there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing more useful in any situation pretty much that
Speaker 1: that is dangerous than somebody who can do medicine. So please,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're studying to do medicine, if you're
Speaker 1: contemplating becoming an e M T. Or a paramedic or
Speaker 1: a nurse or whatever, good God, we need you so badly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked to a little bit about just in the
Speaker 1: medical system in general, and then we can also kind
Speaker 1: of discuss more stuff related to how COVID's impacting certain
Speaker 1: areas more than others. And like, let's say someone who's
Speaker 1: someone who's listening, who's in one of these areas that
Speaker 1: it has only vaccinated, you know, not not a lot
Speaker 1: of people are going on with masks on, and you know,
Speaker 1: schools starting back up, maybe they have kids are going
Speaker 1: to their school system. I know in Texas they have
Speaker 1: you know, child deaths arising. That sounds very frightening to
Speaker 1: be that kind of person who, like you know, would
Speaker 1: like like to see that stuff happened in their state,
Speaker 1: but it's just not really possible. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: with so much of the rest of the world kind
Speaker 1: of slowly taking back restrictions, and I'm sure it feels
Speaker 1: very jarring to be in a situation like that and
Speaker 1: kind of like there's really nothing you can do right
Speaker 1: besides you right, because you can talk to your family,
Speaker 1: talk to your friends, but like overall, it's hard to
Speaker 1: hard to make you know, a big impact in a state,
Speaker 1: you know, like Texas, Alabama, like Idaho, all the ones
Speaker 1: that you that you were mentioning before from a medical
Speaker 1: kind of perspective, is there is there any way people
Speaker 1: can kind of start to talk about those things with
Speaker 1: their family And because the way we've been trying to
Speaker 1: get people take the vaccine, with the marketing we've been doing,
Speaker 1: has not been super successful in these demographics. Um, do
Speaker 1: you think there's other conversations that can get people to
Speaker 1: slowly kind of be more, be more able to you know,
Speaker 1: contemplate that. Yeah, that's a that's a tough question. It's
Speaker 1: particularly tough if you're someone who is believes in the
Speaker 1: importance of vaccines and you'r or the importance of masks
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and you're in a place
Speaker 1: where you're a minority. That is tough. The first thing
Speaker 1: I'll say is definitely know that the vaccine helps. You're
Speaker 1: in a much better position because of the vaccine. When
Speaker 1: I was on the wards and I was looking at
Speaker 1: patients that they're almost all unvaccinated, those are the people
Speaker 1: that end up in the hospital. You can't still get
Speaker 1: into the hospitalize if you have the vaccine, but it's
Speaker 1: it's much less likely. And you know, not that these
Speaker 1: people don't count, they count just as much, but if
Speaker 1: you don't have an underlying problem like a liver transplant
Speaker 1: or some immune suppression, then you're less likely to have
Speaker 1: a really bad outcome with COVID if you're vaccinated. So
Speaker 1: just know that it helps. You still might get it,
Speaker 1: it'll suck, um, but for the most part, you're gonna
Speaker 1: stay out of the hospital. And that really, I think
Speaker 1: is something have a little comfort in. It really does
Speaker 1: seem to work. You know. Outside of that, the schools
Speaker 1: thing is is a real concern for me, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feel a lot better than We're going to be
Speaker 1: in a much better position once we are able to
Speaker 1: get kids vaccinated. So there's there's two things. You guys
Speaker 1: probably heard that there was, um this this committee that
Speaker 1: met to advise the FDA about booster shots. That's one thing.
Speaker 1: So booster shots are gonna go out to people who
Speaker 1: need them, uh sixty five and older people at high risk,
Speaker 1: people in high risk occupations. They're gonna like frontline workers.
Speaker 1: So there's gonna be booster shots coming out. And then
Speaker 1: the data is coming out now about five till Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty promising. Um, it looks like they're gonna
Speaker 1: do okay with lower doses, so they use about one
Speaker 1: third the dose of the vaccine that the adults get
Speaker 1: and it seems to work. We haven't seen much other
Speaker 1: than the pre press release from uh Fightser, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you really pick at it, it looks promising. So
Speaker 1: I am that's something that makes me hopeful. That's something
Speaker 1: I'm definitely clinging to. I think there's no way we're
Speaker 1: getting out of this without vaccinating kids. That just has
Speaker 1: to happen. Um. I think once that starts rolling out,
Speaker 1: and hopefully it will soon. I mean I don't want
Speaker 1: to put a date on it, but I'm hoping within
Speaker 1: the next couple of months this starts happening. So you know, once,
Speaker 1: once that starts happening, I'm gonna feel a lot more comfortable.
Speaker 1: I think people in those situations are gonna feel a
Speaker 1: lot more comfortable too. Yeah, the booster thing is an
Speaker 1: interesting question to me. I mean, they're methical standpoint, particularly,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think it's not a fair
Speaker 1: narrative to say it has to be one or the other,
Speaker 1: and I think people are saying that. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think we can do it. I think we can
Speaker 1: produce enough vaccine here for people who haven't got it yet,
Speaker 1: and enough for the boosters and start supplying more to
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, we can do more. Our Government
Speaker 1: Sharing Visor Maderna definitely need to do more in that regards.
Speaker 1: They definitely need to do more in terms of production.
Speaker 1: They haven't hit their goals in a lot of these places.
Speaker 1: And but it's also not like they haven't done anything yet.
Speaker 1: They give about like a you know, two hundred million
Speaker 1: doses are being donated just this week. I think, so
Speaker 1: they are doing things. That's happening. It's just we need
Speaker 1: more of it. Everything needs we need more of it.
Speaker 1: We need to ramp up production. Yeah, it's weird because,
Speaker 1: like you're right, we could produce enough vaccines for the
Speaker 1: places that don't have them and enough vaccines for boosters
Speaker 1: over here, and all it would take is a couple
Speaker 1: of months of our Afghana stand mad money. But we're
Speaker 1: not going to do that, and so it probably will,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, contribute to an issue effect. There's
Speaker 1: there's a chance that it will contribute to an issue
Speaker 1: of vaccine unavailability. But also it's not like if we
Speaker 1: don't get the boosters, those vaccines will be available because
Speaker 1: we're just not giving them out. Yeah, in the extent
Speaker 1: that we need. So I yeah, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. I'll get the booster if they
Speaker 1: decide to give out boosters because I like not having
Speaker 1: not plague damage or getting long COVID. Yeah. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that seems great. And a lot of the vaccine has
Speaker 1: been see kind of relies. It tracks back to how
Speaker 1: we've been marketing in it, and I've I've been on
Speaker 1: the team that's like, we should stop using Fauchi because
Speaker 1: every time Fauci goes on TV to talk about vaccines,
Speaker 1: more people are going to do like a backfire in fact,
Speaker 1: to be like, no, I'm not gonna get don't trust Fasci.
Speaker 1: So there's a particular like marketing thing that I think
Speaker 1: we've failed on. Like America is very good at marketing
Speaker 1: when we can make money, but when it's not related
Speaker 1: to getting gaining more profit. I think the government is
Speaker 1: very bad at marketing these types of things. Um. And
Speaker 1: on the kind of the marketing side of things, I
Speaker 1: don't know, this is this is kind of old news
Speaker 1: at this point. But the whole smoll and testicals thing, um,
Speaker 1: which we have you have not talked about on this
Speaker 1: show about but I'm sure you have thoughts about how
Speaker 1: this thing has kind of balloons, which is that can
Speaker 1: be like, so, how how the marketing and misinformation relates
Speaker 1: to this cool kind kind of current problem. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first of all, that particular story, I mean that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I mean, like this, I've never I've never seen someone's
Speaker 1: excuse for venereal disease becomes such an international issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: contribute to the desk probably of hundreds of people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the marketing thing. Is a really
Speaker 1: great question, and and and it's been driving me crazy
Speaker 1: because like part of me at this point just wants
Speaker 1: to be like, get the fucking vaccine. What the fund's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Get the vaccine part of my language
Speaker 1: and like, um, but then the part of me knows
Speaker 1: that that doesn't work. Like I do believe doctors should
Speaker 1: be able to express their frustration. Um, they need to
Speaker 1: be able to do that. If we can't do that
Speaker 1: right now, I mean, it's game over. But they need
Speaker 1: to at least have that ability where doctors can voice
Speaker 1: their frustration with antivactors but still give them the same
Speaker 1: high level of care that we're always going to give
Speaker 1: them the matter what when they show up in the hospital.
Speaker 1: But if not working to do that, we need other approaches.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't entirely know what they are. There
Speaker 1: are some people they're they're so far out there that
Speaker 1: we're just never going to reach the people, the microchip people.
Speaker 1: There's like a level of deep programming that will need
Speaker 1: to happen to those people that we just it's it's
Speaker 1: too exhausting to do that. You really have to, like,
Speaker 1: if you can't scale that in any meaningful way for
Speaker 1: the country, I think I think, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think calling it the Trump vaccine was the closest
Speaker 1: we got to have possibility, and that fucking I'm interested
Speaker 1: in your thoughts on the fucking bright Bart article and
Speaker 1: if you're not aware, if you're less online than us,
Speaker 1: and God bless you if you are right Bart, the
Speaker 1: which is I don't know. CNN for Fascists came up
Speaker 1: with an article blaming the Democrats for the fact that
Speaker 1: Republicans don't want to take the vaccine and saying it's
Speaker 1: a secret liberal plot to exterminate conservatives because conservatives refused
Speaker 1: to take vaccines because they're fundamentally oppositional, defiant. Um, and
Speaker 1: like it's it's the fault of people who are telling
Speaker 1: them to take the vaccine that they're not taking the
Speaker 1: vaccine because obviously, why would you trust the liberal on anything?
Speaker 1: But also they're trying to kill us. We're going to
Speaker 1: lose the election because we're all dying because we refuse
Speaker 1: to get vaccinated for a preventable disease. Anyway, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about that guy? I don't. I don't love it.
Speaker 1: I don't love it. Um, I'm vaguely familiar with bright Bart.
Speaker 1: I don't know that exact because I have enough pain
Speaker 1: in my life. But um, but you know, I do wonder.
Speaker 1: It's like when they put out articles like this, or
Speaker 1: when Tucker Carlson goes out and he does his thing
Speaker 1: questioning vaccine, just asking questions about vaccines that lead to
Speaker 1: vaccine hesitancy, Like what calculations are they doing? Are they
Speaker 1: doing calcular? Is this just him being callous in not
Speaker 1: giving a fun and just doing it, or is there
Speaker 1: some calculation that him and some sort of right wing
Speaker 1: fink tank are doing where they're like, hey, look this
Speaker 1: sells to our audience. They love it. Let's keep doing it. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are going to lose ex portion of our audience
Speaker 1: because of this, but we still have plenty of audience left. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't, I wonder how that's happening. Like it is hurting.
Speaker 1: It is true, it is hurting them more than than
Speaker 1: other people. It's hurting everyone. Everyone's getting affected by this,
Speaker 1: um but there it's those states that are being affected,
Speaker 1: the people not getting vaccinated who are listening to people
Speaker 1: like Tucker Carlson. I don't. I don't understand what their
Speaker 1: endgame is here, Like this is their market? Why why
Speaker 1: not protected? And that I do not have a good
Speaker 1: answer for. I was hoping one of you guys would. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's there's a lot going on there. I
Speaker 1: think a decent chunk of it is the assumption that
Speaker 1: whatever they lose in terms of dead followers won't be
Speaker 1: worth more than continuing the cash bonanza. That is owning
Speaker 1: the lips, right because that's all they that's all that's
Speaker 1: the entirety of the right wing media. It's just owning
Speaker 1: the lips. It's just oppositional, defiant, it's just hating anything
Speaker 1: Democrats do. So you you kind of can't. You're a
Speaker 1: cuck if you tell people to receive basic medical care
Speaker 1: if Democrats are taking that basic medical care right, Um,
Speaker 1: so it's a pride thing for a lot of them.
Speaker 1: To two things I love is when you when you
Speaker 1: use the word cuck or when you do Ben Shapiro's voice,
Speaker 1: Like those are like two of my everythings that you do.
Speaker 1: It's you're saying really well, far beyond anything rational on
Speaker 1: the right. Um, and it's it's difficult to like I
Speaker 1: I I think the calculation is just like I think
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys is the same thing with
Speaker 1: climate change. Like they're smart enough to know that they're
Speaker 1: contributing to an uninhabitable world, but they want to cash
Speaker 1: in first. They want to get as much as they
Speaker 1: can out before it falls apart. And I think that's
Speaker 1: all any of these people care about. Because I think
Speaker 1: there are the true believers. The radio guys are true believers, right,
Speaker 1: the radio guys who keep dying because they don't be vaccinated.
Speaker 1: Those guys did believe that it was some sort of
Speaker 1: weird conspiracy, it was the communist whatever, um. Clearly because
Speaker 1: they did management level, yeah, mid management level. They don't
Speaker 1: know all the stuff that they're being told from above
Speaker 1: and they kind of believe it enough to where they
Speaker 1: kill themselves for the company. I think for Tucker, it's
Speaker 1: more a matter of like, hey, I keep making money
Speaker 1: and I maintain my power if I If I continue
Speaker 1: to hold this line, you you lose power, You get weaker.
Speaker 1: It's like when Trump got booed for telling people to
Speaker 1: take the vaccine. You know, um, yeah, crazy. You can't
Speaker 1: go back with this ship. You just can't, and you
Speaker 1: certainly can't admit to ever having been wrong. Right. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's good ship. What a what a fun note to
Speaker 1: end of the episode on what a good society we've
Speaker 1: built Bravo. M hm ah, well cover it. People can
Speaker 1: find you by looking up the House of Pod. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh was slightly less depressing, but not not super uplifting
Speaker 1: either at this point. Uh. Follow us at the House
Speaker 1: of Pot at Twitter, and you can listen to our
Speaker 1: podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcast. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about medical type things, but not so deep into the
Speaker 1: woods that it's not entertaining, I hope. Yeah. Fun the woods, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the woods. We have fun guests ranging from the world's
Speaker 1: best medical experts to you know, you guys. The best
Speaker 1: medical experts. You guys are right up there for medicine, right.
Speaker 1: There's no better medicine than just a big fat pile
Speaker 1: of cocaine. And the good thing about cocaine is it's
Speaker 1: a sterilizing agent. So if you're worried about COVID getting
Speaker 1: in your nasal passages, just rail cocaine before you and
Speaker 1: after you go into the store. It's like getting a
Speaker 1: COVID test, but more fun. Legally, I have to tell
Speaker 1: you that's false. Well, we all have our opinions about
Speaker 1: how cocaine works, and I have my facts. Now, if
Speaker 1: you excuse me, I'm gonna go pick up a single
Speaker 1: item at the grocery store. Hey, leath the listeners tag here.
Speaker 1: Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember I came
Speaker 1: to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt Best's
Speaker 1: name and making sure justice was finally served. But I
Speaker 1: hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart
Speaker 1: the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger.
Speaker 1: Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
Speaker 1: ify Tig, I like you, but now all signs point
Speaker 1: to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this
Speaker 1: game is just starting. You better believe I'm gonna win.
Speaker 1: I'm Tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up
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Speaker 1: Welcome It could Happen Here pod, a podcast that is
Speaker 1: today about the fact that ten years ago it did happen.
Speaker 1: And when when I when I say it did happen,
Speaker 1: I mean we occupied an extremely large number of places,
Speaker 1: and we did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways.
Speaker 1: And with with with me to talk about this is
Speaker 1: Garrison as always. I like that you used the Twitter
Speaker 1: handle for our podcast, not the actual name, but that's fine.
Speaker 1: Where can it where can it go for it? But
Speaker 1: helloon with me? I have I have my special guest,
Speaker 1: Vicky Ostrowil, who is an agitator, who is a writer,
Speaker 1: who has done many many things, probably most famously writing
Speaker 1: the book in Defense of Looting UM from Bold Press,
Speaker 1: Bold type Press, bult Type Press. Yeah, very good book.
Speaker 1: People got very bad, people got very angry. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's it's really I'm really excited to be here to
Speaker 1: to talk about the the anniversary of Occupy from basically
Speaker 1: you know when I when I all got this whole
Speaker 1: train rolling, so yeah, and the the other the other
Speaker 1: thing um that that is probably relevant here is that
Speaker 1: Vicky was one of the first people at Occupy and
Speaker 1: and little correct me if I'm wrong about this. I
Speaker 1: found an oblique reference to this in one of the
Speaker 1: things I read. You facilitated the first meeting. Yes, the yeah,
Speaker 1: I got this on the record now, yeah, I I
Speaker 1: uh yeah, during UM during the general New York City
Speaker 1: General Assembly, it was called in August. Um, there was
Speaker 1: you know, uh, ad Busters hopefully called for a general assembly,
Speaker 1: and you know, a bunch of us sort of went
Speaker 1: down there and there was a tanky party there um
Speaker 1: doing a general assembly, which was just them on speakers,
Speaker 1: UM doing their regular ranting. Um hadn't changed much in
Speaker 1: ten years, um and uh and we um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: a bunch of us just went and sat down, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to the side of it, and started an
Speaker 1: actual general assembly. And by by by happenstance, I I
Speaker 1: associated that meeting and it was the first and last
Speaker 1: Occupy meeting AMATE facilitating. Yeah. Okay, so I want to
Speaker 1: rule back a little bit too, just before the start
Speaker 1: of occupied because yeah, the more be thinking about this,
Speaker 1: the more have just realized that two thousand eleven was
Speaker 1: just a profoundly weird time in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I think people have forgotten, like the entire American security
Speaker 1: state is at this point being terrorized. When you joint
Speaker 1: anonymous lull sick hacking campaign called anti Sick, the symbol
Speaker 1: of which he is a guy in a guy fox
Speaker 1: mask wearing a monocle and a top hat, and this
Speaker 1: was just like normal, Yes, this was the thing that
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, it's it's the it's
Speaker 1: it's the it's the anti sick top hat, full faced
Speaker 1: guy in a monocle. Fun fact about that, just before
Speaker 1: we forget David Gramer Rest in Peace, who was there
Speaker 1: in the early days organizing claimed and um that he
Speaker 1: had he had heard and talked to the some of
Speaker 1: the like overheard the police talking about the reason they
Speaker 1: didn't sweep the occupying encampment the first day when we
Speaker 1: were pretty weak, frankly, or the first week, was because
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of guy fox masks and they
Speaker 1: were scared. They were scared they were going to get hacked.
Speaker 1: If they were scared, they were gonna hack them and
Speaker 1: steal there. Yeah. So so it was a weird time indeed. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think the the other thing that's, you know,
Speaker 1: I think important about this time period if we were
Speaker 1: looking back at what occupied was is that this so
Speaker 1: this is this is three years after the the financial collapse,
Speaker 1: and you know, so I think this is you know,
Speaker 1: in the room to two eleven, there's been a few
Speaker 1: there's been a few protests, there's been there was a
Speaker 1: big thing in Grease in two thousand eight that was
Speaker 1: kind of related, kind of unrelated. But I think in
Speaker 1: my sense of you know, I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was like thirteen. I was like I was like
Speaker 1: an actual baby child. But my sense of it was
Speaker 1: kind of just like like there's that there's this like
Speaker 1: sense that everyone just kind of waiting for something to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like hadn't and it's just like kept going
Speaker 1: and kept going and kept going. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and then and then Genesia starts and suddenly there's you
Speaker 1: know there there there's Protestant Tenessia, there's pertest Egypt. There's
Speaker 1: like people fighting tanks in the street in Bahrain, and
Speaker 1: you know, and this this is you know that this
Speaker 1: this becomes down as the spring and it starts to
Speaker 1: spread to a lot of places. And VICKI I want
Speaker 1: to talk. I want to ask you about this because
Speaker 1: you you were in Spain when it started started. There
Speaker 1: we'll talk about what what what was going on there?
Speaker 1: And yeah, so I wasn't there when it started. Um,
Speaker 1: but but but yes, um, basically you know, and then
Speaker 1: and I want to shout out like there were there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of like movements like in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: right after the crash, there were a bunch of protests,
Speaker 1: like outside Wall Street. They were very small, but they
Speaker 1: were like sort of the like produced some images. And
Speaker 1: then there was you know, in two thousand uh nine,
Speaker 1: there's the Oscar Grant rebellion in Oakland, and you have
Speaker 1: the Madison occupation earlier in two thousand eleven, um, where
Speaker 1: they were the workers unions took over the state House. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone does. It was actually really important at the time. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so you know, so I think I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought up Greece because I think actually Greece
Speaker 1: really that that sort of anarchist rebellion in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight thou nine really kicked off the cycle in a
Speaker 1: certain way, but also didn't quite It wasn't quite the
Speaker 1: first domino, you know. It was sort of more of
Speaker 1: a like forecast. So yeah, so Arab spring, uh you know,
Speaker 1: is huge. It's this huge, huge event, and the US
Speaker 1: media is thing it because obviously like these sort of
Speaker 1: old you know, quote unquote Marxist dictators are falling, um,
Speaker 1: and so of course the US is like all about it, um,
Speaker 1: which of course later later on the return of the
Speaker 1: tankies will use to um to confuse everyone on the
Speaker 1: US left and destroy all solidarity with Syria anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's neither hearner there. Um. So then then in
Speaker 1: then in that summer, um, you get this this wave
Speaker 1: of early summer like May in June. In fact, the
Speaker 1: fifteenth of May was when the movement started in Spain
Speaker 1: and then it starts student again in Greece. And it
Speaker 1: was similar to occupy and that there was these people
Speaker 1: coming together in these sort of encampments in the center
Speaker 1: of the city. Um. I don't know if people remember
Speaker 1: um or or know this history economically, but Spain and
Speaker 1: Greece had recently been sort of going through these like
Speaker 1: big big booms economic booms just for about five or
Speaker 1: six years that turned out to be real estate bubbles
Speaker 1: funded by their entry into the EU, and two thousand
Speaker 1: and Age just smashed that and they were just like
Speaker 1: incredibly impoverished. I mean, like Spain was facing unemployment, Greece
Speaker 1: was like similar. Spain has recovered more than Greece has
Speaker 1: in the intervening years, but it's still bad. Um So
Speaker 1: so yeah, so you had all these it was it
Speaker 1: was you know, predominantly young folks who were um, you
Speaker 1: know had been pushed out of the economy, who had
Speaker 1: been pushed out of their homes, whose families had loft
Speaker 1: their homes. Um gathering together and it was all over
Speaker 1: both countries and it was huge. Um. I happened to
Speaker 1: just be in Barcelona. I had been on a planned
Speaker 1: vacation with some friends. Um you know that we had
Speaker 1: we had planned like sort of six months earlier when
Speaker 1: it all popped off. And I had also just started
Speaker 1: my writing. Um, I would say career, but that's very generous. UM.
