Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: 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 here,
Speaker 1: a podcast that I opened perfectly as a professional, as
Speaker 1: a man who makes all of his money from the
Speaker 1: podcasts uh no, notes, How is 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 years, 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 Cavejota, and of course Garrison Davis. Alright,
Speaker 1: b everyone by. It would be pretty funny to just
Speaker 1: do that, so FA, 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 dads that
Speaker 1: are in our episodes. Right now, I can talk about
Speaker 1: what are we what are we doing right now? What
Speaker 1: is this episode about? What's going on? I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: guys want to talk about the coronavirus or I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can talk about whatever you want, but I think
Speaker 1: that's probably what you guys has 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
Speaker 1: plank The figures talking about hear anything about this is
Speaker 1: the thing, that's why you got those two jabs in
Speaker 1: your arms and that random parking lot. Oh I thought
Speaker 1: that was heroin. Sorry. First of all, can can we
Speaker 1: talk about the use of the word jab. I don't
Speaker 1: love it. It's I mean, you're not James Bond, you don't.
Speaker 1: Let's not use jab. I prefer it's fair. I prefer
Speaker 1: what I think is the proper medical term vein fucked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not really your vein either. It's really just
Speaker 1: intra muscular fucked. Oh right, muscle fucked yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the cool kids calling it? Is it a poke?
Speaker 1: What do we want the teens call? Is it? Are
Speaker 1: they calling it the TikTok's? Yeah, it's called it's called
Speaker 1: the TikTok. I don't know. I've I've been been working on.
Speaker 1: I've been working on all all day Today've been working
Speaker 1: to find this proud boy who's pretending to take COVID
Speaker 1: vaccines but it's actually steroids. Um. He calls the critical support,
Speaker 1: he calls the extracurriculars. Okay, So that honestly rules, that's
Speaker 1: extremely funny. I'm hoping an article will be by the
Speaker 1: time this podcast airs. So, uh, who's the article for
Speaker 1: I'm not sure yet. I'm talking with Opossum Press. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: Well that's funny, Garrison. What is today's episode about. Well,
Speaker 1: we we wanted to talk to We wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to Kava about both what the current plague situation is
Speaker 1: because a lot of people seem to think it's over,
Speaker 1: a lot of people seem to think it's not over. Um.
Speaker 1: And then also, how is COVID and all the stuff
Speaker 1: is still affecting our hospital and medical system? Um? Is
Speaker 1: there supply shortages for medical supplies? What's going on in
Speaker 1: different areas? Yeah, because all of that, all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff got you. Yes, is the answer? Yes, the answer,
Speaker 1: that's the answer. Yeah, it's a it's still a problem.
Speaker 1: I don't think. Uh, don't listen to anyone who tells
Speaker 1: you that it's not um. Don't listen to anyone who
Speaker 1: gives you too Sonny of forecast on it. But it
Speaker 1: you know, it's different in different places, is the along
Speaker 1: the short of it. In places where the vaccinations are
Speaker 1: higher and where there's mandates and there's reasonable laws about things,
Speaker 1: the rates are going 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 declared it's
Speaker 1: not a total DNR, but like anyone who has um
Speaker 1: cardiac arrest is on a DNR now in Idaho because
Speaker 1: they just don't have the resources to be well, that's
Speaker 1: not entire I mean what Okay, So that's not your fault.
Speaker 1: You got wrong, because there were there were doctors that
Speaker 1: were sort of spreading that story about now they are
Speaker 1: and what's called the crisis standard of care. But and
Speaker 1: in part of that means that hospitals could go to
Speaker 1: putting everyone on DNR, which means do not resuscitate, which
Speaker 1: means if you have a cardiac arrest, they won't do
Speaker 1: anything about it. That's that's not what's actually happening. It
Speaker 1: could happen 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 heard of anyone. I was I
Speaker 1: was asking around uh to see if any doctors in
Speaker 1: Idahoo 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, but 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 that situation because
Speaker 1: his doctor like couldn't find a and I see you
Speaker 1: bed for him. Is that? That? Is that the story
Speaker 1: you're talking about. That's the story. So he's this guy
Speaker 1: who had a problem that can be fixed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a procedure called an e r CP that he
Speaker 1: can get done at specialty centers. And he didn't live
Speaker 1: far from Houston. Houston has plenty of the specialty centers
Speaker 1: that can do it. They have great gas from urologists
Speaker 1: like myself, not as good, but you know, the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And they could do it if they
Speaker 1: if they you know, if they had the availability to
Speaker 1: get him in. But they didn't, and so he died.