Speaker 1: I had started technically being paid for writing things. And
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, right about it, Like, let's like
Speaker 1: cover it while you're there. And because no one in
Speaker 1: the US was talking about what was going on in
Speaker 1: Spain when my article popped up, like and this is
Speaker 1: like this is really strange. But it was like the
Speaker 1: early days of Twitter as well, um two eleven, Like
Speaker 1: I guess Twitter started two nine or something, and so like,
Speaker 1: so the the one of the accounts, the camp tweets
Speaker 1: out my article. So I went there the next day.
Speaker 1: I was like, I wrote that article and then I
Speaker 1: was like embedded for a week, and I was there
Speaker 1: for like kind of the height of the popular power
Speaker 1: of the movement in Barcelona only for a week, but
Speaker 1: I was there on the day when there was a
Speaker 1: two and a half million person march through Barcelona. UM
Speaker 1: just like still probably the biggest march I've ever been
Speaker 1: part of it and probably who ever will be UM
Speaker 1: was like la And so you know, so that goes
Speaker 1: on for for a few months in Greece and Barcelona,
Speaker 1: it sort of hits similar limits that occupy would eventually hit,
Speaker 1: which is that like you know that that if you
Speaker 1: can take the space away from people, that's that's the
Speaker 1: common ground, and like you can't really have the movement
Speaker 1: without the encampment. And also all the way in which
Speaker 1: the camps sort of force a kind of internal naval
Speaker 1: gazing and people like get really obsessed with maintaining the
Speaker 1: camp rather than the struggle with the city at large.
Speaker 1: All of those, all of those contradictions sort of like
Speaker 1: came up in Spain and Greece as well. But at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, I was there for the height
Speaker 1: of it. I come back to New York, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is going to happen in the US, like it
Speaker 1: has to. UM. I think a lot of folks who
Speaker 1: had been watching felt that way as well. Um. I
Speaker 1: actually took part in this thing called bloomberg Ville, which
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, fifty people on a sidewalk, um was
Speaker 1: from Michael Bloomberg, right, Um, fifty people on a sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Fifty people was general. I was like, when we were
Speaker 1: doing really well and mostly fifteen of us, It's like
Speaker 1: fifteen of us on a flidewalk um in the financial district,
Speaker 1: like getting yelled at by cops, um, you know, sleeping
Speaker 1: on cardboard, you know, occupy style, but without any attention
Speaker 1: or solidarity. Um. And but because I had been in
Speaker 1: Barcelona and I still have these carbrads in Barcelona, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, we're doing it in New York.
Speaker 1: So we had this thing where bloomberg Ville, which is
Speaker 1: like twenty people like got to talk to a general
Speaker 1: assembly in Barcelona at the height of its power, like
Speaker 1: on a like internet link, like a really early internet link,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and you know so so so. So
Speaker 1: there was all this energy that was happening. And then
Speaker 1: I think, really crucially, the London riots pop off, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't get talked about very much anymore, partially because
Speaker 1: the UK left really stabbed. Here's the back during that
Speaker 1: and and have and and repressed the memory of it
Speaker 1: largely UM, and have suffered ever since, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: strategically UM. But you know that was for us in
Speaker 1: the US, that was huge. It was huge watching UM,
Speaker 1: watching those riots unfold. Like you know, again, this was
Speaker 1: like early live streaming, so like we were like watching
Speaker 1: live feeds of the riots, you know, which is like
Speaker 1: it was not a thing that you could really do
Speaker 1: without a TV before. There was just like there was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on that felt exciting and
Speaker 1: and it was and really important and inevitable that it
Speaker 1: would come to the US because things were so messed
Speaker 1: up over here. I think we should talk about what
Speaker 1: a general assembly actually is because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people aren't. We're going to have like never actually
Speaker 1: ran into what exactly is going on, or have sort
Speaker 1: of forgotten in the last ten years after this sort
Speaker 1: of fallen out of favor. Sure, yeah, I mean it's UM.
Speaker 1: It was never my favorite either, honestly, but it's a
Speaker 1: it's a meeting style UM designed UM. It actually does
Speaker 1: largely actually come from from European anarchist traditions, UM from
Speaker 1: from Spain in Greece, but as as many of us know, UM,
Speaker 1: A lot of those traditions go back further UM and
Speaker 1: have crossed crossed the water general somebody's actually there's a
Speaker 1: long history of them in indigenous communities in Turtle Island,
Speaker 1: for example. So it's an old meeting style UM, in
Speaker 1: which um, the Quakers also the Quakers UM famously also
Speaker 1: sort of uh sort of co opted it from from
Speaker 1: indigenous folks out here on the East coast. UM. But UM,
Speaker 1: it's a meeting style in which, uh, you know, with
Speaker 1: the exception of a facilitator which is occasionally but not
Speaker 1: always present, UM, everyone is able to speak UM together.
Speaker 1: There is something, there's an agenda sometimes, but it's basically
Speaker 1: a meeting designed where everyone present in the meeting has
Speaker 1: like an equal voice, And it's not really designed generally
Speaker 1: for UM decision making specifically or in with like really
Speaker 1: specific goals in mind. Often, although there will be sort
Speaker 1: of like things that are trying to get settled UM.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's it's designed to allow, you know,
Speaker 1: a very very multi vocal approach and for everyone to
Speaker 1: sort of put in their their thoughts and their ideas
Speaker 1: UM and often is connected although not necessarily, but is
Speaker 1: often connected to consensus UM operation where UM things can't
Speaker 1: get sort of decided on unless everyone sort of agrees UM.
Speaker 1: And in occupy UM, that was the general assembly was
Speaker 1: sort of UM was a bit controversial because it was
Speaker 1: just whoever showed up obviously participates in it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: unlike unlike you know, an organizational meeting where you you know,
Speaker 1: everyone knows each other and you have to have a
Speaker 1: you know, you have to be there with an invite
Speaker 1: or whatever. UM, you know, whatever cranky wing nut UM
Speaker 1: wanted to show up could UM. And that had pluses
Speaker 1: and minuses. It was charming sometimes, but it was also
Speaker 1: very frustrating UM. And in in New York where I
Speaker 1: was UM, it was made almost impossible to function by
Speaker 1: this thing called the people's mike UM oh, which I
Speaker 1: think still happens sometimes people even mike check UM and
Speaker 1: and then everyone repeats what was said. But that means
Speaker 1: that it takes four times as long to talk as normal.
Speaker 1: So when you have a wing nut, you know, like
Speaker 1: advocating for wrong Paul, and then you've got thirty people
Speaker 1: echoing him every four yards, it makes it makes discussion
Speaker 1: completely impossible. And a microhistory of the people's mic. The
Speaker 1: reason that happened was because in the first week in
Speaker 1: Zukkati Park Um, whenever we got on a megaphone, police
Speaker 1: would come and arrest whoever was on the megaphone because
Speaker 1: you weren't allowed to use amplified sound in New York.
Speaker 1: And one organizer was like, oh no, no, we can
Speaker 1: like use the people's mic. We can repeat back to
Speaker 1: each other. And this is when we they're still mostly
Speaker 1: like thirty to forty people in the park at any
Speaker 1: one time. It's very small. That didn't feel so bad,
Speaker 1: but then when the movement really got big, the people's
Speaker 1: mike became completely unwieldy and also was a response to
Speaker 1: a was a cowardly response to police repression frankly UM,
Speaker 1: and was a way of So the peopil's mic is is,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, reactionary form anyway, that is hit. So
Speaker 1: it's been ten years. I haven't been able to complain
Speaker 1: about this in like eight years, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: UM anyway, So yeah, the general Assembly is just a
Speaker 1: meeting form um that often often associated with anarchy, anarchist
Speaker 1: practice or radical democratic practice um in which sort of
Speaker 1: consensus is aimed for by allowing everyone to speak there
Speaker 1: much I would say. Yeah. And so this, this, I
Speaker 1: think gets us back to where we open this episode,
Speaker 1: which is Adbusters calls an event with literally no plans
Speaker 1: to like do anything. They're just like, yeah, everyone, we're
Speaker 1: occupied in Wall Street. And then yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: as it's talking about the beginning of it, you guys
Speaker 1: basically hijack well sort of, I mean, so Adbusters. Adbusters
Speaker 1: doesn't show up, like you said, there's I've never met
Speaker 1: an Adbusters person, um. And it was funny, like we
Speaker 1: would do jokes about it. But I think it's also
Speaker 1: thinking about this in preparation for this interview. It's also
Speaker 1: interesting because Adbusters and their culture jamming is kind of
Speaker 1: like one of the results of the sort of altar
Speaker 1: globalization movement of the like late nineties and early two thousands,
Speaker 1: the summit hopping stuff um, the enarchy movement of like
Speaker 1: one generation ahead of occupy UM. So I think it's
Speaker 1: sort of appropriate that Adbusters sort of, like you know,
Speaker 1: was present in this legacy in a certain way, and
Speaker 1: a lot of those organizers were as well. But yes,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I did I just jump in for you. No, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: um the yeah, so so so so, a bunch of
Speaker 1: people I don't actually know who calls for an August second,
Speaker 1: you know, general assembly to talk about the call for
Speaker 1: September seventeenth to occupy Wall Street. UM. And at that
Speaker 1: at that point, that's when the thing I was describing
Speaker 1: earlier like happens where where UM, you know, we a
Speaker 1: bunch of folks and and I really want to underline
Speaker 1: that most of them were people who had been in
Speaker 1: Spain or Greece. UM. David Graber was also. There was
Speaker 1: like a lot of old heads. There was like a
Speaker 1: there was a comrade from Japan. UM. It was a
Speaker 1: very international crew who had like had experience in these
Speaker 1: movements over the summer. UM came and had this General
Speaker 1: Assembly and sort of ran it that way and broke out.
Speaker 1: We had we broke off working groups and then there
Speaker 1: was meetings sort of once a week and then working
Speaker 1: group meets within that UM and general assemblies from August
Speaker 1: second ttil September seventeenth, at which point, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: occupy the day, the day that Adbusters had caused for
Speaker 1: actually happened. So my my impression of this, and I
Speaker 1: was I was very small. I had very limited idea
Speaker 1: of what was going on. The way I remember in
Speaker 1: the media is that like the there, the media was
Speaker 1: weirdly interested in it in a way that I've never
Speaker 1: seen them. I've never seen them cover another social movement
Speaker 1: that wasn't like literally burning their offices down, And it
Speaker 1: was like it was like in the beginning, it was
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, obviously the right wing media is
Speaker 1: losing their minds, but they were kind of kind of
Speaker 1: supportive of it, and I think, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: you thinking about this. One of the things that that
Speaker 1: happens in both in both Greece and in Spain is
Speaker 1: that the product movement of the squares is these electoral movements,
Speaker 1: and these electoral movements just fail like catastrophically, like Starsia
Speaker 1: takes power, like like the they like you know, they
Speaker 1: they have they have they have a like their their
Speaker 1: finance minister is a left communist. He's like he is
Speaker 1: the most fire left person ever like to hold office
Speaker 1: since like the Spanish anarchists in ninety nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: and they employed austerity. Anyways, in Spain, you get put
Speaker 1: demos and it's like wow, okay, you have you know,
Speaker 1: they had this thing called the electoral war machine. They're
Speaker 1: they're gonna take over the Spantish but because something they
Speaker 1: just it collapsed. It just doesn't work. They've they've never
Speaker 1: like they've they've they've they've never taken power. They've never
Speaker 1: really got anywhere. They they successfully evicted a bunch of
Speaker 1: squats in Catalonia. But yeah, but and I think this
Speaker 1: is my impression if it was that I think the
Speaker 1: US media thought they could they could do this to
Speaker 1: occupy and and I think they kind of it's weird
Speaker 1: because looking so you know, like I I come in
Speaker 1: and like to to this kind of stuff around on seventeen,
Speaker 1: and I think it it's like it weirdly worked. But
Speaker 1: it worked because they were able to group the anti
Speaker 1: occupy people. So it's like, yeah, and so they did
Speaker 1: finally get their like cadre of like pseudo left organizers
Speaker 1: so they could used to build a democratic party. It's
Speaker 1: just it is like Jocobin and then I'll think the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole sort of anti occupy group. Yeah, so those
Speaker 1: folks were actually UM active during Occupy UM, critiquing the
Speaker 1: people who now most loudly UM claim the legacy of
Speaker 1: Occupy UM. You know, as you said, Jacobin, a lot
Speaker 1: of those sort of social democratic groups um. At the time, UM,
Speaker 1: and those of us who were there, remember they hated Occupy.
Speaker 1: They would show up, but they like would critique it constantly.
Speaker 1: They would write all these articles about how it was terrible,
Speaker 1: there were no demands, it was too disorganized. And then
Speaker 1: I think, you know, when Black Revolt got put on
Speaker 1: the table, they were like, bring back Occupy. We liked
Speaker 1: that better. But but I think to be as harsh
Speaker 1: as possible, but um, I think like, um, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: there was there was a lot of media coverage. It
Speaker 1: didn't feel super friendly at the time. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of There was a lot of media coverage,
Speaker 1: Like the media was very curious, it was very interested,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that coverage was like why do
Speaker 1: they have no demands? Like why are they so disorganized?
Speaker 1: Why are they so smelly? Whatever? Like there was a
Speaker 1: lot of like there was lot of slander in the press,
Speaker 1: but also a lot of attention, um, which you know,
Speaker 1: I turned turned out was as good as you could get,
Speaker 1: but at the time didn't didn't feel very good. Particularly
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, but yes, those those forces, those forces
Speaker 1: were already present um in you know, in in occupy itself, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of denouncing it um for its disorganization
Speaker 1: um and then eventually claiming that it was the reason
Speaker 1: that Bernie Sanders happened, um, which isn't totally wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to be really clear, like I think, and
Speaker 1: I think what we'll get into this more. But I
Speaker 1: think like the thing that about the thing that was
Speaker 1: important about occupy and the thing that the people who
Speaker 1: in my opinion, like my comrades during Occupy or people
Speaker 1: I meet who were like doing Occupy stuff but like
Speaker 1: who I didn't know, but like now we I you know,
Speaker 1: I roll with them. Most of us have the have
Speaker 1: the you know, the analysis, like it was really important
Speaker 1: that we were doing politics in the street. It was
Speaker 1: really important that we were back together they were talking politics.
Speaker 1: And then there were really really intense, extreme limits to
Speaker 1: what Occupy could have done. UM. And I think Oakland
Speaker 1: really pushed those um and and you know, and got
Speaker 1: to those but um. And I think the folks who
Speaker 1: are like, no, no, Occupy was good at the time,
Speaker 1: we're like Occupy is terrible. UM. And I think that's
Speaker 1: worth notice noting and thinking about. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: before we sort of going into talk a bit about
Speaker 1: what happened to Oakland to talk about some of their
Speaker 1: stuff so on on day to day basis, like what
Speaker 1: is occupy actually doing? Because I think that's also been
Speaker 1: sort of lost in this whole, Like everyone remembers like
Speaker 1: the slogans and everyonebers fact that there's a thing, but
Speaker 1: you know, like that there's there's a bunch of working
Speaker 1: groups and they're doing things like what what was that
Speaker 1: like like day to day? And then I sort of
Speaker 1: brought a lovell yeah so so um So, first of all,
Speaker 1: again I was only in New York. I spent some
Speaker 1: time at Occupied Boston as well. UM, but like I
Speaker 1: don't have a sense of what other places were like,
Speaker 1: so I really can't, I mean other than having heard
Speaker 1: from people. So I want to be very clear that
Speaker 1: I'm like mostly addressing that. Um. I think the thing
Speaker 1: that was going on was that the Zakati Park, like
Speaker 1: the park was like total chaos. Um. Part of that
Speaker 1: was because there was a drum circle that basically was
Speaker 1: owing twenty four hours a day um there, which meant
Speaker 1: that whenever you were down there and it was like
Speaker 1: a canyon. Scotty Park is surrounded by skyscrapers, so it
Speaker 1: was just this incredible cacophony all the time, um, which
Speaker 1: I think was cool. It really ruined a lot of
Speaker 1: finance bros, like like like orally with an a there
Speaker 1: um but I think like, but it also was pretty
Speaker 1: intense and unpleasant. Sometimes you were like please stop, oh
Speaker 1: my god, like that's at one point in general assembly,
Speaker 1: I think decided that drums were like only acceptable during
Speaker 1: certain hours, like near the end of the movement, like
Speaker 1: the drums the drum circle got reproached, when in fact
Speaker 1: they were like actually the biggest agents of chaos in Zuccoti,
Speaker 1: which is another important lesson, but um, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: So you know. Also, because I had been in bloomberg Ville,
Speaker 1: because I've been in Barcelona, I didn't invest myself very
Speaker 1: heavily in camp management stuff, so I mostly was doing
Speaker 1: um work. One of the things that I think it's
Speaker 1: forgotten about is that there were snake marches basically three
Speaker 1: or four a day every day after after the first
Speaker 1: week when we were really small, when it got big,
Speaker 1: they were just constant, constant marches through the city, just
Speaker 1: like always going off, like you would run and you'd
Speaker 1: be on one march you run into another march, like
Speaker 1: on a Saturday or Sunday, when like people were really
Speaker 1: like out there like it was, it was really like
Speaker 1: there was a lot of mayhem. There would be big
Speaker 1: planned marches that would then be bigger. Um. So there
Speaker 1: was like a lot of like, um, what people now
Speaker 1: would call direct action, what I would call largely like
Speaker 1: sort of symbolic practice for direct action. Mostly, UM, I
Speaker 1: don't mind, I like marches. I certainly got my miles
Speaker 1: in then like I don't feel like I need to
Speaker 1: do that again. But um, but you know, so then
Speaker 1: at the camp people were just living there. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of like a lot of punks, a lot
Speaker 1: of like you know, a lot of homeless folks obviously,
Speaker 1: and some and some encampments had more at a higher
Speaker 1: concentration about the house people. Some in New York because
Speaker 1: of all the media spectacle and all the money that
Speaker 1: came in. We had a lot of nonprofit drifters by
Speaker 1: the end in the encampment. But there's also like a library, um,
Speaker 1: a free library with all these books that like would
Speaker 1: be donated. Um, there's a lot of like you know,
Speaker 1: political agitation. There were people standing around the Um, the
Speaker 1: you know the corners of the park, you know, with
Speaker 1: with signs and you're yelling at people. And it's also
Speaker 1: important to remember that like Zuccatti Park in New York
Speaker 1: is tiny. It's tiny. We originally wanted to do it
Speaker 1: on in this big plaza like City Bank plaza. Um,
Speaker 1: and the cops have heard about that and fence it off.
Speaker 1: So on the seventeenth we just like we just, um,
Speaker 1: what's the word we get? We we did a oh
Speaker 1: my god football metaphors we called an audible thank you.
Speaker 1: So we said, Zuccatti is this tiny little park. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly dense, and it's surrounded by you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: to skyscrapers, it's in this really weird part of the
Speaker 1: city that no one would ever spend any time and
Speaker 1: if they didn't have to otherwise. Um. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of So there's all this stuff going on, and then
Speaker 1: they're all these their general assemblies twice a day, um, which,
Speaker 1: as I said, in New York, we're particularly unhelpful. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think anarchists and a lot of cities we
Speaker 1: have talked to you, like I had a comrade down
Speaker 1: in DC one in Denver, they sort of said that
Speaker 1: the general assemblies either quickly like got shifted or got
Speaker 1: or became irrelevant. UM. I think the general sumblies were
Speaker 1: not we're not in the end where we're symbolically important
Speaker 1: but not but not really driving force um of my
Speaker 1: experience UM. And then there would be there would be,
Speaker 1: like I said, there'd be a lot of organizing outside
Speaker 1: of the park. There'd be a lot of like meetings
Speaker 1: and you know, talks and UM, direct actions and marches UM.
Speaker 1: And then there would be you know, uh, I guess
Speaker 1: that's kind of the extent of it, right, is that
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of direct action that but
Speaker 1: there was always this park where you could go and
Speaker 1: like run into people and like hook up with people,
Speaker 1: meet people and like do a weird thing. And I
Speaker 1: think that was really like the heart of the movement
Speaker 1: was the fact that there was this place you could
Speaker 1: go meet someone and like link into something weird and
Speaker 1: maybe cool and maybe not it doesn't matter, but like
Speaker 1: there was always something to do kind of and it
Speaker 1: was constant, was like this or twenty four hour right
Speaker 1: like experience. And I think that was really what um,
Speaker 1: what separated it from from are from other movement waves
Speaker 1: that we've had, we've had since um and was was
Speaker 1: was probably I think it's greatest strength in many ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that was That was the the impression
Speaker 1: that I got. And part of this also was when
Speaker 1: I when I was in college, like every once in
Speaker 1: a while, you just get assigned like some person writing
Speaker 1: but occupy, and it was like most of them were
Speaker 1: just extremely cranky about the whole thing. But sure, you know,
Speaker 1: one of one of the things I think was interesting
Speaker 1: about it is that everyone seemed to eree, at least
Speaker 1: to some extent, that part of what was going on
Speaker 1: was that it's it's it's this way to do I
Speaker 1: don't know if I had any formations quite the right
Speaker 1: word for it, but it's it's this way to sort
Speaker 1: of like rebuild social connections and rebuild like social sort
Speaker 1: of bonds in a way that just had you know,
Speaker 1: as public space becomes just the cops. And like there's
Speaker 1: there's a table in Chinatown that I like called the
Speaker 1: cop Table. Well I'm really mad about that, Like, because
Speaker 1: this is Chicago, chin To, I would like go there
Speaker 1: staring from the library and there's a sign sign on
Speaker 1: the table that says if you loiterer at this table,
Speaker 1: you will be arrested. It's like this is a picnic table,
Speaker 1: Like the cops are you. This table is threatening that
Speaker 1: it is going to arrest you if you use it
Speaker 1: for what's using you know, for what you're supposed to
Speaker 1: use tables for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think like it was, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of UM at the time. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were talking about UM uh embarrassingly about
Speaker 1: heart and negrees sort of like multitude stuff. Really really
Speaker 1: a much better book that was important was also UM,
Speaker 1: David Graber's debt UM. But I think, like, you know,
Speaker 1: and there was like a lot of like people saying
Speaker 1: things about like the Agora you know, UM democracy list
Speaker 1: sort of political the political encounter space of encounter UM,
Speaker 1: and that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of being a little sarcastic with a lot of it,
Speaker 1: but like, but I think, like, like there there was
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, UM part of how we
Speaker 1: should I think we should understand UM, the over discussed
Speaker 1: under under you know, like over analyzed word neoliberalism like
Speaker 1: has largely become meaningless. One of the things I should
Speaker 1: I think I think it's valuable for understanding is a
Speaker 1: process by which capitalism responded to the Long Sixties by
Speaker 1: disorganizing its production process such to the Long Sixties could
Speaker 1: never happen again, right, So like like the four the
Speaker 1: the control the like the concentration of workers within within
Speaker 1: production in such a way that they could be agitated
Speaker 1: by students and then like sort of radically unionized wildcat
Speaker 1: and sort of like almost overthrow a government, right Like
Speaker 1: the neoliberalism is like you know it smashes the unions, yes,
Speaker 1: but it also also like distributes out the active production, right,
Speaker 1: so that so that that's not so easily done. And
Speaker 1: I think one of the real problems of you know
Speaker 1: that was facing social movement, um you know in the
Speaker 1: in the period, you know, the long period, like you know,
Speaker 1: you had stuff like in the U s again that
Speaker 1: this is where you know the best, but like you know,
Speaker 1: you have the l A uprising which is huge, um
Speaker 1: and you have you know, the summit hopping movement and
Speaker 1: anti globalization, which you know what could attack a target.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't really a sense of like how it
Speaker 1: felt hard to do a local struggle um beyond like
Speaker 1: literally like a revolutionary riot like l A, which you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really precipitate. UM. I mean you can't really
Speaker 1: precipitate a movement either, obviously. But I think like but like,
Speaker 1: but like uh, a political political movement, a form of
Speaker 1: political organizing that didn't require something on the level of
Speaker 1: George Floyd, which is what the l A rebellion was, right, UM.
Speaker 1: But that also didn't require, like, uh, an action from
Speaker 1: capital that you were like striking against, right like the
Speaker 1: the uh you know, the Summits or whatever. UM. And
Speaker 1: that that again and like all of these eras are
Speaker 1: very important. This is not to like, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: like this is with with respect for those movements. UM,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we felt I think it felt like we
Speaker 1: were in a political wilderness. And I think that that,
Speaker 1: like UM Occupy really and the movement of the squares globally,
Speaker 1: I think UM really like demonstrated that it was possible
Speaker 1: to practice a kind of street politics even without UM,
Speaker 1: you know, a shop floor where you can organize even
Speaker 1: without UM, you know, a a a capital p party
Speaker 1: to organize within UM. And I think that was really important.
Speaker 1: I think it also scared a lot of people who
Speaker 1: and and continues to who are committed to those politics
Speaker 1: um and um to the twenty century workers movement or
Speaker 1: the nineteenth and twenty century labor movement, which they somehow
Speaker 1: fantasize will come back, um if they just wish hard
Speaker 1: enough and write net books or whatever. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think like, um so, I think that was powerful. I
Speaker 1: also think like like, yeah, sorry, we can move on
Speaker 1: to legacy later. But yes, I think that was Like,
Speaker 1: I think that was very much like an important thing
Speaker 1: was was just like and you know, um, I graduated
Speaker 1: college in two thousand nine, um so I was like
Speaker 1: part of that millennial generation that like, you know, had
Speaker 1: gone into incredibly deep debt, Like we'd have a college
Speaker 1: degree and then like the bottom fill out of the
Speaker 1: economy there were no jobs. Um And Like I think
Speaker 1: there were a lot of you know, like people who
Speaker 1: like had anticipated a middle class life um of some kind.
Speaker 1: Not that I really had at that point, but whatever, like,
Speaker 1: but but a lot of people, like in my economic
Speaker 1: cohort like had um uh suddenly facing you know, proletarianization, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that was one of the strengths of
Speaker 1: the movement. I think that was that, you know, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned the statistics in great in Spain and Greece. Like,
Speaker 1: I think that was a global aspect of this kind
Speaker 1: of movement um uh Arab Spring to like there was
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like that was really a
Speaker 1: response to the economic crisis. Obviously, those folks were already
Speaker 1: more proletarian than the people who the young people and
Speaker 1: in the squares movements, UM. But they they innovated, they
Speaker 1: created the tactics in in Arab Spring right um Terrer Square,
Speaker 1: most famously in Cairo. Um and UM I think like
Speaker 1: those creating a meeting place where um, you didn't require
Speaker 1: a preconstructed like political community um in order to engage
Speaker 1: was a strength and a weakness UM. And I think
Speaker 1: it also, you know, as a result of the dynamics
Speaker 1: of the General Assembly, the dynamics of the sort of
Speaker 1: volunteerist nature of that what I'm describing, um, it led
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who were already confident, who
Speaker 1: are already feeling good, being able to like take more
Speaker 1: power right like um uh And I think it also
Speaker 1: was a very white movement um certainly in New York,
Speaker 1: but but I think I think across the country, UM,
Speaker 1: it was largely it was largely you know it was.
Speaker 1: It was majority white in a way that you know,
Speaker 1: by higher percentages than any movement that we've really been
Speaker 1: part of since um was UM. And that was obviously
Speaker 1: a limit um for for reasons that will be obvious
Speaker 1: to everyone, including the idea that like a lot of
Speaker 1: people pushed that like the police are part of the right. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk about the police, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's that's one of the other extremely
Speaker 1: important aspects of this is this immense militarization. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so I think that the militarization of the police as
Speaker 1: a phrase, I think it's somewhat misleading in that like
Speaker 1: the cops have always like shot people. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: there there's yeah, there, there's there's there's still like there's
Speaker 1: an intense sort of ramp up of of the prison sector.
Speaker 1: There's you have this intense boom in the size of prisons.
Speaker 1: You have, Yeah, you have you have increasing parts of
Speaker 1: the economy that are just the entire towns that used
Speaker 1: to be sort of manufacturing sectors, used to be sort
Speaker 1: of involved in sort of industrial production that are just
Speaker 1: like the economy is now just there's a prison there
Speaker 1: and right, and I think this is also looking back,
Speaker 1: one of the things that look like occupy kind of
Speaker 1: ran ran up into because you know, occupies this attempt
Speaker 1: to like you know, form a democratic space, and it
Speaker 1: relies crucially on this this thing that is nominally in
Speaker 1: the Constitution but doesn't exist, which is the like the
Speaker 1: right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom
Speaker 1: of assembly and freedom assembly like that is that is
Speaker 1: like that is bullshit. It does not exist. If you like,
Speaker 1: if if you actually believe that this exists, like try
Speaker 1: getting like seventy people into a space and see how
Speaker 1: like just like I don't know, like into a street
Speaker 1: or just just like into into like have one of
Speaker 1: people on a park and just like see how fast
Speaker 1: the cops show up, because you know it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the first time yeah that I was I was at
Speaker 1: any kind of protests, cops immediately wanted to take anything
Speaker 1: I was holding. You're not you're not You're not allowed.
Speaker 1: The first thing if if if if you have anything
Speaker 1: in your hands, that's that that is a that is
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, it's like the First Amendment is just
Speaker 1: it's super completely superseded by traffic laws, like laws about
Speaker 1: like sidewalk maintenance, like no, it's it's all fair, like
Speaker 1: none of it like you're you're not You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to And this is this is I think is partially
Speaker 1: what this is kind of a talk, but this is
Speaker 1: part I think why there's so much focused on the
Speaker 1: right about the first Mont because they want to they
Speaker 1: want to draw attention away from the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: the actual thing that's fake about it is that you
Speaker 1: can't gather people and meat anywhere, and they want to
Speaker 1: draw it into these like inane like this professor like
Speaker 1: said the N word a bunch of times in class.
Speaker 1: Isn't it bad that people are mad at them? But
Speaker 1: but if I think also go to tyn this sort
Speaker 1: of back to occupy. You know. Okay, So, so occupy
Speaker 1: functions right insofar as there is a a physical location
Speaker 1: where people can go and physically interact with each other.
Speaker 1: And that's a problem because at some point the police
Speaker 1: are just like no, and they start clearing the encampments.
Speaker 1: And I think this is this is the other thing
Speaker 1: that occupy is that outside of like parts of Oakland,
Speaker 1: and that that's a whole other thing that yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it's incredibly studiously non violent in a way
Speaker 1: that like nothing I've ever seen before since is yeah,
Speaker 1: so so so there's a lot there. I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: want to talk about it because that's there's a lot
Speaker 1: um but yeah, so I think I think the militarization
Speaker 1: of the police thesis um is is incomplete if you
Speaker 1: don't also talk about the policification of the military. Right, so,
Speaker 1: like part of what happens with with the great expansion
Speaker 1: of the of the uh Carcel state, part of that
Speaker 1: is also a response to the Vietnam War um and
Speaker 1: and mass resistance within you know, the troops they were
Speaker 1: like in the Vietnam the in like the last two
Speaker 1: years when ground troops are there in Vietnam, there's like
Speaker 1: four hundred fragging incidents where where um you know where
Speaker 1: where privates and recruits killed their officers. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Army during the during Vietnam was on the brink of
Speaker 1: of collapse in the way that like like the Russian
Speaker 1: Army was looking in it was like like like the
Speaker 1: numbers I think I think still number one point there
Speaker 1: was like forty of the army by the end of
Speaker 1: Vietnam was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was, it was complete. There was the reason that
Speaker 1: Nixon pursues Vietnam sizzation, which is when they just started
Speaker 1: doing air campaigns, bombing and napalm, is because they couldn't
Speaker 1: rely on ground troops anymore. They just they were useless.
Speaker 1: They were all high. Um, you know the talk about
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of talking about like heroin,
Speaker 1: but like that was actually kind of a form of
Speaker 1: resistance within the lines in a complicated way. Whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all very So the military realizes that it can't
Speaker 1: function as a mass military in the model that nation
Speaker 1: states have done since the Napoleonic Wars, right, which is
Speaker 1: like the mass you know, the mass recruitment of the
Speaker 1: citizen soldier. Um, that's sort of how war is fought
Speaker 1: between you know, eighteen ten and nineteen seventy. And then
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that that's not gonna work anymore because
Speaker 1: because the aims of the countries and the power of
Speaker 1: nationalism have become too abstracted. Fascism has done too much
Speaker 1: damage to that image. There's just like there's it doesn't
Speaker 1: really work anymore. So the military turns into a sort
Speaker 1: of what it always was also which is like a
Speaker 1: colonial policing force, and so the police the military drift
Speaker 1: towards one another in form and function. Okay, So in Occupy, Um,
Speaker 1: one of the microhistories that I think it's forgotten is that, like,
Speaker 1: I mean because because it took a week, and like,
Speaker 1: who remembers this week except for like weirdos like me
Speaker 1: who were there. Um, is it like there was no
Speaker 1: one at Zuccati in the first first week. And one
Speaker 1: of the big things that happened was these these these
Speaker 1: you know, young white girls got caught in a police
Speaker 1: net and pepper sprayed, and there was this video that
Speaker 1: went around with them getting pepper sprayed and screaming. Is
Speaker 1: particularly this good this woman on her knees, you know,
Speaker 1: screaming with with tears and pepper spray going down her face,
Speaker 1: and that really outraged people because you know, they were
Speaker 1: you know, it was police depression and police violence. So
Speaker 1: in terms of the question of non violence, yes, Um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of non violence. It was a
Speaker 1: constant fight that took honestly took until the George Floyd
Speaker 1: uprising for the right outside to win. Frankly, but but
Speaker 1: but but during occupy there was you know, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of non violence nonsense. Um and I think like,
Speaker 1: but but another thing that happened though was that like
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, people were marching every day.
Speaker 1: So even in New York, where I think the political
Speaker 1: height was kind of achieved, October one when we took
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Bridge. Um, I think I think New York
Speaker 1: never really like had a big moment again, Like it
Speaker 1: was largely sort of like smaller things after that. But um,
Speaker 1: but like and there was a mass arrest on the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge. We marched over the Brooklyn Bridge, the brookn
Speaker 1: Bridge got shut down. They arrested seven hundred of US. Um.
Speaker 1: It was the first big infrastructure shutdown that happened in
Speaker 1: the US since the l A Riots. It was a
Speaker 1: big deal at the time. Now, can I put a
Speaker 1: note doubt though, specifically for the Brooklyn Bridge if you're
Speaker 1: because people I've seen every every single time there's one
Speaker 1: of these movements, people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge
Speaker 1: and they all got arrested. It's like, can can you
Speaker 1: all like please, I am begging you if you're going
Speaker 1: to try to take a bridge, make sure you have
Speaker 1: a way out, Like, yeah, you got to hold one
Speaker 1: of the sites to get arrested. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you
Speaker 1: got a way out a bridge designed to not have
Speaker 1: a way out. Exactly. Please please don't all get arrested.
Speaker 1: It's it's in fact bad and yeah, sorry, exactly. I
Speaker 1: have seen a few people successively take bridges a few times,
Speaker 1: but that's because there was like three cop cars and
Speaker 1: like people, if you have like a block with two
Speaker 1: hundred kids, you're not going to be able to hold
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Welcome to Dick hauld Happened Here, a
Speaker 1: podcast about a crumbling empire and planting seeds in the
Speaker 1: spaces between. Here's part two of our interview with Vicky
Speaker 1: Ouston while about the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. But
Speaker 1: but you know, like you were saying, you know like
Speaker 1: that that you know, don't get arrested, it's bad. So
Speaker 1: I think when occupy really started, you know, we were
Speaker 1: mostly people who had been educated by the co optation
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement, which is that it is
Speaker 1: all non violent and that the whole thing was getting
Speaker 1: arrested and Martin Luther King was like the only voice
Speaker 1: that made any sense and that was what was effective.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah. Um. We had all learned
Speaker 1: that in school, right, We had all been trained that
Speaker 1: like non violence was like the only thing that made
Speaker 1: sense and that worked. Um. And I think like those
Speaker 1: of us who learned about it at all in school,
Speaker 1: which is certainly not everyone, but like I think, like
Speaker 1: like the the experience of occupy of like every day
Speaker 1: just getting beat up by the cops every day, like
Speaker 1: getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people got really some people
Speaker 1: got really nihilistically nonviolent, Like some people like really dug
Speaker 1: in and they're like like like we're like no, like
Speaker 1: there is nothing we can do except be beaten in
Speaker 1: the turn of this like real masochistic game. But that happens,
Speaker 1: that still happens all the time. Oh yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's one. That's one common response. But another thing that
Speaker 1: happened was that people started breaking through that that that ship.
Speaker 1: People people started on the ground. Like I remember a march,
Speaker 1: you know, early on, you know, the police would attack
Speaker 1: and everyone would sort of like d try a d
Speaker 1: esco late and people would try to like you know,
Speaker 1: like like talk to the cops or whatever. And like
Speaker 1: by November when right before the camps got cleared, I
Speaker 1: remember being on a march where we stole all of
Speaker 1: their orange meeting using and you're just holding it over
Speaker 1: our head at large and like trapping cops in it.
Speaker 1: So like even in New York where things never gotten
Speaker 1: that intense, um like in some ways in terms of
Speaker 1: direct action like that lesson on the ground, like you
Speaker 1: have to be you have to be very ideologically committed
Speaker 1: to get hit with the baton three times and still
Speaker 1: think the police are on your side. You know, you
Speaker 1: have to like really, you have to really be drinking
Speaker 1: kool aid. And some people are like some people really
Speaker 1: do want to believe that. But I think, um, I
Speaker 1: think that was one So during occupy, like those of
Speaker 1: us who hated the police were pretty lonely even though
Speaker 1: the police were beating us up. But by the end
Speaker 1: of Occupied the seeds had really been sown for a
Speaker 1: lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: immediately so fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think,
Speaker 1: like I think like folks who stayed in struggle from
Speaker 1: there grew more and more anti police. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that in general. That was well, okay, so my stress
Speaker 1: was less with occupying more with like the two thirteen
Speaker 1: stuff in Turkey. But it's like that that was because
Speaker 1: I was brought up in that like this sort of
Speaker 1: like Foe Gandhi and like, yeah, MLK civil to Subians.
Speaker 1: And then it was like like I watched Turkey happened,
Speaker 1: and it was like, hey, here's my friend just like
Speaker 1: getting his ribs broken by a cop. And then like
Speaker 1: there's Raba and you know, and it were bas sort
Speaker 1: of where whe the Egyptian movement dies and were bad,
Speaker 1: they just you know, they bring out the machine guns
Speaker 1: and they just shoot everyone. Yeah, and at a certain point,
Speaker 1: like you know, this is the limited non violence, right
Speaker 1: is that what happens if they just shoot you and
Speaker 1: and Gandhi? You know, if what if you ever want
Speaker 1: to like go down to the Gandhi rabbit hole, like
Speaker 1: Gandhi like writes this letter to like like the Jews
Speaker 1: of Germany where he's telling them to like throw themselves
Speaker 1: on the blades of the Nazis, and it's like this,
Speaker 1: it's it's this is this is like yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous, like just this is just like it's
Speaker 1: being complacent for abuse. UM. Anyone Too Studios has a
Speaker 1: really good video on why non violence helps the state
Speaker 1: UM and how basically activists that try to force other
Speaker 1: you know, demonstrators to adhere strictly to non violence, that's
Speaker 1: basically that's that's them in that's them basically saying that
Speaker 1: if like that, that's then endorsing the police beating somebody
Speaker 1: up like like that. Like that's it's it's not actually
Speaker 1: tied to any kind of movement and it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: help like I and we could actually see this last
Speaker 1: year with like the first few weeks of like you know,
Speaker 1: abuse from the state actually making headlines and actually changing people.
Speaker 1: But after a while it just didn't matter. Like a
Speaker 1: cop could put someone down and pummel their face in
Speaker 1: like August and like who gives a ship nobody, Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know, like that's that's
Speaker 1: why I found it funny when you talked about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, people getting mad because the cops are like
Speaker 1: mazing people when they turn into them, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: if that happened, no one, no one would give a
Speaker 1: ship Like yeah, well, like I think not at all anymore. Yeah, totally. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I think part of it is the first
Speaker 1: time that you see it, it's like what on earth?
Speaker 1: Like this this? This I think has been one of
Speaker 1: the things that's been the core of the whole sort
Speaker 1: of nineteen like late sort of cycle revolutions, is that
Speaker 1: like if if you're just like a dude in a
Speaker 1: grocery store and some guy runs in is like running
Speaker 1: away from the cops and then like fifteen riot cops
Speaker 1: and just start beating the shout out of them, which
Speaker 1: is the thing that happens like a lot. Like if
Speaker 1: you just see that, right, there's no way you can actually,
Speaker 1: like like if you ordinary person just witness the cops
Speaker 1: running up and just being the show of someone, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized
Speaker 1: against the police by it. But like, yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: there's a certain point where you hit it. The decentitization
Speaker 1: happens more quickly than what it should. Um, and we
Speaker 1: stopped caring. I agree. I agree with both of you
Speaker 1: that like that, Like both it is shocking and radicalizing
Speaker 1: and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular
Speaker 1: pressure to naturalize the police and non violence ideology is
Speaker 1: part of that is part of naturalizing police violence, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's nothing you can do about police violence. Um,
Speaker 1: so all you can do is control yourself, and therefore
Speaker 1: you should you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Gandhi had this whole fantasy about, um, the perfect army
Speaker 1: would march unarmed into machine gun fire, um, and would
Speaker 1: just be mowed down. It's it's he's a fascist, frankly
Speaker 1: um and and yeah, and you only need to look
Speaker 1: at his opinions about black Africans when he was when
Speaker 1: he Africot to see that even if you even if
Speaker 1: you just read like like even if you just read
Speaker 1: like self reliance, it's like this is you know, it's
Speaker 1: not everything I want to talk about with with the
Speaker 1: peace police though, which is that like they're also like
Speaker 1: in terms of like fighting, like inflicting violence on other protesters,
Speaker 1: like they are the most violent like of of of
Speaker 1: the factions you've seen in a pro that does happen
Speaker 1: very well, maybe not the most like like that, it
Speaker 1: does happen like like they beat people up. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, like it ties into like protest security,
Speaker 1: and when protest security is usually working with these more
Speaker 1: like peace police type organizers, and then they use protest
Speaker 1: security to literally beat up people who are doing more
Speaker 1: radical action against the state. Um. That happens all the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, protest security. When I see protest security or marshals, Um,
Speaker 1: I know exactly that that the that we're in a
Speaker 1: bad We're in a bad march. Um. The only time
Speaker 1: I've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during
Speaker 1: Occupy actually, um during after the night after you've been evicted, um,
Speaker 1: which is like November, I think. Um. And if people
Speaker 1: don't remember, Obama and the FBI coordinated this nationally, all
Speaker 1: the occupying encampments got swept within a week of each other.