Speaker 1: Is something that he shouldn't love. It's basically the example.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's more examples of that. And what
Speaker 1: really worries me is the examples that you're not hearing yet,
Speaker 1: like cases they're delayed now, cancer screening, things that are
Speaker 1: being delayed now in these hospitals that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: paying down the road. That's that's the ship that really
Speaker 1: scares me. Just people not going in for things in general. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I have friends other than you who work and e
Speaker 1: R s and stuff, um nurses and the doctor, um
Speaker 1: and bull it's up in the p m W. But
Speaker 1: the ship they're saying it is like into days crap,
Speaker 1: like like I they are working on like building capacity
Speaker 1: and making sure they have things to like treat their
Speaker 1: friends because it's they're like the advices, do not go
Speaker 1: to the hospital like if if, if at all possible,
Speaker 1: because there's just not capacity for you unless it's like
Speaker 1: literally an immediate life and death thing. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: uh not worth like trying because there's just nothing. There's
Speaker 1: no slack the system is and it's it's it's starting
Speaker 1: to turn. It looks like here in in in the
Speaker 1: Portland area, but like it's it's frightening, like these are
Speaker 1: not people who would be bullshitting or or are are
Speaker 1: are prone to panic. You know, they're e er professionals,
Speaker 1: but um, it's it's it's fucked up, like it's it's it.
Speaker 1: It's this thing where like the scary thing to me
Speaker 1: is not even necessarily where we are right now, because
Speaker 1: it does like there is some kind of broadly positive
Speaker 1: news in a lot of areas about like where the
Speaker 1: pandemic is going It's just like this situation won't be
Speaker 1: fixed when case numbers go down. It's it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be permanent damage has been done to this system.
Speaker 1: And I guess what I'm wondering first off, like from
Speaker 1: what you're seeing, like, what what is the extent of
Speaker 1: the permanent damage done to our our emergency medical system
Speaker 1: in particular and our our ability to even like get
Speaker 1: care at the moment. Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know. It kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to I think what Garrison want to talk about, which
Speaker 1: is like the collapse of the medical system. I think
Speaker 1: we talk about it a lot in terms of we're
Speaker 1: on the edge of collapse, we're near collapse. I think
Speaker 1: there are places in this country where it already has collapsed.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty evident. It's really it's not homogeneous
Speaker 1: in any way across this country. There are certainly places
Speaker 1: that are better than others, and there's certainly places that
Speaker 1: have a lot more uh leeway and flexibility, but everywhere
Speaker 1: is strained right now. And in regards to your question
Speaker 1: about permanent damage, I'll answer that in regards to just
Speaker 1: the personnel you know, because um, because of the show
Speaker 1: that I have, the House of Pod follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at the House of Pod, and I talked to
Speaker 1: a lot of doctors and nurses from all over the country,
Speaker 1: talk to them a lot, and it's bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: the stress that they're under, the pts D that they're
Speaker 1: that they're dealing with, the burnout. The level of burnout
Speaker 1: is just intense. It's intense and and it's I think
Speaker 1: we were talking about moral injury and burnout before all
Speaker 1: this started, and now it is to a point where
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen to the medical system,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the personnel when this is all over.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people who are getting out
Speaker 1: of medicine, getting out clinical medicine. I mean out of
Speaker 1: like would I would say, out of just my immediate
Speaker 1: friend group. I can think of a couple off hand,
Speaker 1: excellent doctors, really great I c u e R doctors
Speaker 1: who are already planning their exit. And when I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean in the next coming years, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a major issue, and I don't know how we're going
Speaker 1: to address that and our nurses in the I c u.