Speaker 1: Um on that march. Um, we're marching around, We march
Speaker 1: around all night, UM. And I'm just dragging a trash
Speaker 1: can into the street because we're being followed by police
Speaker 1: cars and I'm literally attempting to do some education. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I'm like pulling the trash can in
Speaker 1: the street, and I'm yelling, you know, I am doing
Speaker 1: this because I want to protect us from police violence.
Speaker 1: Like if this is in the street, then the cop
Speaker 1: cars can't catch us as much. That's why we build baraka.
Speaker 1: I'm like literally trying to like yell this because, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because pulling a trash can in the streets
Speaker 1: incredibly and effective ultimately, so it was like literally it
Speaker 1: was literally just like for education purposes at that point
Speaker 1: basically anyway, especially since a lot of people would like
Speaker 1: pull them back out of the street. Whatever. This guy
Speaker 1: runs up on me and grabs me by the collar
Speaker 1: and lifts me up and like threatens me with this
Speaker 1: fucking fist, and he says, if my mom can't get
Speaker 1: to work tomorrow because of you, like I'll beat the
Speaker 1: ship out of you. And we're like we're marching in
Speaker 1: Manhattan a like one am. I'm like, what the hell
Speaker 1: are you talking about? And like he would have he
Speaker 1: would have hurt me like pretty bad if a friend
Speaker 1: of mine hadn't like luckily had my back and like
Speaker 1: de escalated a bit That's the only time I've ever
Speaker 1: been like physically like brought up like into a fight
Speaker 1: um with by by another protester. Was was a guy
Speaker 1: insisting that me dragging a trash can into the street.
Speaker 1: It was beyond the pale and I but I want
Speaker 1: to just talk a bit more, but like how systematic
Speaker 1: the violence was, like because Okay, so originally I was
Speaker 1: gonna try to get someone from Occupy Oakland to come
Speaker 1: talk about this, and I talked to a lot of
Speaker 1: people and the biggest thing that I got was that
Speaker 1: no one would talk about it on the record because
Speaker 1: they got because Oakland had Oakland had a blacklist and
Speaker 1: if if you were inoccupy and like anyone else found
Speaker 1: out about it, like people like people couldn't people spent
Speaker 1: half a decade just not being able to find jobs
Speaker 1: because they just play blacklisted everyone and like to this day,
Speaker 1: like the thing I was told was like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I won't talk about this because you know, like if
Speaker 1: if I talked about this, like I will be fired,
Speaker 1: all of my family everyone around me will be fired.
Speaker 1: And there's like I think, like this is the everything.
Speaker 1: But when we talked about sort of the collapsive occupy,
Speaker 1: the the extent to which, after a bomb in the
Speaker 1: ordered the camps closed. The policy is that the comps
Speaker 1: are going to torture anyone who attempts to like gather
Speaker 1: in a place yep, yep. For for two years, you
Speaker 1: couldn't have a meeting outside without a police attacking basically,
Speaker 1: and yeah, um and and yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was. You know, I think like a lot of UM,
Speaker 1: the people who now claim that that occupy is the
Speaker 1: reason that they do politics or whatever for burning standers
Speaker 1: or whatever, UM, at the time they were saying that
Speaker 1: the reason it collapses because there was no UM organization.
Speaker 1: There was no structure, there was no political party, there
Speaker 1: was no you know whatever, there was no demands. And
Speaker 1: like it's true that it was poorly organized, like there's
Speaker 1: no doubt, um, but like we got beat out of
Speaker 1: the streets, Like we got beat out of the streets,
Speaker 1: and like people tried for six months really intensely, and
Speaker 1: for another six months after that less intensely to restart
Speaker 1: that energy. Um. There was all this works forwards, like
Speaker 1: a general strike on May Day, UM two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: which ended up not really working, which is actually actually
Speaker 1: the kind of demand filled one day of action kind
Speaker 1: of politics that they were demanding actually really failed, which
Speaker 1: I think is telling. But but in the meantime, like
Speaker 1: you know, like occupy like Zuccati got cleared. But for
Speaker 1: a while, there was a thing. No one remembers this,
Speaker 1: I don't think, but there was a thing up in
Speaker 1: um uh Union Square. Um. There was an occupation for
Speaker 1: three weeks. There was like all the Union Square freaks
Speaker 1: um and like a bunch of occupiers um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the cops just like it was just like batons out
Speaker 1: on site for a few years in New York. UM.
Speaker 1: And I know it was like that everywhere else or
Speaker 1: most everywhere else, and that that came down from on
Speaker 1: high that like the police were just like, oh, what
Speaker 1: was dangerous about this was people gathering in public. So
Speaker 1: we really need to like we really need to like
Speaker 1: enforce the Second Amendment being meaningless now, we really need
Speaker 1: to stop meetings from happening in public. Um. And that
Speaker 1: violence was super intense and super real, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people got beaten out of the movement, you know,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people got really demoralized and left.
Speaker 1: And I understand why. It was scary and awful and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of repression, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and it and it, and it has continued to sort
Speaker 1: of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate. Um.
Speaker 1: But what has successfully happened in our movements, I think
Speaker 1: to our to our credit, is that we haven't actually
Speaker 1: formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more
Speaker 1: effective police repression. All the police have right now against us,
Speaker 1: for the most part is batons in the street. Um.
Speaker 1: They have a lot more trouble infiltrating. UM, a lot
Speaker 1: more trouble, Which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy,
Speaker 1: but they have a lot more trouble um, um taking
Speaker 1: down the movements in the in a sort of cointel
Speaker 1: pro way, right. Um. The modes of repression have changed
Speaker 1: a bit. UM. But that's also because we don't have
Speaker 1: It's a combination of the fact that we don't have
Speaker 1: those forms of organization, but we also don't have those
Speaker 1: forms of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our
Speaker 1: living conditions like they used to. UM. So I think
Speaker 1: it's it's you can't just give credit to any one thing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different factors at play. I think
Speaker 1: I will say one of one of the other things
Speaker 1: that that I've noticed, and I think I think I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this has happened. Talked to talk to people
Speaker 1: are talking about that occupies it like the first thing
Speaker 1: if you have a group of people who are just there,
Speaker 1: the first thing the cops trying to do is a
Speaker 1: point a leader so that they have one person that
Speaker 1: they can go to and this and this lets them
Speaker 1: sort of this this sort of like access point to
Speaker 1: which they sort of break like the demands of the
Speaker 1: crowd is that they find one person, they point in
Speaker 1: the leader and they get that person to sort of
Speaker 1: like be the liaison. My favorite Occupied joke, I gotta
Speaker 1: give respect to Occupy Denver. This is the best joke
Speaker 1: that ever happened to Occupy. They announced the beginning of
Speaker 1: one week on Friday, we are going to announce our leader.
Speaker 1: Occupy Denver has chosen a leader, and the whole movement
Speaker 1: got so upset. Everyone was so angry. I was like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck and like they have this like big
Speaker 1: press conference and their leader was a Golden Retriever and
Speaker 1: it was like, as as who knows to Occupied Denver?
Speaker 1: Whoever organize that prank? I love you, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking thinking of kudos to a place. The last thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about was the giant like port
Speaker 1: occupation strike thing in Oakland, because I mean that that
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time people had done it, like I know,
Speaker 1: I know during the anti war movements even till like
Speaker 1: aw eight there's one of people trying to occupy ports.
Speaker 1: But and in Oakland they like did it. They really
Speaker 1: they put like forty thousand people like in this in
Speaker 1: the port of Oakland and they shut it down. And
Speaker 1: I think that was like that was one of the
Speaker 1: things one of the stories kind of been lost from
Speaker 1: this because like you know, like that was the point.
Speaker 1: Like so like I know people in Oakland who like
Speaker 1: they got like drugged, repeatedly drugged by police informants because
Speaker 1: particularly Okland, it's also Oakland is also way the walking
Speaker 1: by ok Bood is way way less white than any
Speaker 1: other movements, and they get like the kind of police
Speaker 1: oppression they get is like it's just like yeah, you
Speaker 1: know again like people people being repeatedly drugged by informants,
Speaker 1: like cops shooting people in the face, like the you know,
Speaker 1: you have you have the black list, you have all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I think, you know, part of it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is because part of
Speaker 1: it's because it's a bunch of non white people and
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's just what happens. But I think
Speaker 1: another part of it was also that there was this
Speaker 1: fear about Yes. So so the reason the port strike
Speaker 1: is able to happen is because there's sort of there's
Speaker 1: a complicated game here where the other people like sort
Speaker 1: of got involved in in like longshoreman union politics. But
Speaker 1: that sort of like fusion of of you have all
Speaker 1: the people in the street and then they start showing
Speaker 1: down ports and that like like the cops like lose
Speaker 1: their minds over that. Like that that I think was
Speaker 1: like extremely scary to them in a lot of wiz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I would you know, I would
Speaker 1: defer to anyone from Oakland who was who was there
Speaker 1: during that. You know, I have comrades there, I've talked
Speaker 1: to you have read about it since. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think part of the heightened police oppression
Speaker 1: and the heightened power of the Oakland occupied Oakland folks
Speaker 1: was Oscar Grant rebellion. Like I mentioned the two thousand
Speaker 1: nine which had happened, which had you know, it had
Speaker 1: been a few hundred people, but it had been really rowdy.
Speaker 1: They'd been like looting and smashing. Um maybe maybe more
Speaker 1: than a few hundred, maybe near a thousand people in
Speaker 1: the big on the first night. UM. And you also
Speaker 1: obviously have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland,
Speaker 1: So you know, the Black Panther Party, you know, forms
Speaker 1: in Oakland at last in Oakland a decade and a
Speaker 1: half longer than it does anywhere else in the country. UM.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of like and you also have
Speaker 1: the really really intense getrification of the Bay that's happening.
Speaker 1: So there's an incredible political and economic pressure in the
Speaker 1: Bay combined with this history of radicalism that really you know, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think what you said, like you you put your
Speaker 1: you know, you hit the nail on the head, like
Speaker 1: it was largely like it was terrifying that it was
Speaker 1: the most effective direct action in the occupy movement I
Speaker 1: think was that port shutdown. I think, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: like the biggest mass direct action that that occupy achieved, um,
Speaker 1: was that November twelve was that was that with the
Speaker 1: data that I remember near the end of the near
Speaker 1: the end of the cycle. Um. And I think like
Speaker 1: the other thing ing about um about that though, was
Speaker 1: that that was very similar to the altar globalization movement,
Speaker 1: right where the unions had sort of teamed up with
Speaker 1: you know, like in Seattle there's a lot of trade
Speaker 1: unions on the ground next to all the black blocks, right,
Speaker 1: um And I think like that that image, Um, I
Speaker 1: think really it's really interesting. It really terrified the police,
Speaker 1: and it really it could be it could have been
Speaker 1: a vector for a certain kind of like labor first
Speaker 1: politics that could have emerged. But instead, like the labor
Speaker 1: first people have turned out to be all electoralists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems that that's sort of a weird blip that
Speaker 1: hasn't really returned. Um. Yeah. And it's interesting too because
Speaker 1: like because now like you know, like the the the
Speaker 1: a f l C. I oh, just like you know
Speaker 1: a f l C A is like no cop unions great,
Speaker 1: and it's like there's this there's this sort of like
Speaker 1: split between the street movements and organized labor because they're
Speaker 1: off doing like electoral stuff and like cops ship, which
Speaker 1: is this sort of yeah, and and and and have
Speaker 1: been now for for seven decades, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean really like like the the buying off of
Speaker 1: the unions and the New Deal, um, you know, with
Speaker 1: some brief you know, with brief windows of like wildcat
Speaker 1: action in the seventies and the nineties, Um, the buying
Speaker 1: off of the unions has has never really gone away.
Speaker 1: Industrial unionism in the US has has long been and
Speaker 1: in and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where those developed
Speaker 1: in the early twenty century, that labor movement, Um, they've
Speaker 1: really been successfully bought off. And I don't think there
Speaker 1: is uh. I don't think that those unions are like
Speaker 1: a big easy route to power any more than I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't like I don't think they're gonna overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I will say, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is my my also my the thing that I plug
Speaker 1: every time is at the a f l C. I
Speaker 1: oh overthrew a end a like yeah, like like they
Speaker 1: they they're there are people on the ground were like
Speaker 1: directing like like we're directing a bunch of the anti
Speaker 1: a end a stuff. And it's like and it was
Speaker 1: the and it was the union bureaucracies like more recently
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, who are in the wake of
Speaker 1: September eleventh, who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric into buy American,
Speaker 1: which it turned out was often buying prison made materials.
Speaker 1: But like that was that was the union. The union
Speaker 1: sort of um defanged, defanged, alter globalization into buy American.
Speaker 1: And there's there's something like there's a whole another story
Speaker 1: there about how that like how anti globalization turned from
Speaker 1: like you know, the Zapatistas to like Trump, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly depressing, and yeah, goes goes through this line of
Speaker 1: sort of like the replacement of internationalism with nationalism and
Speaker 1: that kind of like by local stuff and the fact
Speaker 1: that like these people sort of just decided that you
Speaker 1: know personally after Seattle Port step and eleven, they're just like,
Speaker 1: we're not doing direct action again. And in Oakland's like
Speaker 1: Oaklands like like that. That's like that's like the one
Speaker 1: big exception to that was that moment, and then it
Speaker 1: just kind of just has never happened again. And that's
Speaker 1: partially because that that union that I l W is
Speaker 1: I l W I think out there is on the
Speaker 1: on the boards that was a particularly like radical union
Speaker 1: that had happen in wildcats like and and like like
Speaker 1: more democratic than any of the many of the other
Speaker 1: unions in in in those those ships. But uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's that's also like a big story for another time. Obviously.
Speaker 1: The conotation of global antiglobalization over the twenty year period, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just kind of corny. But like what
Speaker 1: what can we actually learn from what happened there? What
Speaker 1: went wrong and sort of what the limits of it was? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So the legacy, So I think one legacy that um,
Speaker 1: the legacy that is most widely accepted and known, which
Speaker 1: we can go over quickly, is that it reintroduced class discourse,
Speaker 1: largely into the popular you know, the n which is
Speaker 1: a very very bad class politics. But like you know,
Speaker 1: like um, like the you know, it reintroduced some of
Speaker 1: that sort of class war class war discourse and UM
Speaker 1: and I think more important than that, but but not
Speaker 1: that dissimilar. It um reintroduced um street politics into the US. UM.
Speaker 1: I think a part of legacy that gets forgotten UM
Speaker 1: because like the general the global nous of the wave
Speaker 1: gets forgotten as well, Like is that when when ship
Speaker 1: pops off in New York, everyone in the world knows,
Speaker 1: or at least they did then, right, because America had
Speaker 1: been so successfully you know, appeased politically for so long
Speaker 1: that I think that when occupy popped off um in
Speaker 1: rather it really like signals to the world, like the
Speaker 1: rest of the world like, oh, like this is real,
Speaker 1: like even in the you know, even in the center
Speaker 1: of empire, like like people are rising up. UM. It's
Speaker 1: hard to remember, and it's weird, but like there was
Speaker 1: an occupy in uh New York, in a UK, there
Speaker 1: was one in tel Aviv. There was actually kind of
Speaker 1: like a pro Palestinian occupy in tel Aviv briefly UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort
Speaker 1: of immediate tactical um offshoot of occupied was occupyed Nigeria
Speaker 1: UM in the first weeks of UM when President good
Speaker 1: Luck Jonathan um took took the fuel subsidies away and
Speaker 1: they were like sort of two weeks of really intense
Speaker 1: revolutionary rioting um in in Nigeria. That that then called
Speaker 1: themselves Occupy as a way of being legible to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. UM. I think the other legacies
Speaker 1: though that are that are a little more sort of subtle.
Speaker 1: I guess is like that a lot of folks still
Speaker 1: in the struggle now, Like I will still meet people
Speaker 1: you know, my age, who like I've met I have
Speaker 1: two comrades here in Philly who I didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time, but who were organizing in New York, right,
Speaker 1: Like we probably hung out in rooms together, Like we
Speaker 1: probably like we were probably in the same space as
Speaker 1: But like so like a lot of folks, you know
Speaker 1: it each of these waves that has come has left.
Speaker 1: You know, some people leave, some people swing right, but
Speaker 1: like there's a residue of folks that like becomes the
Speaker 1: base for the next movement. And I think like occupy
Speaker 1: really did provide a lot of people in a way
Speaker 1: that the gap between alter globalization and occupy didn't produce
Speaker 1: nearly as large a contingent of people, although of course
Speaker 1: there are those people, UM, but I think also like
Speaker 1: really importantly like the tactics of occupy. Like one of
Speaker 1: the things that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising
Speaker 1: was that every tactic that we UM have tried in
Speaker 1: the last ten years re emerged. Right there was a
Speaker 1: prison strike, there were indigenous blockades, there were me too
Speaker 1: style callouts UM, which of course developed out of um
Speaker 1: punk and queer scene callouts that have been going on
Speaker 1: for a decade. But there were occupations, right, you had
Speaker 1: the chairs in Seattle, which we can you know, well,
Speaker 1: well what we're yeah, we will get to that one
Speaker 1: day in any case, In any case, like I think
Speaker 1: like that that has remained in the repertoire of poltarian struggle,
Speaker 1: like as a result of of occupy and and and
Speaker 1: if it had just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as a result of the global movement of the squares,
Speaker 1: which obviously goes until Terrier Square and Turkey, I think
Speaker 1: it's probably the Gezi Park in a Turkey, UM, which
Speaker 1: is like the last big moment of the squares really, um.
Speaker 1: But that five year wave like it was really really important,
Speaker 1: um globally, really really important locally as well, UM in
Speaker 1: terms of building activists, building a class of of well
Speaker 1: I don't you know whatever, building revolutionaries, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call them, the good version of the thing, not
Speaker 1: the bad version of it produced a lot of them. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I think like in terms of its limits
Speaker 1: and like what we can learn from it, Like I
Speaker 1: think I think taking the police more seriously, it was
Speaker 1: really important. I think taking police violence more seriously was
Speaker 1: a really important legacy of occupy. I think, um, I
Speaker 1: think pushing towards the limit of what total democracy meant.
Speaker 1: A lot of people and Occupy remember that, like a
Speaker 1: lot of Ron Paul people and like weirdo like and
Speaker 1: the Fed cranks and like right wingers like spoken Occupy
Speaker 1: and like that. That that total open populism of of
Speaker 1: occupy I think was both probably its greatest strength and
Speaker 1: its ultimate limit, right, which was that like it was
Speaker 1: never going to be able to really like sharpen itself
Speaker 1: into the into the knife, and it wanted to be
Speaker 1: to like really change the face of of global capital
Speaker 1: or whatever um because of because there were so many white, yeah,
Speaker 1: middle class like like a bunch of the like a
Speaker 1: lot of the like the current for right media people
Speaker 1: came buy like Center Fairbanks was like an occupy streamer Simpool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. For Tim Poole, um, who was filming on
Speaker 1: the last day, a bunch of us um doing some
Speaker 1: things and Tim Poole did not manage to continue filming,
Speaker 1: is all I'll say. And after that is when he
Speaker 1: started swinging right. So you're welcomever um anyway, Sorry, that
Speaker 1: guy is a fucking asshole. He was an asshole then. Though.
Speaker 1: I think what's important to know is that a lot
Speaker 1: of these people were suss as hell back then to
Speaker 1: occupy folks, like they were around and occupy because of
Speaker 1: the nature of occupy, like but like they were, we
Speaker 1: already didn't like them, you know, like a lot of
Speaker 1: these people were already unpopular. We're already just liked in
Speaker 1: the movement. Um. So yeah, um, but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think so, I think you know, there is there
Speaker 1: there are all these different legacies, um from it that
Speaker 1: I think, Um, ultimately, the legacy things that emerged are
Speaker 1: much more important than occupy. Um. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things about it was that it really
Speaker 1: was just like the reemergence of street politics, and like
Speaker 1: like as the re emergence of street politics, like it
Speaker 1: was pretty limited, and it was not that effective at
Speaker 1: changing things. Um. And also it was incredibly effective at
Speaker 1: leading to those last decade of struggle in the US,
Speaker 1: And I think you can't you know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a tendency to want to judge movements by the immediate
Speaker 1: results that they produce, you know. Um, And like you know,
Speaker 1: I think it is my about to quote now, I
Speaker 1: think I am was it like when when he gets asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what was the what was the you know,
Speaker 1: in in the twentie anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, he
Speaker 1: gets asked like, what was the what was the outcome
Speaker 1: of the Chinese Revolution? He says, it's too early to tell, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think, like that maybe that's I don't remember who
Speaker 1: that is. They were right, Yeah, they were right. A
Speaker 1: lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: yeah they successfully transition to capitalism and yeah, yeah it
Speaker 1: was yeah. So, um, so what was the results of occupy?