Speaker 1: S Man the stuff they have to put up with
Speaker 1: is and is insane. You just see it in their
Speaker 1: eyes eyes are broken. Like I was. I volunteered on
Speaker 1: the wards a couple of weeks ago, and people, they're
Speaker 1: the doctors and nurses taking care of these COVID patients
Speaker 1: day in day out, like they there's like a little
Speaker 1: bit of their soul that's been broken. And just see
Speaker 1: it in their eyes, like I was there for like
Speaker 1: just a week, and it's terrifying. You know, you're going
Speaker 1: into a room with a patient with COVID. It's scary,
Speaker 1: you know, even no matter how much ppe protective equipment
Speaker 1: you have on, like you're always a little scared. And
Speaker 1: I just think years of that that weighs on a
Speaker 1: person in a way I don't I mean, I am
Speaker 1: worried about. I don't know how we going to address that.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, And it's frustrating because like
Speaker 1: from the perspective of people listening, right, the thing you
Speaker 1: want to ask is like, well, how can I help?
Speaker 1: And it's like, well you can't because you're already If
Speaker 1: you're listening to the show, I assume you're masking. I
Speaker 1: assume you've gotten vaccinated if you don't have like a
Speaker 1: condition that that renders you unable to get the vaccine,
Speaker 1: you're you're I I think our listeners tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty responsible people. It's just not enough because of the
Speaker 1: country decided to like Leroy Jenkins, a plague and ud Garrison.
Speaker 1: Do you know that reference? Is that? Geerence? 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 brought him to your attention, isn't it. No, No,
Speaker 1: I it came to my attention just doing general internet nothing. 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 somebody got seat to stadium. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what brought you into medicine. This is what I saw work.
Speaker 1: They were so proud of me, like, look at look
Speaker 1: at our son, 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 going to have you to like
Speaker 1: explain how you can take care of your own medical
Speaker 1: treatments in an emergency on a podcast. That's not the
Speaker 1: time or the place, although I do think it's probably
Speaker 1: a good idea for people to read up on first
Speaker 1: aid and basic life saving emergency like it's always a
Speaker 1: good idea 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 is help contribute to sites that
Speaker 1: will help get the rest of the world vaccinate. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can definitely talk about that the question of boosters
Speaker 1: here versus you know, vaccines for the first time elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But there that's the one thing I would recommend right
Speaker 1: now if you want to help, um, let's put our
Speaker 1: money into places where we can get vaccines to other places.
Speaker 1: And I think that every little bit of that helps
Speaker 1: in the long run. And that's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that we could use. Other than that, I mean, I
Speaker 1: just hope that people are still going into medicine and
Speaker 1: in nursing, you know. That's the only thing I can
Speaker 1: still hope is that people who haven't interest in it,
Speaker 1: you know, continue to do it. And and for those
Speaker 1: people who are just their training, those years of their
Speaker 1: formative years are during this time. I just want to
Speaker 1: let them know. I swear it gets better. It's not
Speaker 1: always gonna be like this. And if you make it
Speaker 1: through this, you're gonna be an amazing clinician. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be an amazing nurse, You're gonna be an amazing doctor.
Speaker 1: And I really want you guys to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: That's that's one thing I would say to Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I I'll certainly add that if you're someone who's
Speaker 1: contemplating a medical career, please please, I mean, just from
Speaker 1: a there's a couple of things on that, like, just
Speaker 1: from a perspective of what the world needs. It's what
Speaker 1: the world needs. But also, if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about the possibility of
Speaker 1: the collapse, if you're someone who who foresees things getting
Speaker 1: potentially much more difficult in the future, not a lot
Speaker 1: of things more useful in a bad situation than somebody
Speaker 1: with medical training. I don't count on that getting me
Speaker 1: through the apocalypse. I'm I'm soft. I am so so.