Speaker 1: It's too early to tell, um, But I think like
Speaker 1: I also think, like the things that we've talked about
Speaker 1: here um where we're core components of what what why
Speaker 1: it matters. I do think one other kind of effect
Speaker 1: that it's had. And It's hard for me to gauge
Speaker 1: this because I've only been around post occupy, but I
Speaker 1: feel like now when people try to get stuff started,
Speaker 1: they really fall kind of into an occupy mindset where
Speaker 1: they're like, the only way to make this successful is
Speaker 1: to hold this space. And I think that is really
Speaker 1: a default way that even more experience, like both experienced
Speaker 1: organizers and new organizers. Really, can I keep you saying
Speaker 1: we're default it's because like that's just that's just really
Speaker 1: like what they go into. You saw this in a
Speaker 1: lot of different cities last year, really like people trying
Speaker 1: to set up spaces to hold UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: them did not work. You know a lot of them.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were like, oh, yeah, we're trying
Speaker 1: to try to hold the space for like an hour,
Speaker 1: because then the cops pushed us out right, and you know,
Speaker 1: in a place like the Chairs, it got extended out
Speaker 1: a bit longer that Chas had its own problems UM
Speaker 1: and other cities in the Pacific Northwest. This happened a city,
Speaker 1: it happened, and it happened a lot of places. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I think George Floyd Square is maybe one of
Speaker 1: the more honestly successful ones UM for how they were
Speaker 1: able to actually kind of keep police away, and they
Speaker 1: did they avoided turning it into this big media thing
Speaker 1: like like with the Chaz did UM. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think I grew very and I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this
Speaker 1: like kind of occupy mentality, because what that kind of
Speaker 1: results in is people just setting up outside of a
Speaker 1: police head quarters and trying to stay there for as
Speaker 1: long as possible, which is like that's not doing anything,
Speaker 1: You're just kind of waiting to get beat up. Um. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's complicated though, right, Like in defense of that tactic,
Speaker 1: like I think like like that was also very color.
Speaker 1: That was also very core to Ferguson. Right, they held
Speaker 1: West Florescent for a week and a half. Now, they
Speaker 1: did it much. They didn't do it by setting up
Speaker 1: tents and sitting there. Um. And also like you know,
Speaker 1: like like a thing that gets forgotten a lot in
Speaker 1: the lot in the histories, you know, Occupy Ice it
Speaker 1: was pretty spot. I was big here in Philly, it was.
Speaker 1: It was massive here in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: like there were moments when that tactic really does like
Speaker 1: it's important to have a space to meet in, and
Speaker 1: I think we did learn that. But I also agree
Speaker 1: that it has become like any tactic that works once
Speaker 1: it becomes a fetish, Right Yeah, it's always trying to
Speaker 1: balance space because like you know, the two big things
Speaker 1: that have happened the past ten years, it's occupying Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: So people try to balance these two kind of almost
Speaker 1: opposing things like hold this space and be water. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the two things that people yell at the
Speaker 1: street back and forth, and no one really knows what
Speaker 1: to do because it was yelling slogans and and and
Speaker 1: I was I was there saying about this. So they're
Speaker 1: like the one time the people in Hong Kong got
Speaker 1: pinned down when when they had to and they had
Speaker 1: versa siege, it was a ship show, like you know what,
Speaker 1: I like, the people in Hong Kong, like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like even when they're like they they did not have
Speaker 1: by by by the time you're getting to the sort
Speaker 1: of decision of the universities like that, like you know,
Speaker 1: like they had like Moloto they had like like Molotov workshops,
Speaker 1: Like there were people like standing on the roof shooting
Speaker 1: bows and arrows and cops and it's like it just
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. And I mean and part partially partially that
Speaker 1: has to do with the fact that, like you know,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong is in a uniquely bad position insofar as
Speaker 1: it is one city, and it's like the the the
Speaker 1: only possible way that a supposed movement in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: like ever just doesn't get crushed by just the fact
Speaker 1: that they're outnumbered, like a thousand to one is if
Speaker 1: it spreads. But like yeah, and it became this you know,
Speaker 1: like that that moments like yeah, that the this that
Speaker 1: that the whole problem with with friend to hold space
Speaker 1: because really apparently because even if you have an extremely
Speaker 1: large number of people right like like attacking one isolated
Speaker 1: space in mass even think the cops are really good
Speaker 1: at and I think they really bad at is trying
Speaker 1: to deal with like you know, like five hundred people,
Speaker 1: like seven hundred instances of five hundred people going through
Speaker 1: places because it just aren't enough of them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was what was it? Like the head of who
Speaker 1: wasn't it was a big and then National police in
Speaker 1: the National Police, uh you know whatever um said that
Speaker 1: like we can very easily handle one march of ten
Speaker 1: thousand people, but we can't handle ten marches of one.
Speaker 1: It was and you gotta see this in Chicago too,
Speaker 1: like this is this is this is how the police
Speaker 1: lost control of of of the miracle miles. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just there's people everywhere for everywhere, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, yah know, And that's and that's how
Speaker 1: that's that's what you know. I mean, certainly in Philly
Speaker 1: where it was where it was very very powerful. That's
Speaker 1: what the George Flood rebellion looked like, was with people
Speaker 1: were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods, you know, people
Speaker 1: didn't you know, like we were out there, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: um and like they're like people didn't know what was
Speaker 1: going on three blocks south, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it was like that, like there was just there
Speaker 1: were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions, the police
Speaker 1: can't can't, no matter how tries they are, they can't
Speaker 1: act um effectively anyway they can act. They certainly will
Speaker 1: they will act like pigs um. But but I think like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that that that sort of dispersion. But
Speaker 1: I think the other there's so there's I'm going to
Speaker 1: promote a really really weirdo crank book right now, but
Speaker 1: before twentie century, like literary weirdos. Guy uh Elias Connetti
Speaker 1: um Italian wrote this book called Crowds and Power, where
Speaker 1: he attempts to he attempts to describe the entirety of
Speaker 1: human history and anthropology in terms of crowds. This is
Speaker 1: obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that book has the best
Speaker 1: descriptions of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere, And
Speaker 1: I like, I like people who take big swings because
Speaker 1: they end up they miss. Yeah, miss has lots of
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. UM. I think that's why people like Settlers
Speaker 1: by Jason Kai so much. Like I think the thesis
Speaker 1: wasn't great, but there's so much incredible stuff in that
Speaker 1: book that like it works anyway. UM that having a
Speaker 1: really wild thesis allows you to like really like get
Speaker 1: into some so anyway, one of the things that Connetti
Speaker 1: talks about in that book is that UM a crowd UH,
Speaker 1: an open crowd, as he describes it, an open crowd
Speaker 1: is UM must constantly be growing, and the moment it
Speaker 1: stops growing, it starts shrinking. Right like this, I think
Speaker 1: that dynamic UM in terms of both movement and like
Speaker 1: a momentary protest or riot, right is like really real,
Speaker 1: I can and I think one of the things that UM,
Speaker 1: particularly organizers, are trained to do and like that that
Speaker 1: that we learned to do, especially in law periods, and
Speaker 1: we're like organizing these little you know, you know, these
Speaker 1: little crystallized groups of like hard cadre or whatever is that,
Speaker 1: like you that like what we learn as organized is
Speaker 1: something that is defendable. But once you start defending something,
Speaker 1: you start losing it because we cannot take on the
Speaker 1: state or the police in a head on confrontation. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is this can be confusing because sometimes you
Speaker 1: can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a
Speaker 1: few months. You can defend a space sometimes, but once
Speaker 1: people get really interested in the defending, then they begin
Speaker 1: forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing, security forces, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: They start becoming the like the the They start undermining
Speaker 1: the very thing that made it powerful, which was this
Speaker 1: sudden rapid growth, the sudden like you know, like like
Speaker 1: big explosion of power and self recognition that comes in
Speaker 1: the beginning of movement. And I think, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a way to will that problem away, Like I
Speaker 1: don't think we can just like think our way out
Speaker 1: of it, like it's just a problem. But I do
Speaker 1: think that like one thing that we could take from
Speaker 1: the experience of occupying the experience the last decade is
Speaker 1: that like if you do, you know, consider yourself someone
Speaker 1: who wants to participate in these kind of movements, which
Speaker 1: is probably why you're listening to this podcast. UM. Right now, UM,
Speaker 1: don't try and defend, like, don't try and defend Like
Speaker 1: some things will need to be defended sometimes obviously, but
Speaker 1: like if your main thing is like the thing, we
Speaker 1: should never defend something we've achieved so far, UM, we
Speaker 1: should never not be willing to destroy it in order
Speaker 1: to like build something bigger. Right, Like we should never
Speaker 1: no movement thing that we have, be it an occupy part,
Speaker 1: be it, be it like a take in space. Defending
Speaker 1: that should never outweigh the possibility of expanding. And if
Speaker 1: that's our strategic mindset. Obviously moment to moment you can't
Speaker 1: just be thinking that constantly. But the strategic mindset is
Speaker 1: like what we have now is only good to the
Speaker 1: extent that it can turn into something more, UM, rather
Speaker 1: than we have to defend what we have now. If
Speaker 1: you can think that way, I think it opens up
Speaker 1: a lot of strategic possibilities. UM. And I think it's
Speaker 1: it's what has worked over the last decade that I've
Speaker 1: seen is UM, when people attack, when people expand, when
Speaker 1: people try to do try to do new stuff. It
Speaker 1: doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold, but that's
Speaker 1: what When that stuff stops happening, the movement is doomed.
Speaker 1: I think I think that. I think that's a really
Speaker 1: good way to wrap things up. I think that's a nice,
Speaker 1: beautiful sentiment. I kind of view this type of thing
Speaker 1: in more than just protests and you know, and into
Speaker 1: differentastets of life. I think you can always learn from
Speaker 1: past experiences, from past struggles, but if you try to
Speaker 1: perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely gonna fail. You can should
Speaker 1: always learn and move on, but you should not be
Speaker 1: focused on any kind of replication. Is there any of
Speaker 1: your book store writings you'd want to plug before we
Speaker 1: wrap up here? Sure? Yeah, I mean I wrote a
Speaker 1: book that came out last year, UM called Defensive Looting.
Speaker 1: UM came out UM with both type UM. I am
Speaker 1: currently also writing. UM. I'm obsessed with movies. I write
Speaker 1: a movie review UM column for the Al Jazeera plus
Speaker 1: UM I did not know letters. Yeah, the news letter
Speaker 1: sub stack UM. If you want to read, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really it is really a movie reviews. So if
Speaker 1: you want you know, cranky anarchist theory, it's not the
Speaker 1: spot for you. Um. Otherwise, Yeah, I'm I'm on a
Speaker 1: pretty long social media break right now, but good for
Speaker 1: you there. Eventually I'll probably come back inevitably, um unfortunately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have I have writing popping up
Speaker 1: every every now and then, and um, and if you
Speaker 1: read it, I would appreciate it. Well. Yeah, absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and yeah, thank you for so much for
Speaker 1: coming on to talk about, um, occupying stuff that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people hear about, but you know,
Speaker 1: at least all of my generation does not fully kind
Speaker 1: of grasp it. Um. It is. It is literally my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Like I you know, i wasted so much of my
Speaker 1: life thinking about this. I'm so glad to be able
Speaker 1: to share some of it with some people. I'm so
Speaker 1: so glad you're able to join us too. This is
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to us for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very excited. All right. That wraps up us today.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Instagram, at cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media and Happen Here Pod. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: for a few more episodes. This week. Audios executive producer
Speaker 1: Harris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think
Speaker 1: and That's good news for anyone that is confused by men,
Speaker 1: which is basically everyone, get an inside look at what
Speaker 1: goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves.
Speaker 1: It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think
Speaker 1: podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
Speaker 1: bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the
Speaker 1: minds of men. As much as we like to think
Speaker 1: all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week,
Speaker 1: a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area
Speaker 1: of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I
Speaker 1: had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and
Speaker 1: absolutely no man splaining. Men are hard enough to understand
Speaker 1: without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halbern, host of Deep Cover.
Speaker 1: Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the
Speaker 1: mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts, we controlled absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: He brobed judges and even helped a hit man walk free,
Speaker 1: until one day when he started talking with the FBI
Speaker 1: and promised that he could take the mob down. I've
Speaker 1: spent the past year trying to figure out why he
Speaker 1: flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective,
Speaker 1: Bob was too good to be true. There's got to
Speaker 1: be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy.
Speaker 1: He looks like a little scum, big lawyer, stool pidging.
Speaker 1: He looked like what he was or at. I can
Speaker 1: say with all certainty I think he's a hero because
Speaker 1: he didn't have to do what he did, and he
Speaker 1: did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around
Speaker 1: the first time, my life was over. If it ever
Speaker 1: got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen
Speaker 1: to deep Cover on the I heart Rate your app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ev Rodsky,
Speaker 1: author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
Speaker 1: Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
Speaker 1: attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr Addina Rukar, a
Speaker 1: Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise and the
Speaker 1: science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so
Speaker 1: excited to share our podcast Time Out, a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, we're uncovering why society
Speaker 1: makes it so hard for women to treat their time
Speaker 1: with the value it deserves. So take this time out
Speaker 1: with us. Listen to Time Out a fair play podcast
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Uh, that was the introduction, I
Speaker 1: did it, Sophie. Sophie's saying, that's an acceptable introduction. You
Speaker 1: know what podcast this is. You clicked on it, so
Speaker 1: I don't need to tell you the title. I don't
Speaker 1: need to say who we are. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: dive right into the fucking episode. No I'm not. This
Speaker 1: is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling
Speaker 1: apart and uh and what to maybe do to to
Speaker 1: arrest that and do something better in its place? And uh.
Speaker 1: You know, folks who are are regular listeners who listened
Speaker 1: to the original scripted episodes of It Could Happen Here,
Speaker 1: the first fifteen episodes, which I certainly recommend to everybody.
Speaker 1: Know that one area in which I kind of separate
Speaker 1: from a lot of particularly more liberal folks and even
Speaker 1: some folks on the left, is an embrace of the
Speaker 1: fact that firearms are sometimes necessary tools, especially in times
Speaker 1: of collapse when things get bad. Um. Now that said,
Speaker 1: we're also not uh kind of gun culture people here.
Speaker 1: We try not, to, for one thing, recommend that everybody
Speaker 1: necessarily pick up a gun. There's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: perfectly nice people who shouldn't have them, who don't need
Speaker 1: to have them, you know, if you're dealing with suicidal
Speaker 1: ideation or whatever. We're not. The point is, we try
Speaker 1: to be very careful about how we we talk about
Speaker 1: firearms as a potentially useful you're being potentially necessary tool
Speaker 1: in the times that we're in. And today, since we're
Speaker 1: a few weeks into this, we've covered producing food, We've
Speaker 1: covered some medical stuff. We've talked about uh, community organizing,
Speaker 1: and a number of other things that I think our
Speaker 1: priorities for most people before you know, getting strapped. Today,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit about getting strapped. And
Speaker 1: my guest today is Paul. Paul, do you want to
Speaker 1: kind of introduce your background in brief so people know
Speaker 1: why why you're on here. Sure, Robert Uh I was
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps and Infantry, and after that I
Speaker 1: went to security consulting and then to the Federal Protective
Speaker 1: Service and finally the A. T. F some of our
Speaker 1: funnest agencies. Yeah, all my favorite organizations there. Well they're
Speaker 1: bet in the what is it, the f d A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they beat the f d A. I mean in terms
Speaker 1: of body count, they'res certainly better than the f d A.
Speaker 1: And what what do you do now, Paul that you're
Speaker 1: you're you're out of that line of work. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I do two things. I got a day job at
Speaker 1: disney World, and then the side gig is we run
Speaker 1: a explosives and machine guns supply company, also body armor,
Speaker 1: a handful of other things, but that's the big thing
Speaker 1: is destructive devices. Yeah, and uh, you've you've got I
Speaker 1: think experience that a lot of people, particularly on this
Speaker 1: side of the political i'll lack you know. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the downsides of kind of rejecting the
Speaker 1: federal government in the military and all its forms, is
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of people who may accept the
Speaker 1: validity of being armed and don't really have much in
Speaker 1: the way of practical training. And firearms are tools that
Speaker 1: to use most efficausly do require training. In practice, you
Speaker 1: can't just you can pick them up and be dangerous,
Speaker 1: but not in a way that is particularly protective. To
Speaker 1: you in your community. Oh yeah, UM, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about kind of recommendations and and everything. We
Speaker 1: talk about nothing. We're not talking in the context of
Speaker 1: forming a militia or in the context of you know,
Speaker 1: showing up with guns to to yell at people at
Speaker 1: a protest. If that's the thing you're choosing to do,
Speaker 1: that's a whole different ball game. We're talking about, um,
Speaker 1: kind of responsibly arming yourself and your community in a
Speaker 1: way that is not going to get you in legal trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: It is also not going to endanger them. Because one
Speaker 1: of the things you have to accept about firearms is that, um,
Speaker 1: there's a risk you know, related to owning a firearm. Um.
Speaker 1: Not just the risk that like you know, suicide risk
Speaker 1: raises if you have a gun in the house, but
Speaker 1: just um, if you don't use them properly. Even carrying
Speaker 1: a gun. You know, it's not unheard of for people
Speaker 1: carrying guns to have those weapons taken from them and
Speaker 1: used against them. It happens to police, and it happens
Speaker 1: to armed citizens. So it's it's a matter of um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think when you accept that you're going
Speaker 1: to be armed, there's something incumbent upon you to understand
Speaker 1: the risks of being armed. And I guess that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I want to start. Like, what are some
Speaker 1: of the big pitfalls you see people uh fall into, like,
Speaker 1: um that I think traditionally training is supposed to help
Speaker 1: allay to some degree. Uh. Well, probably number one is
Speaker 1: uh grandpa's gun in the closet that's been there for
Speaker 1: forty years unfired, and somebody just picks it up and
Speaker 1: throw some ammo in it to go huna deer, and
Speaker 1: you know it's got a barrel obstruction or something just
Speaker 1: blows up, you know. Um. But number two and and
Speaker 1: the one that can be mitigated by training rather than
Speaker 1: just general uh not being stupid, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: stupid to pick something up that's really old and just
Speaker 1: try to shoot it. Is um, not shooting yourself, and
Speaker 1: when you do go out to the range, not shooting
Speaker 1: other people, and then not shooting people in your own home.
Speaker 1: M you know, you don't, as much as you might
Speaker 1: want to say, defend your own home, do you want
Speaker 1: to shoot your wife when she comes home at two
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, uh, after work and wakes you up.
Speaker 1: And there are ways to mitigate that, and and it's
Speaker 1: really easy and it's really cheap. So yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's start with some of those just if you're if
Speaker 1: you're new too, if you've decided I need a gun
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you purchase a gun. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the most basic first things are in terms
Speaker 1: of like actually making that relatively safe. Is number one,
Speaker 1: knowing which which kind of firearm to purchase and number two,
Speaker 1: And these are not in order of importance, these are
Speaker 1: both very important. Number two is securing that weapon properly,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just having it laying loose in the house,
Speaker 1: which is never the best place. The best way to
Speaker 1: store a firearm, is it. Um? Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: own a number of personal firearms. Um. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: in my office right now where I got a locked
Speaker 1: door nobody can get in, and I got a gun
Speaker 1: safe back behind the monitors. Um. And you know I'm
Speaker 1: comfortable with that. But if if it was in a
Speaker 1: place where kids could get at it, you don't want
Speaker 1: to just stuff it in, uh, in a sock in
Speaker 1: the closet, which is actually what my mom did when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, I mean safe storage, and
Speaker 1: I mean really being able to identify your target is
Speaker 1: probably the biggest preventer of like inter family accident because
Speaker 1: I know, you know, we do talk about safe storage,
Speaker 1: kids and all that, but um, back to the wife
Speaker 1: coming home, if you just put a light on your gun,
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar light, you can look at the thing
Speaker 1: that you're shooting in the middle of the night and uh,
Speaker 1: not shoot someone you don't want to shoot. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would go so far as to say that, like, if
Speaker 1: you've got a a home defense weapon without a light
Speaker 1: on it, Um, you don't fully have a home defense weapon. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, it's gonna be useless in roughly half
Speaker 1: of the situation. And statistically, like if you're looking at
Speaker 1: when people are actually tend to be endangered in their
Speaker 1: own homes, the vast majority of the situations in which
Speaker 1: you might be in danger. Um. When it comes to
Speaker 1: weapons selection, uh, this is another area where like if
Speaker 1: you go on maybe one of the worst places in
Speaker 1: the world to have this discussion as Twitter, because everybody
Speaker 1: has the opinions on Twitter. Um, I tend to say
Speaker 1: because I think most people when they're looking for a
Speaker 1: first gun, if they're if they're committed, just like thinking
Speaker 1: of personal defense, they're going to go for like a
Speaker 1: lock or something. And I think unless you're planning on
Speaker 1: carrying a gun, and you can correct me if you
Speaker 1: disagree here, but I tend to think a handgun again,
Speaker 1: unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon, is the
Speaker 1: last thing that you should own as a gun owner. Um.
Speaker 1: I got a mixed opinion on that. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, the handiness of a handgun can
Speaker 1: outweigh some of the issues. I know you guys dealt
Speaker 1: with fires up there, we have hurricanes. Um, being able
Speaker 1: to stick a handgun into a backpack you know it
Speaker 1: can go a long way, or being ab um, keep
Speaker 1: keep it on you in your car, because here we're
Speaker 1: depend on state laws. Everything you say depends on state laws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are states where you can Yeah. Yeah. If you're
Speaker 1: in California and you're in one of the counties that
Speaker 1: it doesn't issue a concealed carry of license like l A,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get one from what I understand, Berndino,
Speaker 1: if you want to get one of those, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: first off, like tooth, I got a short list of guns,
Speaker 1: and like two thirds of the list illegal in California.