Speaker 1: I went camping and I couldn't handle it. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, I went camping. It was awful. There
Speaker 1: was so much dust. It was an awful experience. But
Speaker 1: I just thought, if the apocalypse comes, I will hopefully
Speaker 1: get placed in a very nice tent because I'm a doctor,
Speaker 1: so I'm counting on that to get me through. There
Speaker 1: are there are so many dumbass boogaloo type quote unquote
Speaker 1: preppers who focus on the guns and the gear or
Speaker 1: in the dried food, but the throwing knives in the
Speaker 1: shirt throwing knives, but don't even have an IFFAC an
Speaker 1: individual first aid kit or like a tourniquet, And like
Speaker 1: the talk to you talk to like like I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a little off topic, but like talk to
Speaker 1: combat marines about like their favorite person. It's always the corman.
Speaker 1: It's the guy who knows or the lady who knows
Speaker 1: how to like patch a bullet wound and whatnot. Like
Speaker 1: there's there's nothing more useful in any situation pretty much
Speaker 1: that that is dangerous than somebody who can do medicine.
Speaker 1: So please, if you're if you're studying to do medicine,
Speaker 1: if you're contemplating becoming an e MT or a paramedic
Speaker 1: or a nurse or whatever, good God, we need you
Speaker 1: so badly. Yeah, we've talked to a little bit about
Speaker 1: just in the medical system in general, and then we
Speaker 1: can also kind of discuss more stuff related to how
Speaker 1: COVID's impacting certain areas more than others. And like, let's
Speaker 1: say someone who's someone who's listening, who's in one of
Speaker 1: these areas that it has only vaccinated, you know, not
Speaker 1: not a lot of people are going on with masks on,
Speaker 1: and you know, school starting back up, maybe they have
Speaker 1: kids are going to their school system. I know in
Speaker 1: Texas they have you know, child deaths are rising. That
Speaker 1: sounds very frightening to be that kind of person who,
Speaker 1: like you know, would like like to see that stuff
Speaker 1: happened in their state, but it's just not really possible.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, with so much of the rest
Speaker 1: of the world kind of slowly taking back restrictions, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it feels very jarring to be in a
Speaker 1: situation like that and kind of like there's really nothing
Speaker 1: you can do right besides you right, because you can
Speaker 1: talk to your family, talk to your friends, but like overall,
Speaker 1: it's hard to hard to make you know, a big
Speaker 1: impact in a state, you know, like Texas, Alabama, like Idaho,
Speaker 1: all the ones that you that you were mentioning before
Speaker 1: from a medical kind of perspective, is there is there
Speaker 1: any way people can kind of start to talk about
Speaker 1: those things with their family and because the way we've
Speaker 1: been trying to get people take the vaccine with their
Speaker 1: marketing we've been doing has not been super successful in
Speaker 1: these demographics. Um, do you think there's other conversations that
Speaker 1: can get people to slowly kind of be more, be
Speaker 1: more able to you know, contemplate that. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a tough question. It's particularly tough if you're someone
Speaker 1: who is believes in the importance of vaccines and you're
Speaker 1: or the importance of masks and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and you're in a place where you're a minority. That
Speaker 1: is tough. The first thing I'll say is definitely know
Speaker 1: that the vaccine helps. You're in a much better position
Speaker 1: because of the vaccine. When I was on the wards
Speaker 1: and I was looking at patients that they're almost all unvaccinated,
Speaker 1: those are the people that end up in the hospital.
Speaker 1: You can't still get into the hospitalized if you have
Speaker 1: the vaccine, but it's it's much less likely. And you know,
Speaker 1: not that these people don't count, they count just as much.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have an underlying problem like a
Speaker 1: liver transplant or some immune suppression. Then you're less likely
Speaker 1: to have a really bad outcome with COVID if you're vaccinated,
Speaker 1: So just know that it helps. You still might get it.
Speaker 1: It'll suck, um, but but 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 a real concern for me, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: feel a lot better than We're going to be in
Speaker 1: a much better position once we are able to get
Speaker 1: kids vaccinated. So there's there's two things. You guys probably
Speaker 1: heard that there was, um this this committee that met
Speaker 1: 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 coming out now about five yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty promising. Um, it looks like they're gonna do
Speaker 1: okay with lower doses. So they use about one third
Speaker 1: the dose of the vaccine. That the adults get and
Speaker 1: it seems to work. We haven't seen much other than
Speaker 1: the pre press release from UH Fighter, 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. Yeah. The booster thing is
Speaker 1: an interesting question to me. I mean, they're a 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 fiser 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 of that would take is a
Speaker 1: couple of months of our Afghani stand mad money. But
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that, and so it probably
Speaker 1: we will, like I don't know, contribute to an issue
Speaker 1: effect There's there's a chance that it will contribute to
Speaker 1: an issue of vaccine unavailability. But also it's not like
Speaker 1: if we don't get the boosters, those vaccines will be
Speaker 1: available because we're just not giving them out. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the extent that we need, so I yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying. I'll get the booster if
Speaker 1: they decide to give out boosters because I like not
Speaker 1: having not the plague damage getting or getting long COVID. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that seems great. And a lot of the vaccine
Speaker 1: has been ce kind of relies. It tracks back to
Speaker 1: how we've been marketing in it, and I'm I've I've
Speaker 1: been on the team that's like we should stop using
Speaker 1: Fauchi because every time Fauci goes on TV to talk
Speaker 1: about vaccines, more people are going to do like a
Speaker 1: backfire infactor be like, no, I'm not going to get EXA.
Speaker 1: Don't trust Fauchi. So there's a particular like marketing thing
Speaker 1: that I think we've failed on. Like America is very
Speaker 1: good at marketing when we can make money, but when
Speaker 1: it's not related to getting gaining more profit, I think
Speaker 1: the government is very bad at marketing these types of things. Um.
Speaker 1: And on the kind of the marketing side of things,
Speaker 1: I don't know, this is this is kind of old
Speaker 1: news at this point. But the whole smoll in 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 cold, kind current, 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 dest probably of hundreds of people, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's the marketing thing is a really
Speaker 1: great question, and and it's been driving me crazy because
Speaker 1: like part of me at this point just wants to
Speaker 1: be like the fucking vaccine, but the fund's wrong with
Speaker 1: you get the fucking vaccine part of my language and like, um,
Speaker 1: but then the part of me knows that that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Like I do believe doctors should be able to express
Speaker 1: their frustration. Um, they need to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: If we can't do that right now, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: game over. But they need to at least have that
Speaker 1: ability where doctors can voice their frustration with antivactors but
Speaker 1: still give them the same high level of care that
Speaker 1: we're always going to give them the matter what when
Speaker 1: they show up in the hospital. But it's not working
Speaker 1: to do that. We need other approaches. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't entirely know what they are. There are some people
Speaker 1: they're they're so far out there that we're just never
Speaker 1: going to reach the people, the microchip people. There's like
Speaker 1: a level of deep programming that will need to happen
Speaker 1: to those people that we just it's it's too exhausting
Speaker 1: to do that. You really have to, like, if you
Speaker 1: can't scale that in any meaningful way for the country,
Speaker 1: I think I think, yeah, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: calling it the Trump vaccine was the closest we got
Speaker 1: to have a possibility, and that fucking I'm interested in
Speaker 1: your thoughts on the fucking bright Bart article and if
Speaker 1: you're not aware, if you're less online than us, and
Speaker 1: God bless you if you are right Bart, the which
Speaker 1: is I don't know. CNN for Fascists came up with
Speaker 1: an article blaming the Democrats for the fact that Republicans
Speaker 1: don't want to take the vaccine and saying it's a
Speaker 1: secret Liberal plot to exterminate conservatives because conservatives refused to
Speaker 1: take vaccines because they're fundamentally oppositional defiant, um, and like
Speaker 1: it's it's the fault of people who are telling them
Speaker 1: to take the vaccine that they're not taking the vaccine
Speaker 1: 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 article because I have enough
Speaker 1: pain in my life already. But um, but you know,
Speaker 1: I do wonder It's like when they put out articles
Speaker 1: like this, or Tucker Carlson goes out and he does
Speaker 1: his thing questioning vaccine, just asking questions about vaccines that
Speaker 1: lead to vaccine hesitancy, Like what calculations are they doing?