Speaker 1: They're they're not on roster. But for what's most usable
Speaker 1: against our most handy, it's probably a handgun. But if
Speaker 1: you're expecting a threat more than uh like thirty feet away,
Speaker 1: have something other than a handgun. Handguns they suck at
Speaker 1: hurting people, they suck at killing people. Yeah, they're they're ineffective.
Speaker 1: They're hard to use. I mean, say thirty feet away.
Speaker 1: But if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in
Speaker 1: a stressful situation at thirty ft with a handgun can
Speaker 1: be difficult. It's not easy. Yeah, um, it's not easy,
Speaker 1: and I tend to recommend number one. There are some options,
Speaker 1: like even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are
Speaker 1: different kind of um like uh options for that. Like
Speaker 1: I I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which
Speaker 1: is essential the size of a small rifle, so you
Speaker 1: can fit them easily in a backpack. Every backpack I've owned,
Speaker 1: you can you can stick something like um like a
Speaker 1: Sazy scorpion in without much difficulty. And because they're so
Speaker 1: When you're talking about what makes a weapon easier to use,
Speaker 1: number one of the number one things is size. So
Speaker 1: the longer the barrel, the more accurate it is. The
Speaker 1: heavier the gun, the less recoil is a problem, the
Speaker 1: easier it is to use it. Range um and a
Speaker 1: pistol caliber carbine. You know you stick a light on that.
Speaker 1: That's a really good home defense weapon. Oh absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean especially uh, people will argue about the different
Speaker 1: types of magazines, but if you buy one that takes
Speaker 1: a glock magazine and you have a glock, you can
Speaker 1: build a full little load out that's just takes all
Speaker 1: the same magazines. One is more accurate, one is a
Speaker 1: handgun UM, and you know, all the same AMMO. You're
Speaker 1: not having to uh figure out and read a bunch
Speaker 1: on on what kind of AMMO you need and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. You just buy one and it works for everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when when you're talking about AMMO, I think one
Speaker 1: of the most important things, like especially if you're worried
Speaker 1: about a survival situation, is is availability um. Which is
Speaker 1: the nice thing about like what we call the NATO caliber.
Speaker 1: So the NATO calibers are nine millimeter seven six two
Speaker 1: by fifty one better known as three O eight your
Speaker 1: grandpa's hunting rifle, and seven six two by fifty one
Speaker 1: UM or it's thirty six but whatever, UM and then
Speaker 1: five five six slash two to three and those are
Speaker 1: the rounds that's like six is the standard. That's what's
Speaker 1: in your bog standard a r UM. And so almost
Speaker 1: no matter what happens, UM, including you know Ammo crunches,
Speaker 1: you will be able to find some amounts of these
Speaker 1: fliverers genital day through your neighbors and you're going to
Speaker 1: find a box of bullets. They might not even owe
Speaker 1: a gun and they got a boxing nine millimeter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's got nine millionaire and UM, so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the basics of like, um, what to get if
Speaker 1: you're looking at kind of just a basic defensive arm, um,
Speaker 1: you know how to store it safely? You know those
Speaker 1: kind of questions are important, Um when it comes to training. Uh,
Speaker 1: what are some of in your opinion, like the mistakes
Speaker 1: that you see people make when it comes to kind
Speaker 1: of of of practicing training with their weapon. Um, going
Speaker 1: to an n R A basic like four hour class
Speaker 1: and thin king that you are a god. Um, They're
Speaker 1: there are people who have spent UM five days a
Speaker 1: week going to classes and doing training because there's practice
Speaker 1: and then there's training. Training is where someone teaches you something. Uh,
Speaker 1: practices where you go with what you're already taught. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So there there are people that spend all that time
Speaker 1: and there's still not the best in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: there are people who do a ton of practice. Jerry Micklock,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if you ever seen him shoot,
Speaker 1: but he's uh he's like the fastest gun in the
Speaker 1: world or something like that. Um, his videos are crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean he'll he'll outshoot a full
Speaker 1: auto gun. Yeah, with with revolvers and it's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just absolutely mind blowing. Um. But now
Speaker 1: he's like he's like he's like Michael Jordan or something.
Speaker 1: You know, you just get people who have it's just
Speaker 1: that natural ability. Um, certainly married with a practicing But yeah, continue,
Speaker 1: if if you had a fight, a gunfight, which they
Speaker 1: really don't happen that much, but if you had a
Speaker 1: gun fight between um, a guy with a high point
Speaker 1: C nine who had the cheapest quote reliable handguns on
Speaker 1: the face there, if you had a guy with that
Speaker 1: that had had paid five hundred dollars for a training
Speaker 1: class over weekend and still went in Uh, went to
Speaker 1: the shooting range every week and practiced and um, or
Speaker 1: not even every week, just every month, and then did
Speaker 1: dry fire drills once a month in his garage or whatever.
Speaker 1: Versus a guy who went out and bought a Wilson
Speaker 1: Combat three thousand dollar nineteen eleven but had only taken
Speaker 1: the n R A class. I will bet on the
Speaker 1: guy with the eight or the C nine all day long. Um,
Speaker 1: even if he's only got one bullet, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't care, He'll win. And often, like for all
Speaker 1: of it, for all of the guys you see, you know,
Speaker 1: in all of their tactical gear and whatnot in the
Speaker 1: spare mag's taking a three hundred rounds out. If you
Speaker 1: actually look at most defensive shootings, UM, it's very common.
Speaker 1: And I think, like like three to five rounds, three
Speaker 1: to five rounds generally closer than thirty feet, sometimes closer
Speaker 1: than like ten or fifteen sits in my pocket most
Speaker 1: of the time. It's nineteen so tiny. Um, it has
Speaker 1: more bullets than I'll ever need to gunfight. Probably. I
Speaker 1: think I want to pivot from this point to UM.
Speaker 1: We started this by it introducing that you you spent
Speaker 1: some time in the A t F spent some time
Speaker 1: in the FPS. I haven't had any personal interactions with
Speaker 1: the A t F, but I have met some FPS
Speaker 1: guys support. You know, I'm kind of curious, especially as
Speaker 1: because I came in contact with you through your through
Speaker 1: your Twitter, where you're you're very my personal Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're you're quite politically active now, um in a
Speaker 1: way that I think is surprising people for someone with
Speaker 1: your background. Are you in protable with kind of tracing
Speaker 1: sort of the broad strokes of your journey there, because
Speaker 1: I think that's instructive um for folks oh at FPS specifically, Well,
Speaker 1: just kind of what brought you from there to hear? Oh? Um?
Speaker 1: So I got kind of uh, oh man, what what's
Speaker 1: what's the word for when you just get uh? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just I got to a point. I
Speaker 1: showed up for for work at four thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning and I was literally shuffling through some some paperwork
Speaker 1: and and was getting ready to file a warrant and
Speaker 1: just kind of realized, I I didn't think that it
Speaker 1: needed to happen, And you know, I talked to my
Speaker 1: supervising agent about it, and UM was kind of told
Speaker 1: too bad. And and I put in for some vacation
Speaker 1: time and ended up putting in my resignation while I
Speaker 1: was on vacation. I mean that that's the gist of
Speaker 1: how I became not a cop. Yeah, And um, I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: kind of what do you think? Is there anything that
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, what looks different to you
Speaker 1: now as you've kind of left that behind? Was it
Speaker 1: like sort of, Um, I'm guessing there's like a period
Speaker 1: like a goldfish, you know, in a new bowl of
Speaker 1: of acclamation to to life outside of being a cop. Um? Like,
Speaker 1: what what were the first kind of things that started
Speaker 1: to shift in your perspective when you left that that
Speaker 1: thought space. I'll tell you what, watching or reading whatever,
Speaker 1: an article or a YouTube video, especially now that body
Speaker 1: cams are more and more prevalent, is watching something, reading
Speaker 1: the the press release and going But that's that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. Like I just watched it and and and
Speaker 1: going from being able to justify it in your own
Speaker 1: mind and literally argue with people and be a hundred
Speaker 1: percent convey like that was a good shoot. Um. Castillo?
Speaker 1: What it was a Philandro Castillo? Yeah, oh god? And
Speaker 1: he was man if you've if you've gotten lost track
Speaker 1: of this shooting in between all the others. Filando was
Speaker 1: a black man, a legal gun owner with a legal
Speaker 1: concealed carry permit, who was pulled over with his girlfriend
Speaker 1: and child in a car and hands on the wheel,
Speaker 1: told the officer he had a gun, uh, and got shot. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and it did the thing you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Although now actually since then, you will get like some
Speaker 1: states will and some training classes will recommend if it's
Speaker 1: not legally required and you're carrying a gun, don't say
Speaker 1: anything for that reason. But I mean, yeah, the command
Speaker 1: to not reach for the gun to being shot multiple
Speaker 1: times in the chest was like under two seconds. Um,
Speaker 1: So I mean, I mean the decision was already made
Speaker 1: as soon as as soon as he gave the command,
Speaker 1: the decision was made. Here's what that brings me too,
Speaker 1: in terms of a question that's relevant to the topic
Speaker 1: of community self defensive potential community armed self defense, because
Speaker 1: that's not that is a that is a cop problem,
Speaker 1: but that's not just a cop problem. And what happened
Speaker 1: everybody problem in the chop in the chairs in Seattle,
Speaker 1: the the autonomous zone is evidence of that. You had
Speaker 1: this situation where people, after nights and nights of mostly
Speaker 1: inaccurate warnings about proud boys coming to attack, got amped up.
Speaker 1: They had guns, some kids drove by in a car
Speaker 1: and they fucking shot him to death. Um. And it
Speaker 1: is the same, it's the same mental thing happening. You
Speaker 1: don't have to have a badge for that that mindset
Speaker 1: to infect, especially when you're carrying a gun. Um, how
Speaker 1: do you, in your opinion, fight back against that chill? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, like like honestly, Um, if you were a teenager,
Speaker 1: which we grew up in almost the same place you're from,
Speaker 1: plane oh, from Capel, So I would have argued with
Speaker 1: you about them being the same place when the same
Speaker 1: But they're the same place. Yeah, they're absolutely the same place.
Speaker 1: Yeah one has uh one has uh woot dot com
Speaker 1: and the other one has raytheon so you know, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of hospitals. Um. But uh, you and I
Speaker 1: grew up in the same time, same place, same types
Speaker 1: of schools. How many times did you see in like
Speaker 1: high school or even middle school, just a guy hit
Speaker 1: on a girl and then the girl's boyfriend comes over
Speaker 1: and just starts fighting him, like like like the guy
Speaker 1: had no reason to know. He didn't know he was
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong. Um. And I'm not suggesting, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: What I'm pointing out is that, um, it's almost ingrained
Speaker 1: in us at a societal level to to react violently
Speaker 1: to maintain like our personal position. And if that means
Speaker 1: that I'm in my neighborhood and I don't recognize someone,
Speaker 1: it may seem like violence is the right way to go.
Speaker 1: That's actually what what you're doing when like what's it called,
Speaker 1: Karen ng you know where you call somebody the black
Speaker 1: kid yell uh selling water bottles or whatever. Um, I
Speaker 1: know that was one in New York where the police
Speaker 1: came and harassed you know, some like twelve year old
Speaker 1: black kids because they were selling water bottles. Um, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. I mean, you know in that case,
Speaker 1: you're not personally doing the violence, You're just calling somebody
Speaker 1: else to do it for you. Um, because you know
Speaker 1: the police are kind of violence, violence of monopoly and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah. Yeah, And that's some one of the
Speaker 1: most I think important things about that is the idea
Speaker 1: of violence is like when you when you're willing to
Speaker 1: accept violence to kind of mean hein your your your
Speaker 1: social position or something. UM. And I think that has
Speaker 1: a huge amount to do with with the kind of
Speaker 1: violence you see um at protests with like we've had,
Speaker 1: you know, protests quote unquote security here in Portland, people
Speaker 1: kind of declaring themselves security And what does that mean
Speaker 1: shooting other kids within guns for graffiti liked up? But
Speaker 1: it is it is a matter for it's they're not
Speaker 1: doing it to protect anybody. They're doing it because they've
Speaker 1: declared themselves security. Somebody doesn't listen to what they say
Speaker 1: and their ego is hurt. It's the same thing that
Speaker 1: again cops do. It's this it's a human mindset. It's
Speaker 1: not just a a cop mindset. And UM, I think
Speaker 1: you when you're talking about like, I think there's a
Speaker 1: couple of things. Number One, if you're going to be armed,
Speaker 1: and if you're going to be armed in a community
Speaker 1: self defense role, one of the things you have to
Speaker 1: accept is that like you're not, as a person who
Speaker 1: is armed and cares about the defense of your community,
Speaker 1: you're not a separate thing from them. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the areas where which policing goes wrong. May
Speaker 1: view yourself as a separate Yeah, And I know, you
Speaker 1: guys have a big problem with that. Um, what we
Speaker 1: do here too. I live in a metro and our
Speaker 1: metro police, like them, don't even live in the county. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all go the same here. Yeah. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: even not just the city, they don't live in the
Speaker 1: whole county. Um. And that's despite they get a living
Speaker 1: allowance if they'll live in the city, and there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of if they live in the city, they get
Speaker 1: a take home car. There's a bunch of incentives to
Speaker 1: try and get people to live here, and they still
Speaker 1: won't do it. They want to go live in the
Speaker 1: next sheriff over, the next county where yeah we have
Speaker 1: a very vocal sheriff the next county over. Who's who's
Speaker 1: really racist and all that ship? Um? And I yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you're if you're talking about like the
Speaker 1: potential of again of like armed community self defense, um
Speaker 1: you almost I almost would prefer phrasing it de friently
Speaker 1: community self defense, you know, um, which should be the
Speaker 1: entire community. Yeah. Yeah, community And you're not the gun
Speaker 1: isn't what you are. You're not you're not security, you're
Speaker 1: not self defense because you're armed your self defense because
Speaker 1: you're a member of the community, and if you personally
Speaker 1: choose to be armed, that is an option that is
Speaker 1: expanded to you specifically because you're armed. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: change fun. It shouldn't change what you are. And if
Speaker 1: it does, there's a phrase that I think is really useful, Um,
Speaker 1: the finger pulls the trigger and if you want to
Speaker 1: avoid or the trigger pulls the finger. Sorry. And it's
Speaker 1: this idea that when you show up armed, and you're
Speaker 1: showing up armed as someone like your purpose there is
Speaker 1: to be armed, you're at at heavy risk of the
Speaker 1: weapon guiding your responses. Um. And that's the most important
Speaker 1: thing in any circumstance to avoid if you're carrying a weapon.
Speaker 1: If if you've gotta hammer, everything's a nail exactly. Well.
Speaker 1: And and uh, the last twenty years we've had kind
Speaker 1: of a with the War on Terror. You've seen a
Speaker 1: proliferation in media around um making Navy Seals and all
Speaker 1: that ship look really really really cool. Uh, every other
Speaker 1: movie is about that, even though like, really they're just
Speaker 1: drunk guys who yell at people a lot and who
Speaker 1: occasionally commit murder to protect. Or was that was that
Speaker 1: the Seals? Was that the Green Berets who killed that
Speaker 1: guy to protect a drug trafficking Greg, I mean probably both.
Speaker 1: Oh you know that that was the Green Berets in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: crosses all all borders. Um. But one thing that's come
Speaker 1: out of that is we we've started to call those
Speaker 1: guys operators, right, So you've gone from a gun being
Speaker 1: a tool that someone trains there to use too, they
Speaker 1: are merely an operator of a weapons system. Um. And
Speaker 1: it it's kind of dehumanizing, like it allows you to
Speaker 1: get out of the thought on that. Um, it's exactly
Speaker 1: what you were talking about. Where where the triggers really
Speaker 1: pulling the finger at that point? Um? Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: it's I think there's a number of I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a number of tactics and more than we can
Speaker 1: get through, and that we'll be talking with some other
Speaker 1: community to self defense people at some point in the
Speaker 1: near future about this, because this is a big topic, right,
Speaker 1: and it's not one I haven't seen anyone do it
Speaker 1: super well yet in the United States like we anytime
Speaker 1: you have kind of persistent right wingers every once in
Speaker 1: a while, yeah, yeah, they take over blm Land. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then they die. I forgot about that. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did die get killed. Um And I think that it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really messy topic because of you know,
Speaker 1: what you brought up is a valid point, all the
Speaker 1: reading that all the kind of social baggage there is
Speaker 1: around weaponry in this in this country and in our
Speaker 1: in our culture. This kind of like worship of the gun.
Speaker 1: And if you think like the left is any more
Speaker 1: immune to that than the right, you're wrong. You see
Speaker 1: the same you know, toxic behavior all around. You have
Speaker 1: to be extremely cognizant of it, even if you know
Speaker 1: it's something at the risk for there is um weapons
Speaker 1: in general have a mental impact on us carrying them. Um.
Speaker 1: And there is there is a level of just like
Speaker 1: being around weaponry that is entrancing. It's it's a human thing.
Speaker 1: You know, we make weapons. It's we're too using apes
Speaker 1: and weapons are some of the first tools that we
Speaker 1: made that that are responsible for why you know, we
Speaker 1: get to tell the dogs and the cats what to do. Um.
Speaker 1: And you have to you have to really approach being
Speaker 1: armed from a standpoint of rejecting a lot of that.
Speaker 1: If you're going to do it responsibly. I mean, among
Speaker 1: other things, the idea that you might have to use
Speaker 1: a gun UM has to be you're you're very close
Speaker 1: to your worst nightmare UM, because it would be it
Speaker 1: would be if you ever actually had to use one.
Speaker 1: UM at minimum, you're talking like when you actually look
Speaker 1: at like legal self defense shoots, you're talking minimum. The
Speaker 1: next if you kill somebody, at least minimum, the next
Speaker 1: year of your life is dealing with the legal consequences
Speaker 1: of that. Sure, and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're having if if IF IF file,
Speaker 1: if charges get filed, you're talking hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars for like a capital defense case, if not millions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and that's in you know. There's one of the
Speaker 1: gun YouTubers that I like to push people towards it
Speaker 1: for this kind of stuff is a guy named Paul Harrold,
Speaker 1: who is certainly more on the conservative side, but who
Speaker 1: actually killed somebody in a self defense and went through
Speaker 1: the whole legal process afterwards. And he has a couple
Speaker 1: of videos where he talks about it, and he gives
Speaker 1: I think pretty good advice on that. That is that
Speaker 1: is completely without ego because it was a nightmare for him.
Speaker 1: It was the worst experience of his life, which is
Speaker 1: what it's going to be if you ever have to
Speaker 1: use a gun, and that should be like, that should
Speaker 1: be the top of your that should be the top
Speaker 1: of your mindset. You know, I've been in this situation
Speaker 1: a couple of times at protests where like someone pulls
Speaker 1: a knife and starts lunging at people and I have
Speaker 1: a gun and I'm fifteen feet away, and I never
Speaker 1: drew in part because it never quite crossed that line
Speaker 1: for me, and I knew that giving people the chance
Speaker 1: to deescalate was vastly more important than um introducing a
Speaker 1: second weapon to the situation immediately. And if things had
Speaker 1: gone differently, perhaps I would feel differently about my choices
Speaker 1: in that moment. But um, they didn't and nobody got hurt.
Speaker 1: And that's always the best case scenario, even if it's
Speaker 1: somebody you really dislike who is who is threatening people
Speaker 1: with a weapon. I swear that happened up in Olympia
Speaker 1: like two weeks ago. Yeah, Well, the shooting in Olympia,
Speaker 1: which was a guy named Tye Me who got shot UM,
Speaker 1: and there's video of it. It's absolutely not illegally justified
Speaker 1: shoot for sure. Like, yeah he was he was like
Speaker 1: forty feet away, you know. Um, yeah, but he's really tall.
Speaker 1: He is big, he is I think that counts for something.
Speaker 1: He was tall, he was tall, he was chasing them,
Speaker 1: he was armed. Um. Not making a moral case here.
Speaker 1: I think legally they would have had a trouble had
Speaker 1: they stayed around. Now, of course they've got I believe
Speaker 1: they've been arrested at this point. Oh have they? I
Speaker 1: just didn't think so. So sorry. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: crash it for a second. I think I saw our
Speaker 1: best friend Andy post something about it three days ago.
Speaker 1: Three Yeah, okay, so they did. They did arrest the guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's another thing if you, um,
Speaker 1: if you feel if if you're involved in like a
Speaker 1: shooting that you feel is a just defined legal shooting. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't leave the scene. Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the better videos you'll get on like what
Speaker 1: to do and uh, this guy's life has gone to
Speaker 1: ship because of the political nature of your shooting. But
Speaker 1: the guy in um in Denver who shot that dude
Speaker 1: at a protest, the pinker, I'll tell you, you know, no,
Speaker 1: no matter what you want to say about whether or
Speaker 1: not it was a good shoot. Yeah, that that he
Speaker 1: dropped that fucking guy. I mean he dropped head down
Speaker 1: on his knees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. You know, again,
Speaker 1: the court case is not settled out, so I don't
Speaker 1: know if that guy's story is going to end happily.
Speaker 1: But in terms of if you want to not get
Speaker 1: shot yourself and you want to have the maximum chance
Speaker 1: of defending yourself if you have to shoot somebody in
Speaker 1: a situation that's legally justified, what that guy did after
Speaker 1: the shoot is how to handle it. Um. And I
Speaker 1: mean the evidence for that is he did not get shot.
Speaker 1: And obviously your mileage with that's gonna vary depending on
Speaker 1: your skin color. Uh yeah, that's actor. Yeah. In terms
Speaker 1: of actual training, people can like pay for if they
Speaker 1: if they want to take that step, which I think
Speaker 1: is a good idea. Um, who do you do. Do
Speaker 1: you have kind of like broad recommendations for how people
Speaker 1: can know if some things you know, because there's this
Speaker 1: is certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Um, yeah, I mean most of the beginner level, Uh,
Speaker 1: how to fight with a gun. Classes are two to
Speaker 1: three days long like that. That's a good starting point
Speaker 1: is the fact that you're going to pay probably three
Speaker 1: to five hundred dollars per day, um, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be multiple days long. You can't because you're going
Speaker 1: from a baseline. You know, they know you already know
Speaker 1: how to point and shoot a gun, but they're going
Speaker 1: to go up for everything on how to draw, how
Speaker 1: to move, how to reload. Um. You're gonna have some
Speaker 1: classroom time going over their specific safety instructions and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. UM. But anything you can do in one
Speaker 1: day or four hours or forty rounds or whatever, it
Speaker 1: isn't going to cut it. Um. You need to go
Speaker 1: get something, and you need to listen because they're going
Speaker 1: to ask you to do things that might not be
Speaker 1: the way you want to do it. You might say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not the way my dad taught me how to
Speaker 1: reload a handgun. UM. A good example is actually UM
Speaker 1: tactical Response in Tennessee. They a lot of people hate them,
Speaker 1: but they have a very specific way that they say,
Speaker 1: everyone reloads this way in our class. You know, you
Speaker 1: put it in and you sling shot the slide um.
Speaker 1: And and people will argue and go, well I want
Speaker 1: to just press the button. Well the button is cool
Speaker 1: and all, but we want you to sling shot the slide.
Speaker 1: Just do it for this class. Um. Sorry I got
Speaker 1: a little off topic there. No, no, no, that's a
Speaker 1: good point too, because I mean and listen, um. And
Speaker 1: you don't have to take everything away. You you take
Speaker 1: what you saw as good usable information and merge that
Speaker 1: with what you already know, maybe throw away some of
Speaker 1: what you already know when you've got this ball a
Speaker 1: goo that you can work with h for practice. Um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah it is. And to that point when you're
Speaker 1: talking about like training, one of the differences between handguns
Speaker 1: and rifles, Like all all shooting, as always there's a
Speaker 1: degree of perishable nous to it, but shooting a handgun
Speaker 1: is a much more perishable skill than shooting a rifle. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's so if you're going to be armed
Speaker 1: with a handgun, UM, it really behooves you to take
Speaker 1: to train, you know, because you're only as good as
Speaker 1: how often you've been out there. Really um and having
Speaker 1: a state a good foundation, like taking some real professional
Speaker 1: classes will help a lot in that as opposed to
Speaker 1: just kind of going out to the range every now
Speaker 1: and again. But yeah, um, let's talk at the s.
Speaker 1: The last little bit of this here about kind of
Speaker 1: the gun that's always on the tip of everybody's tongue
Speaker 1: when you start talking about being armed and armed self defenses.
Speaker 1: You know, the A R platform. Um, it's a gun
Speaker 1: with a lot of baggage, a tremendous amount of cultural baggage,
Speaker 1: and it's it has become vastly more than just a
Speaker 1: firearm in our culture. Um what a what? What do
Speaker 1: you what? Are kind of? Because I am a big
Speaker 1: advocate of people who who are open to being armed
Speaker 1: getting an A R platform. I think it's a great
Speaker 1: gun to learn. I mean it goes yeah, it goes
Speaker 1: bang really well almost every time, as long as it's
Speaker 1: from a reputable manufacturer. Um, despite what some people say,
Speaker 1: they're very reliable. Um, they're easy to clean. Literally as
Speaker 1: long as you keep them lubricated. Even in the field,
Speaker 1: you keep it lubricated, it will just just keep banging
Speaker 1: out rounds and it functions in you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this during the episodes on like you know, food
Speaker 1: storage and in and whatnot, Like where there's A. There's
Speaker 1: the there's the cheap version. I like stuff where there's
Speaker 1: there's the cheap version that works, and there's the expensive
Speaker 1: version that works. And you you have that with an
Speaker 1: A R. You can get a very inexpensive ARE and
Speaker 1: you can you can replace every part of that ARE
Speaker 1: over the next five years and have a six thousand
Speaker 1: dollar gun. I I did um minor price checking last
Speaker 1: night because I was like, you know, I haven't checked
Speaker 1: the price the retail prices on stuff right, so in
Speaker 1: like your your budget tier normal price that that's out
Speaker 1: right Now, you've got like a Ruger, a R five
Speaker 1: five six, there's seven hundred bucks. That's that's dirt cheap,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna go bang, just in the same red gun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who who's who's a R is
Speaker 1: a RE five five six and they're very solid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just they go bang every time. You're not going
Speaker 1: to break up, um, I mean, as long as you
Speaker 1: don't use it like a baseball bat, you're not going
Speaker 1: to break up, especially now that the Russian steelcase dammo
Speaker 1: has been banned. But then like the the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum is you got a sick right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple. Okay, so you know what the
Speaker 1: rattler is. Oh, yeah, that's a fun one. I do
Speaker 1: not own a rattler, but they are they are cute.
Speaker 1: Do you know how much? Well, first off, the rattler
Speaker 1: it's a short, bare old five five six. It's not
Speaker 1: really an air of fifteen, but like technically it kind
Speaker 1: of is. Yeah, um, and it's well, how about this,
Speaker 1: how much do you think that the rattler costs? Right now?
Speaker 1: Don't don't go look it, just just say probably bucks
Speaker 1: would be my guess. Now it's uh now, I actually
Speaker 1: put it in my category of honorable mentioned slash meme
Speaker 1: because it's kind of a meme. Gun. Uh it's so tiny, um,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to get out with it. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of the spread we were talking about, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, you can get a seven d dollar gun
Speaker 1: and it'll go bang the exact same way as the rattler. Um,
Speaker 1: it fires the same bullet um, and you can build
Speaker 1: up to something not like a rattler, but you can
Speaker 1: build up to um a bunch of novesky parts. You
Speaker 1: can throw a bunch of novesky parts into that ruger
Speaker 1: lower and upper that you bought and build a really
Speaker 1: awesome gun that will be you know, nine percent reliable. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can you know, I think generally if you're
Speaker 1: buying like a again, you're you're getting kind of a
Speaker 1: bargain basement. Are one of the first things that that
Speaker 1: it's going to behoove you to replaces the optics. You know,
Speaker 1: it'll probably start with ion sights. But these don't even
Speaker 1: come with anything. Yeah, usually they come with nothing on
Speaker 1: him and you have to stick the irons or you
Speaker 1: stick a reflex site. There's a whole world of um
Speaker 1: of optics. And I think one of the actually one
Speaker 1: of the websites I recommend people check into if you're
Speaker 1: looking and kind of reading up on this and and
Speaker 1: doing your due diligence is Pew Pew tactical um. They
Speaker 1: do not written from like a super you know, chutty
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like you get a lot of very political
Speaker 1: gun websites that may have some good information that are
Speaker 1: frustrating to read. They're not that way. They're written you know,
Speaker 1: four people who are not super aggro about guns, but
Speaker 1: who are are are interested in guns, and you can
Speaker 1: find really good reviews on stuff. But as a general rule,
Speaker 1: modern optics beeed iron sights every day of the like
Speaker 1: they prefer I I and I do in some case
Speaker 1: on my a case, I vastly prefer using irons, But
Speaker 1: that would never be the weapon I would pick if
Speaker 1: I was in a situation where I needed a weapon,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean I think everyone should learn
Speaker 1: how to use iron sights, absolutely, But if I can
Speaker 1: hand someone a four D and fifty dollar aim point
Speaker 1: pro which which is uh the budget for version of
Speaker 1: a high end optic, if I can put a four
Speaker 1: under and fifty optic with the mountain everything onto a
Speaker 1: rifle and just go, hey, just just put the dot
Speaker 1: on what you want to shoot, You're done. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that goes past that, but we got
Speaker 1: rid of the entire proper site alignment and all that.
Speaker 1: They just got to put the dot on the box
Speaker 1: and squeeze. Yeah. Yeah, I mean even even the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: famous for for fielding marksman, has gone we're going to
Speaker 1: switch over to optic based training. Yeah, they're just I
Speaker 1: mean you look at even guys in like id Lib Province,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the rebel provinces in Syria
Speaker 1: that's been persistently under siege for most of the last decade. Um,
Speaker 1: they're all using fancy optics now like that generally alf
Speaker 1: and Ali Baba versions of like brand optics. But it
Speaker 1: does the trick, you know. I mean it's a it's
Speaker 1: a sig Romeo that never got the role market for
Speaker 1: cig on it. Yeah, exactly, and they paid a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks instead. Yeah. Um, alright, Well, I think that's most
Speaker 1: of what we can responsibly get through. I do want
Speaker 1: to end on the caveat we started with this with,
Speaker 1: which is that um deciding whether or not and and
Speaker 1: I we advocate, uh, firearms is an option both as
Speaker 1: a legal option and something that can be for your
Speaker 1: community and for you as an individual potentially practical. I
Speaker 1: don't blanket advise people to buy guns. I think in
Speaker 1: many cases it's going to be counterproductive. I think you
Speaker 1: should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone who
Speaker 1: struggles with suicidal ideation, they they can be a very
Speaker 1: dangerous thing to have in your home if that's something
Speaker 1: that that you battle with. I do think that they
Speaker 1: can be owned and used very responsibly. In addition to
Speaker 1: I think shooting can be a really enjoyable pastime um,
Speaker 1: and I think more than anything, when a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people who are talking about killing you all have guns,
Speaker 1: it can behoove you to own a firearm as well
Speaker 1: if you're a member of one of those communities. So
Speaker 1: please don't take any of this. As Robert Evans says,
Speaker 1: everyone go buy a gun. But if you're going to
Speaker 1: buy a gun, there's there's a right way and a
Speaker 1: responsible way to go about it, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: picking up a random twelve gauge and shoving it under
Speaker 1: your bed, which is no more shotguns for home defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not ideal. Um, yeah, I mean we can,
Speaker 1: we can talk about over penetration and stuff, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just being able to move lead in a
Speaker 1: direction they're very bad at. Yeah. Um yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're They're not They're not. I mean again, something like
Speaker 1: uh an a R or a pistol caliber carbine is
Speaker 1: in a lot of situations going to be a much
Speaker 1: more practical and and have less risk of hitting stuff
Speaker 1: you don't want to hit necessarily. Get the high point?
Speaker 1: Um yeat yeah, they eat cannon. Well, we'll discuss that
Speaker 1: on our whole episode of about high points. So you've
Speaker 1: shot yourself in the dick the high points story. All right, well, um,
Speaker 1: do you wanna Paul, you've got any got anything to
Speaker 1: plug before we roll out here? Uh? Give food to
Speaker 1: homeless people? Well houseless, houseless, I think is yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you're in an area with a based d
Speaker 1: S A, joined the d S I and then vote
Speaker 1: out the ship loads. That's what's happening here in Orlando. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, embrace anarchy. Well, I'm Robert Evans, this is
Speaker 1: gonna podcast. And uh and remember as we sail out,
Speaker 1: there's a reason the episode talking about guns came after
Speaker 1: the episodes talking about storing and growing food. When P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, what rose from its ashes would change the world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Grim and Mild presents an ongoing journey into
Speaker 1: the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season,
Speaker 1: will be giving you a backstage tour of the always
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Speaker 1: Side Show. So come along as we visit the shadowy
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Speaker 1: Grim and Mild dot com slash Presents. I'm Tanya sam
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Speaker 1: Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: make sure you leave a review. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: It could Happen here. Yeah, that's the podcast we're doing
Speaker 1: right now. It's a podcast about how things are kind
Speaker 1: of falling apart, but maybe they don't need to, or
Speaker 1: at least not as much as they have. Then I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans with me as often is my co host Garrison.
Speaker 1: Davis Garrison, UM say something inciting to the audience. I'm
Speaker 1: on my second cup of coffee. Yeah, because it is.
Speaker 1: It is the early morning for you, by which I
Speaker 1: mean to eleven in the afternoon. UM, also with us today.
Speaker 1: Our guest for this episode is David van Dooson. Uh. David,
Speaker 1: you are the president of the State Labor Council for
Speaker 1: the Vermont a f l c I O and there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that's interesting about your organization. Will
Speaker 1: dig into it in more detail in a second, but
Speaker 1: first I just want to say hello and thank you
Speaker 1: for being on the shower now, David, the big thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Vermont a f l c I has
Speaker 1: been in the news a couple of times recently. The
Speaker 1: most recent one is y'all issued a statement making you
Speaker 1: the coverage I've seen has said the first labor organization
Speaker 1: in the US to like support gun rights. I mean
Speaker 1: like as is stated in a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: you've put out, like Blair Mountain. There's a long history
Speaker 1: of labor organizations making use of the Second Amendment. But UM,
Speaker 1: I certainly haven't heard of a labor organization stating at
Speaker 1: the way you did, which is basically the case you've made,
Speaker 1: is because far right fascist organizations are so heavily armed
Speaker 1: and any gut all of the gun control policies being
Speaker 1: heavily debated, at least among liberals, are likely to ignore
Speaker 1: those people while restricting the ability of working class and
Speaker 1: particularly marginalized people to arm themselves. Um, you do not
Speaker 1: support those regulations because you support the rights of those
Speaker 1: groups to be able to defend themselves from fascists. That
Speaker 1: more or less correct. Well, Look, we believe in the
Speaker 1: right of the people to defend themselves, but our policies,
Speaker 1: including that one, are not adopted by the elected leadership,
Speaker 1: including myself. They're adopted by our members. We believe very
Speaker 1: firmly and democracy participaty democracy. So with issues like this,
Speaker 1: we're happy to bring into our convention, which we recently did,
Speaker 1: and facilitate a full debate on the issue. So that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we did. We talked about it, our rank
Speaker 1: and file members talked about it. They made amendments, They
Speaker 1: debated passionately different sides of the issue in a respectful way,
Speaker 1: in a productive way. A number of amendments were made,
Speaker 1: that were adopted, and then ultimately the resolution was passed
Speaker 1: with over a two thirds majority of our recopil delegance
Speaker 1: in favor. So that's where we are right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read a bit about this, including you know, there's
Speaker 1: been some critiques from a representative from the a f T,
Speaker 1: which is the local teachers union. But there was also
Speaker 1: a member of the Vermont a f l C i
Speaker 1: oh who essentially stated, like, hey, I didn't actually agree
Speaker 1: with this amendment but or with this resolution, but it
Speaker 1: was made democratically, and like I I support the process
Speaker 1: by which it was done, which is one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is it is so interesting here that
Speaker 1: this isn't like um UM a kind of a group
Speaker 1: of activists at the top making declaration declarations. This is
Speaker 1: an organization that is really um dedicated itself increasingly to
Speaker 1: I think a kind of progressive ism that we we
Speaker 1: haven't really seen in an organized way, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the American labor movement until recently. Well, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about democracy in the labor I mean we could
Speaker 1: be just as well here about democracies in society as such.
Speaker 1: The fact is is that organized labor today is not
Speaker 1: particularly democratic, and we're looking to change that, and our
Speaker 1: world is not particularly democratic now. The vision that we
Speaker 1: hold our slate are progressive slate called United, is one
Speaker 1: where we increase the means for direct producerary democracy, both
Speaker 1: within labor and within our society. So of course we're
Speaker 1: going to go to our members and our rank and
Speaker 1: file and ask them to debate the issues of our
Speaker 1: day and ultimately to make a decision on these major
Speaker 1: political and social issues. This was one we again, we
Speaker 1: do believe that people need to have a right, the
Speaker 1: working class needs have a right to defend itself, and
Speaker 1: we can't bury our head in the stand. Anybody that's
Speaker 1: even followed a little bit of the news lately will
Speaker 1: know that between November up until late January, we were
Speaker 1: one general shy of a coup in this country, in
Speaker 1: the upside down world that we're now living in. It
Speaker 1: was because of the joint chiefs of Staff and the
Speaker 1: head of the c i A not supporting a coup
Speaker 1: that a neo fascist cou didn't totally in fold materialized
Speaker 1: in a more mature form. Let that sink inform it
Speaker 1: our democracy, or the vestiges of the democracy we have
Speaker 1: in the United States right now is precarious. Uh. They
Speaker 1: just because they've been there for two hundred years doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're gonna be there tomorrow. The new playbook from
Speaker 1: an increasingly far right Republican Party is to limit as
Speaker 1: much as they possibly could let people's right to vote
Speaker 1: and to participate in the political process. We see this
Speaker 1: happening in Texas, We see this happening in Georgia. We
Speaker 1: see this happening in Florida. We see this happening in Red. Uh.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say red, but I should say Republican states
Speaker 1: all throughout the US. So these are dangerous, dangerous times, right,
Speaker 1: so dangerous that our top generals were trying to decide
Speaker 1: what their position would be and make plans in case
Speaker 1: a coup, a full encoup, not just a hint of
Speaker 1: a coup, came into being within the last year of
Speaker 1: our republic. Now, given those realities and giving the rise
Speaker 1: of the far right, given that our former president Donald
Speaker 1: Trump told the neo fascist Proud Boys to stand what
Speaker 1: did you say, stand back and stand by? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And now at least they claimed that forty thousand members
Speaker 1: around the United States and they are armed. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't just rest in our laurelds and and pretend
Speaker 1: that the state as such is going to keep us safe.
Speaker 1: So it seems prudent and reasonable for us to have
Speaker 1: taken the action and say we defend our constitutional right
Speaker 1: to bear arms as intended to defend our communities. They
Speaker 1: defend our unions, to defend the working class. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that because we were just talking about
Speaker 1: the the coup that very nearly got pulled off your organization,
Speaker 1: at least in UH I believe it was right after
Speaker 1: the election, issued a statement that if the president illegally
Speaker 1: attempted to stay in power, the former president, you would
Speaker 1: participate in an attempt to help organize a general strike.
Speaker 1: Now that's something we talk about a lot on this show.
Speaker 1: We're big believers in the potential of a general strike.
Speaker 1: Were also big believers that the kind of general strike
Speaker 1: that we need to i don't know, potentially get climate
Speaker 1: justice and a number of other major things is an
Speaker 1: undertaking on par with the space race. You know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about an enormous task. I'm really interested in picking
Speaker 1: your brain on when we talk about a national general strike,
Speaker 1: what is the kind of infrastructure that's actually necessary to
Speaker 1: make something like that feasible, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: talk on like Twitter and Facebook of like, let's just
Speaker 1: do a general strike on this day in October. I
Speaker 1: six months doesn't go by, as President c I O
Speaker 1: ver month where I don't left this group of some
Speaker 1: kind of contact with me to endorse their general strike, right,
Speaker 1: going to shut down on data X And it's yet
Speaker 1: to happen, at least in our country. So that's a
Speaker 1: great question. A couple of things. When we voted, and
Speaker 1: again this wasn't a decision of myself and the leadership.
Speaker 1: This was a decision we went back to the rank
Speaker 1: and file with to our to one of our conventions
Speaker 1: of our delegates, after our long debate, voted to authorize
Speaker 1: the elected deecutive Board to call for a general strike
Speaker 1: in the event of a coup, in the event that
Speaker 1: there wasn't transfer power on January as the constitution requires.
Speaker 1: It was our feeling that in that very specific space
Speaker 1: and time, in that very specific political climate, um we
Speaker 1: would be able to call for such a strike and
Speaker 1: with a serious amount of work and a serious amount
Speaker 1: of organizing, pull that off and make that happen, and
Speaker 1: the thought was if we could do it in Vermont
Speaker 1: because the call was a further Mont Channel strike, then
Speaker 1: it could spread to other states, which would be absolutely
Speaker 1: necessary if there was if our country descended into a
Speaker 1: fascist dictatorship of some sort. But generally speaking, when we
Speaker 1: talk about climate issues, when we talk about the fact
Speaker 1: that millions of Americans don't have healthcare or aren't paid
Speaker 1: liv wages, all of these issues are at least these
Speaker 1: issues together certainly warrant us looking at things like a
Speaker 1: general strike, but they're a bit it's a bit phine
Speaker 1: this guide to think that, hey, we got ten grade
Speaker 1: issues that we want to see progress on, We're gonna
Speaker 1: call for our strike and is going to happen. The
Speaker 1: infrastructure is not there, nor is the political will within
Speaker 1: the large labor bodies at this praised present time. Without
Speaker 1: participation from organized labor, first of all, I don't think
Speaker 1: anything is going to happen. So you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: achieve buy in a certain level. But even with buying
Speaker 1: from key leaders or even a localized shop stewards, you
Speaker 1: still need to have infrastructure in place. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that lacks in the a f l c
Speaker 1: I O as a national organization. We don't have an
Speaker 1: effective network of local union contacts in every shop, at
Speaker 1: every shift, in every factory that's represented by a union,
Speaker 1: let alone the majority of workplaces at this point that
Speaker 1: aren't unionized. So what our top priority is as far
Speaker 1: as the vermontney a fl Sea goes over the next
Speaker 1: two years, is to build a network of local union
Speaker 1: contacts in every single shop and every single shift that
Speaker 1: we represent folks here in Vermont. So we see this
Speaker 1: as a way to increase communication. Without communication, you're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to pull off mass mobilizations and
Speaker 1: what and also you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: conduct mass education on issues X, Y or Z. So
Speaker 1: over a period of two years, we're looking to build
Speaker 1: this network that would function not as a one way
Speaker 1: means of communication, but almost a two or three way.