Speaker 1: Are they doing calcular? Is this just him being callous
Speaker 1: in not giving a funk and just doing it, or
Speaker 1: is there some calculation that him and some sort of
Speaker 1: right wing fink tank are doing where they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: look this sells to our audience. They love it. Let's
Speaker 1: keep doing it. Yes, we are going to lose ex
Speaker 1: portion of our audience because of this, but we still
Speaker 1: have plenty of audience left. Like, I don't, I wonder
Speaker 1: how that's happening. Like it is hurting. It is true,
Speaker 1: it is hurting them more than than other people. It's
Speaker 1: hurting everyone. Everyone's getting affected by this, um but there
Speaker 1: it's those states that are being affected, the people not
Speaker 1: getting vaccinated who are listening to people like Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: So I don't, I don't understand what their endgame is here,
Speaker 1: Like this is their market? Why why not protected? And
Speaker 1: that I do not have a good answer for. I
Speaker 1: was hoping one of you guys would. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot going on there. I think a
Speaker 1: decent chunk of it is the assumption that whatever they
Speaker 1: lose in terms of dead followers won't be worth more
Speaker 1: than continuing the cash bonanza. That is owning the lips,
Speaker 1: right because that's all that that's all, that's the entirety
Speaker 1: of the right wing media. It's just owning the lips.
Speaker 1: It's just oppositional defiant, it's just hating anything democrats do.
Speaker 1: So you you kind of can't. You're a cuck if
Speaker 1: you tell people to receive basic medical care if Democrats
Speaker 1: are taking that basic medical care right, Um, so it's
Speaker 1: a pride thing for a lot of them. To two
Speaker 1: things I love is when you when you use the
Speaker 1: word cuck or when you do Ben Shapiro's voice, Like
Speaker 1: those are like two of my favorite things 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 bood for telling people to take
Speaker 1: the vaccine. You know, yeah, yeah, um yeah, crazy. You
Speaker 1: can't go back with this ship. You just can't, and
Speaker 1: you 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 built?
Speaker 1: Oh 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 are you listen to podcast. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about medical type things, but not so deep into
Speaker 1: the woods that it's not entertaining, I hope. Yeah 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 fact, have my facts. Now,
Speaker 1: if you excuse me, I'm gonna go pick up a
Speaker 1: single item at the grocery store. Welcome to It could
Speaker 1: Happen Here pod podcast that is today about the fact
Speaker 1: that ten years ago it did happen. And when when
Speaker 1: when I When I say it did happen, I mean
Speaker 1: we occupied an extremely large number of places, and we
Speaker 1: did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways. And with
Speaker 1: with with me to talk about this is Garrison as always.
Speaker 1: I like that you used the Twitter handle for our podcast,
Speaker 1: not the actual name, but that's fine. Where can it?
Speaker 1: Where can it go? For it? But helloon with me.