Speaker 1: Imagine that this is a way for the rank and
Speaker 1: file to communicate up to the leaders. This is a
Speaker 1: way for the leadership to communicate down to the ranks,
Speaker 1: I mean down to the lunch room level of what
Speaker 1: it means to be in a union shop. And also
Speaker 1: ideally it's going to be a way for local union
Speaker 1: leaders to horizontally communicate with each other. With such a
Speaker 1: structure in place on a grand scale, on a state scale,
Speaker 1: on a federal scale, then things like organized general strikes
Speaker 1: over political issues and social issues become feasible. And even
Speaker 1: when they're feasible, though, then we still have the political
Speaker 1: question of you know, will they be supported by the internationals,
Speaker 1: will they be supported by the executive board of the
Speaker 1: National a f C AL And that's a huge conversation,
Speaker 1: you know. So, Yeah, it's interesting to be hearing your
Speaker 1: perspective on this because my experience with kind of activism
Speaker 1: UM has been much more of kind of the decentralized
Speaker 1: and kind of much more recent groups, you know, since occupy. UM,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with these these structures that in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases there I mean, the A f l C
Speaker 1: I O goes back like what like a century, right
Speaker 1: one one way or the other. Yeah, you know, I think, UM,
Speaker 1: because of kind of how shall I say, online, a
Speaker 1: lot of the discussion about this stuff seems to be
Speaker 1: organized labor often gets left out. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think is most important when talking about
Speaker 1: the value that organized labor has in any kind of
Speaker 1: discussion if a general strike is what happened during the
Speaker 1: during the budget uh negotiations or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them in twenty nineteen where you you had UM
Speaker 1: airline workers threatening a general strike that effectively brought it
Speaker 1: into a president's saber rattling over over the budget like
Speaker 1: it's it's president Sarah Nelson. Yeah, headlines over that and
Speaker 1: that was the right thing to do, absolutely her and
Speaker 1: would love to sear a a stronger positional leadership the
Speaker 1: national level. Well, I'm interested because I see a lot
Speaker 1: of potential in Obviously organized labor has had a lot
Speaker 1: of problems, particularly in the last you know, during my lifetime, UM,
Speaker 1: And I think part of it is what you said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's it's not as democratic as it should be at
Speaker 1: most levels. UM. What you guys have done with United
Speaker 1: is attempting to reform that, you know within Vermont. I'm wondering, first,
Speaker 1: how did that kind of come about? You know, twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen is when you first got got put into office,
Speaker 1: when when the United State got put in the to
Speaker 1: the office in Vermont? What was kind of the back
Speaker 1: story to that? And then my second question is kind
Speaker 1: of what do you see as necessary to like what
Speaker 1: what what's what's the fight as you see it to
Speaker 1: get stuff like that done on a larger scale around
Speaker 1: the country. So our story in Vermont is probably a
Speaker 1: lot like the story of organized labor in many different
Speaker 1: places are starting point. So in two thousand and seventeen,
Speaker 1: not that long ago, ah, we had a convention with
Speaker 1: something like twenty or twenty five delegates there. Imagine that
Speaker 1: twenty delegates representing T at the time ten thousand grown
Speaker 1: since but ten thousand members. That's called the democracy. So
Speaker 1: there was a problem, an existential problem. Now I come
Speaker 1: out of Asked Me Local Me four thirteen in the
Speaker 1: northeast Kingdom of Vermont. So when I got together with
Speaker 1: a number of other leaders from different unions, different Asked
Speaker 1: Me locals, but also United Academics is part of a
Speaker 1: f T the building trades. A number of folks. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a general recognition at the leadership level that
Speaker 1: something was very wrong. Member participation was weakest can be,
Speaker 1: and things had to change. And we continually as an organization,
Speaker 1: you know, with some exceptions, hitch our wagon to the
Speaker 1: shortcomings that are the Democratic Party. So all of these
Speaker 1: things together led to inactivity, apathy, and lack of democracy.
Speaker 1: So we started going around we started talking with workers,
Speaker 1: we started talking with shops across the state, and one
Speaker 1: of the first things that was striking. People would say
Speaker 1: they would know what union they're n be a A
Speaker 1: PWU or asking me or whatever it was. But we'd say, listen,
Speaker 1: we're talking. We're thinking about running a slate progressive slave
Speaker 1: for office with to take the a f l c
Speaker 1: I O in a new direction. The next thing they
Speaker 1: would say, is, what's the a f l C I
Speaker 1: think about that? Right, workers involved, some of which were
Speaker 1: union stewarts and their locals didn't even know what the
Speaker 1: a f l c I O was. So that was
Speaker 1: our starting point. It was an excellent crisis of labor.
Speaker 1: And mind you, during these what I would call some
Speaker 1: dark periods, we would often endorse a hundred candidates for
Speaker 1: state House, nearly all of which being Democrats, and then
Speaker 1: we they would win. They would win their elections, like
Speaker 1: largely our candidates win, and then we get nothing in
Speaker 1: the state House. Right, there would be no labor bill,
Speaker 1: there'd be no advancement of card check. Differently, the organized
Speaker 1: labor and yet we keep repeating the same mistake year
Speaker 1: and year out and not figure out that something was wrong.
Speaker 1: So when we formed the United State as a coalition
Speaker 1: of a number of different unions to recognize it was
Speaker 1: time for change, we really brought the discussion into the
Speaker 1: grassroots level. We developed a ten point program we called
Speaker 1: our little read book. It's now the policy and the
Speaker 1: platform of the Vermont f l c i A, and
Speaker 1: we ran an organized campaign based on that right at
Speaker 1: a very local level. And here we did all the
Speaker 1: things that you know you should be doing, the phone calls, emails,
Speaker 1: the shop visits, all of this and created a sense
Speaker 1: of excitement going into our two convention. Our two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen convention with over if I recall, over a hundred
Speaker 1: and five delegates and alternates, was the largest convention we
Speaker 1: had up here in in something like thirty plus years.
Speaker 1: So that was an exciting atmosphere where something was going
Speaker 1: to be different and something was going to change right.
Speaker 1: So we swept. We essentially slept those elections. We want
Speaker 1: all the seats except for one. We had a follow
Speaker 1: up convention in two UM sorry election in two where
Speaker 1: we won every single seat, and then the last selection
Speaker 1: UM we won all seats except for one where one
Speaker 1: person who's a good, good person from the building trades
Speaker 1: ran but was not part of our state. So the
Speaker 1: real question is what have we done in the intern
Speaker 1: how are we changing that direction, and how are we
Speaker 1: changing trying to seek to change the capacity of labor,
Speaker 1: and what lessons does it add to the national room.
Speaker 1: I would suppose so on that for one of the
Speaker 1: first things we did is we took money out of
Speaker 1: our lobbying operation and put it into an organizing the department,
Speaker 1: whereby we would hire and we have hired on call
Speaker 1: organizers to assist our affiliates in either new organizing or
Speaker 1: internal organizing, therefore delivering an actual benefits to our affiliate unions. Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, we represent just about every sector of workers
Speaker 1: all across the state, but forever they very rarely got
Speaker 1: a concrete, measurable acts of solidarity from the Federation as such,
Speaker 1: right because all of a lot of too many of
Speaker 1: resources were put in belonging. And we also took a
Speaker 1: critical eye towards the Democratic Party and recently we've instead
Speaker 1: endorsed the Social Democratic Vermont Progressive Party slates and their
Speaker 1: runs for state House and state wide office. In many cases,
Speaker 1: so we've done a few things differently. We're continuing to
Speaker 1: do things differently. We've expanded the size of our executive
Speaker 1: board so you we elect more leaders now. We've more
Speaker 1: than double the size of the delegates afforded to each
Speaker 1: local so we could have more rank and foot file
Speaker 1: voices present when we're meeting at a convention. And we've
Speaker 1: taken a strong um social justice position where we think
Speaker 1: that organized labor must work very closely in an alliance,
Speaker 1: form alliances with groups like Migrant Justice or Black Perspective
Speaker 1: or environmental organizations like three fifty dot org. And we've
Speaker 1: done those things, worked on their issues where we have
Speaker 1: common interests, and we've asked them to support us on
Speaker 1: our issues where where they've I have some common interests.
Speaker 1: So those are things that are very different that the
Speaker 1: National a f l C is not doing. Other state
Speaker 1: labor federations largely aren't doing enough. And we're hoping now
Speaker 1: to build that out, and we're engaging conversations seeking to
Speaker 1: form a national progressive Caucus within the National ALC. I
Speaker 1: and I think that's so important when you talk about
Speaker 1: kind of on the national level for progressive number one
Speaker 1: to not not continually kind of reflectively support the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party when the Democratics parties is failing progressives, which you know,
Speaker 1: we have a perfect case study right now in Congress
Speaker 1: with the the Reconciliation Bill. UM. It often does seem
Speaker 1: like such an insurmountable task just because the inability, like
Speaker 1: a bill, the three point five trillion dollar infrastructure bill,
Speaker 1: is so widely supported by Americans, but it just keeps
Speaker 1: coming down to this tiny number of folks with you know,
Speaker 1: finding anential interests in donors um, who are who are
Speaker 1: pushing against something that's widely supported. And I feel um
Speaker 1: optimistic when I look at state organizations like what y'all
Speaker 1: are doing and the fact that I can see something building,
Speaker 1: but I also does it is such a titanic task
Speaker 1: to imagine translating that on a national scale in a
Speaker 1: way that actually gets us the things that you know,
Speaker 1: we we really can't wait for when you're talking about
Speaker 1: some of this infrastructure stuff, when you're talking about healthcare,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about climate justice, Like, I do feel
Speaker 1: the clock ticking um, and I'm wondering what you see
Speaker 1: as the hope on the national scale for actually putting
Speaker 1: some muscle behind the progressive movement. Well, look, it's not
Speaker 1: just the the issues of the Infrastructure Bill and the
Speaker 1: budget bill. It's also the Proact right, the bill that
Speaker 1: is language in the Senate. And let's not lose track
Speaker 1: of the fact that those efforts are all stalling and
Speaker 1: likely very likely to fail. And I hope they don't
Speaker 1: because of Democrats, because the Democratic Party is not united.
Speaker 1: They ran on a platform saying they were going to
Speaker 1: do X, Y and Z, and now when they're in
Speaker 1: a position to carry it out, they're not going to
Speaker 1: do it. And Joe Manchin, uh far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: UH call him a class trader, but I don't think
Speaker 1: he's ever was part of the working class. He claims
Speaker 1: to support the Proact, but in the same breath he
Speaker 1: he won't get rid of the filibuster. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's absolute bullshit as far as I'm concerned. So how
Speaker 1: do we change that? Well, the National a f l
Speaker 1: c I O puts millions and millions and millions of
Speaker 1: dollars into elections. We have gotten so many of these
Speaker 1: people elected and back them in Arizona and West Virginia,
Speaker 1: you name it, and then we get nothing back. If
Speaker 1: we were to take that money instead and put it
Speaker 1: into a robust new organizing department or a recrafted organizing
Speaker 1: department and actually assigned reel on the ground organizers in
Speaker 1: every single state in the country to help our affiliates,
Speaker 1: to help our state federations and their affiliates to internally organized,
Speaker 1: to build a kind of network I talked was talking
Speaker 1: to me about before, and to be active and build
Speaker 1: alliances the Social Justice Group, our power would be amplified
Speaker 1: five million fold. This is the way we do it.
Speaker 1: Politicians aren't going to do what's right because it's right.
Speaker 1: Politicians are gonna do what's right when they feel so
Speaker 1: much pressure that they have to do it. Now, the
Speaker 1: victories that we saw for working people during the Great
Speaker 1: Depression under FDR, that wasn't just because FDR thought, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the right thing to do. It's because people
Speaker 1: are going on strike, because people were organized because they
Speaker 1: were scared of revolutionary change in this country. So turn
Speaker 1: to meaningful, true, true um of major reforms as a
Speaker 1: way to blunt that perceived threat that they have. And
Speaker 1: that's what we got to get back to. Not our
Speaker 1: power is never gonna grow from people who are wearing
Speaker 1: ties in Washington. Power is going to grow based on
Speaker 1: our solidarity on the shop floor and in our communities.
Speaker 1: So that's the direction we gotta go, and we got
Speaker 1: to do that rapidly, very rapidly. It's been clear to
Speaker 1: me for quite a while both that the reason workers
Speaker 1: gain so much in the wake of the Great Depression
Speaker 1: and the only kind of hope we have for doing
Speaker 1: that now is, um, they have to be scared, you know,
Speaker 1: to an extent, they have to be scared of of
Speaker 1: what's arrayed against them, both in its organization and in
Speaker 1: its ability to disrupt things. UM. And I'm wondering what
Speaker 1: you think people listening, people um, who maybe are not
Speaker 1: involved in organized labor, Like what what what do you
Speaker 1: think people can do to further those ends? Like this
Speaker 1: is like when we when we start talking about national
Speaker 1: level a f l C I O politics, that's not
Speaker 1: something I think most people listening feel like they have
Speaker 1: any kind of ability to influence. Um, what do you
Speaker 1: think they can influence? What do you think people can
Speaker 1: be doing to build that kind of capathitate? Well, you
Speaker 1: gotta be active, and you've got to engage in the
Speaker 1: political and social movements. But also most folks, you know,
Speaker 1: they're gonna have a job of some time and a
Speaker 1: lot of folks aren't getting treated the way they should
Speaker 1: in their job. I don't care if you're work in
Speaker 1: a coffee shop, in a restaurant, or in a gas station,
Speaker 1: or in manufacturing, and you could start by organizing with
Speaker 1: your coworkers to form a union today. You know, you
Speaker 1: could reach out to a local union to ask for help,
Speaker 1: or you could do it on your own. Frankly, but
Speaker 1: if we're not organized as working people, and we are
Speaker 1: we are most of the world. If we're not organized
Speaker 1: amongst ourselves, we're not going to be able to become
Speaker 1: that expression of power that we need to be in
Speaker 1: order to create the change. If we're just a collection
Speaker 1: of individuals, then the ruling class, the wealthy, the powerful,
Speaker 1: the elite, they're gonna have all their ducks in a
Speaker 1: row to keep us divided and to keep their foot
Speaker 1: on the pedal of the status quo. So we need
Speaker 1: to come together. We need to organize in the natural
Speaker 1: place to organize is in the workplace. In my opinion, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it. It is the natural place to organize.
Speaker 1: It's also become an increasingly difficult place to organize. We
Speaker 1: all watch what Amazon did in Bessemer this year. You know, UM,
Speaker 1: and and that fight is still ongoing to an extent. UM,
Speaker 1: but it is Uh, it is a continuing challenge, um
Speaker 1: to to actually effectively unionized in a lot of the
Speaker 1: industries where it matters most you know, UM, like we
Speaker 1: have some choke point industries, like we talked about aircraft
Speaker 1: employees that are heavily unionized, thankfully, and that do have
Speaker 1: a lot of power, as has been demonstrated recently when
Speaker 1: they when they go to the mat. Um. But I
Speaker 1: I'm interested in kind of we we've got, you know,
Speaker 1: Amazon employees is really one of the areas that I'm
Speaker 1: looking at where, my god, if if we could actually
Speaker 1: if something significant could actually get off the ground and
Speaker 1: a significant number of those workers could get organized, it
Speaker 1: can make a real difference. UM. But you know, you've
Speaker 1: got effectively what are community organizations for the most part
Speaker 1: going up against um. You know, Amazon at this point
Speaker 1: has more resources than most nation states. Yeah, but so
Speaker 1: did the Carnegies and the Rockefellers and the folks like
Speaker 1: this and and are particularly and it's always been hard,
Speaker 1: uh too long ago in our country, maybe during our
Speaker 1: grandfather's day, where there was a very good chance you'd
Speaker 1: be shot or at least beat over the head with
Speaker 1: a club from the Pinkerton's if you try to organize.
Speaker 1: Organizing has never been easy, and yeah, such as Columbia today,
Speaker 1: trade unions are killed at an unbelievable clip, almost on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, and yet still they organized. So I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting to any of your listeners that if this
Speaker 1: is easy, what I am that it has to happen.
Speaker 1: It has to happen. And there's different models too. Like
Speaker 1: in some Place is one of the models that's been
Speaker 1: effectively used as forming workers centers, right, So that's not
Speaker 1: a traditional union. It's a center in a city, or
Speaker 1: in a community or in a town where workers come
Speaker 1: together and strategized right at a in a location, to
Speaker 1: strategize how to be effective as a group, as a whole,
Speaker 1: as a class on issues that are important to them,
Speaker 1: you know, be an economic, be its social, be it um,
Speaker 1: fighting against racism, whatever it may be. That's a model
Speaker 1: that I suggest folks could could look into as an
Speaker 1: alternative way. If, for whatever reason, you don't feel that
Speaker 1: the time is right for a union in your shop today,
Speaker 1: although it needs to be tomorrow, take a look at
Speaker 1: workers center and see if there's one in your community,
Speaker 1: get involved, if not, get together a few people and
Speaker 1: see what it would take to start when where you live.
Speaker 1: But one way or another, we have to be organized,
Speaker 1: we have to come together. We cannot just be a
Speaker 1: collection of individuals. That's a great point, UM, and useful information.
Speaker 1: I think kind of the last thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into UM was one of the things I first
Speaker 1: learned about your organization that you issued a solidarity statement
Speaker 1: back and I think it was two thousand nineteen UM
Speaker 1: with the YPG and J in Rojaba. UM. And you've
Speaker 1: issued you know it stated your solidarity with Black Lives matter,
Speaker 1: with the Zapatista's currently what they're undergoing in Mexico, UM,
Speaker 1: which is massive repression from the government yet again. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know your support of Palestinian rights and of
Speaker 1: against sort of the U S occupation or not occupation,
Speaker 1: but a blockade of Cuba. UM. What do you see
Speaker 1: when we're talking about this struggle, this broad struggle we've
Speaker 1: been talking about all day, what do you see as
Speaker 1: the role of internationalism and both in both organizing people
Speaker 1: in organizing resistance. Well, our starting point today is capital
Speaker 1: is international. So we're going to have a foundational challenge
Speaker 1: to the power of capital. We also have to be
Speaker 1: internationalists in our altbum. We supported the YPG y p
Speaker 1: J and the newly elected government in Rojava because they
Speaker 1: are struggling for economic equity and a direct prot history
Speaker 1: democracy in that corner of the world. We see this
Speaker 1: as the most significant revolution in in the world, uh
Speaker 1: in generations. I mean this in our mind is on
Speaker 1: far with the Spanish Civil War and what we saw
Speaker 1: around Barcelona and the c n T then or the
Speaker 1: Paris Commune of EE. If this was happening in Europe,
Speaker 1: a day wouldn't go by the where this wouldn't be
Speaker 1: front page news. But in the Western world we often
Speaker 1: the corporate media terms of blind blind eye to many
Speaker 1: of those struggles. So they're doing their part, and we
Speaker 1: have to do our part in our country. To the Zabatistas,
Speaker 1: they're doing their part in Chiapas, in broadways, in some
Speaker 1: regards in Mexico as such. But we need to reach
Speaker 1: our hand out in encouragement and say hey, we're here
Speaker 1: to support you. One of the things we sought to
Speaker 1: concretely do in the Vermont labor movement is in two
Speaker 1: thou nineteen one of our Central Labor Council's passed the
Speaker 1: resolutions for we said, look, if you are go over
Speaker 1: to fight and volunteer with the YEPG and y p J,
Speaker 1: because there's thousands of volunteers right uh, they're are volunteered
Speaker 1: to go over, if you return and your American will
Speaker 1: hook you up with a union job, and we'll hook
Speaker 1: you up with three months of room and board so
Speaker 1: you could get reacclimated, you could get back into the
Speaker 1: community and get back into the local fight through the
Speaker 1: labor movement. And we were proud to actually have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to do that for one returning American fighter in
Speaker 1: our latest resolution in two one, and this one was
Speaker 1: broader because it was the whole vermonti a FO, not
Speaker 1: just the Central Labor Council. We again offered, we encourage
Speaker 1: folks to feel so inclined if they're in that place
Speaker 1: in their life to volunteer with the YPG and y
Speaker 1: PA and if they're Americans and they come back, we're
Speaker 1: happy to hook you up. We'll do our best to
Speaker 1: get you a good union job when you return. So
Speaker 1: we felt that was a very small least we do
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But concrete way to provide solidarity. We
Speaker 1: all have to stand together. It's really one fight. But
Speaker 1: the place we're going to be effective is where you
Speaker 1: live locally, in your town, in your city, and your
Speaker 1: state and in your country. Yeah. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great note to end on and a great thing that
Speaker 1: you all are doing. And I really do appreciate that,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you, David coming on and talking to
Speaker 1: us today. Um, is there anything else you wanted to
Speaker 1: to to get out or anything you wanted to like
Speaker 1: any you know, charities or mutual aid funds or whatever
Speaker 1: you wanted to uh push before we kind of roll
Speaker 1: out today. I'd just like to push for folks to
Speaker 1: go to work out tomorrow and and organize, organize with
Speaker 1: your fellow workers and let's change the world solidarity. Thank you, David.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here and I wanted to ask for your help.
Speaker 1: There is a Portland area woman rub it to me me.
Speaker 1: She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist and
Speaker 1: she is trying to save her home at the moment.
Speaker 1: She's got to go fund me. If you go to
Speaker 1: save Ruba's house, are you be a on go fund Bank,
Speaker 1: you'll find it. Save Ruby's House on go fund Me
Speaker 1: if you've got a few bucks, um, she could really
Speaker 1: use it again. Save Ruba's House. Are you be a
Speaker 1: at go fund Me? Thanks? Hey, We'll be back Monday
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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