Speaker 1: I have I have my special guest, Vicky Ostrowil, who
Speaker 1: is an agitator, who is a writer, who has done
Speaker 1: many many things, probably most famously writing the book In
Speaker 1: Defense of Looting um from Bold Press, bold Type Press, Bultypress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very good book. People got very bad, people got very angry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's it's really I'm really excited to be
Speaker 1: here to to talk about the the anniversary of Occupy
Speaker 1: from which is basically, you know, when I and I
Speaker 1: all got this whole train rolling, so yeah, and the
Speaker 1: the other the other thing um that that it is
Speaker 1: probably relevant here is that Vicky was one of the
Speaker 1: first people at occupy and and a little correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong about this. I found an oblique reference
Speaker 1: to this in one of the things I read. You
Speaker 1: facilitated the first meeting. Yes, the yeah, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: it's on the record now, yeah, I uh yeah, during um,
Speaker 1: during the general New York City General Assembly it was
Speaker 1: called in August UM, there was you know, uh ad
Speaker 1: Busters hopefully called for a general assembly, and you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of us sort of went down there and
Speaker 1: there was a tanky party there um doing a general assembly,
Speaker 1: which was just them on speakers, um doing their regular ranting.
Speaker 1: Um hadn't changed much in ten years, um and uh
Speaker 1: and we um. Yeah, so a bunch of us just
Speaker 1: went and sat down, uh you know, to the side
Speaker 1: of it, and started an actual general assembly. And by
Speaker 1: by by happenstance, I I associated that meeting and it
Speaker 1: was the first and last Occupy Mediamate pasilitation. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to rule back a little bit too,
Speaker 1: just before the start of occupied because Yeah, the more
Speaker 1: thinking about this, the more have just realized that two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven was just a profoundly weird time in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. I think people have forgotten, like the
Speaker 1: entire American security state is at this point being terrorized
Speaker 1: by you joint anonymous lull sick hacking campaign called anti Sick,
Speaker 1: the symbol of which he is a guy in a
Speaker 1: guy fox mask wearing a monocle and a top hat.
Speaker 1: And this was just like normal, Yes, this was the
Speaker 1: thing that I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's it's the it's the anti sex top hat,
Speaker 1: full faced guy in a monocle. Fun fact about that,
Speaker 1: just before we forget David Gramer rest in Peace who
Speaker 1: was there in the early days organizing claimed and um
Speaker 1: that he had he had heard and talked to the
Speaker 1: some of the like overheard the police talking about the
Speaker 1: reason they didn't sweep the occupying encampment the first day
Speaker 1: when we were pretty weak, frankly, or the first week,
Speaker 1: was because there were a bunch of guy fox masks
Speaker 1: and they were scared. They were scared they were going
Speaker 1: to get hacked. If they were scared, they were going
Speaker 1: to hack them and steal there. So it was a
Speaker 1: weird time indeed. Yeah, Yeah, And I think that the
Speaker 1: the other thing that's you know, I think important about
Speaker 1: this time period if we're looking back at what occupied was,
Speaker 1: is that so this is this is three years after
Speaker 1: the the financial collapse, and you know, so I think
Speaker 1: this is you know, in the room to two eleven,
Speaker 1: there's been a few there's been a few protests. There's
Speaker 1: been there was a big thing increased two eight that
Speaker 1: was kind of related, kind of unrelated. But I think
Speaker 1: in my sense of you know, I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I was like thirteen. I was like I
Speaker 1: was like an actual baby child. But my senseitive 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 just like hadn't and it just like kept
Speaker 1: going and kept going and kept going. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and then and then Genesia starts and suddenly there's you know,
Speaker 1: they're there. There's Protestant Tunisia, there's pert Egypt. There's like
Speaker 1: people fighting tanks in the street in Bahrain, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this this is you know, this this becomes down
Speaker 1: at the up spring and it starts to spread to
Speaker 1: a lot of places. And Vicky, I want to talk
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about this because you you
Speaker 1: were in Spain when it starts started there. I want
Speaker 1: to 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 where 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 thousand nine really
Speaker 1: kicked off the cycle in a certain way, but also
Speaker 1: didn't quite It wasn't quite the first domino, you know,
Speaker 1: it was sort of more of a like forecast. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so Arab spring, uh, you know, is huge. It's this huge,
Speaker 1: huge event, and the US media is loving it because
Speaker 1: obviously like these sort of old you know, quote unquote
Speaker 1: Marxist dictators are falling, um, and so of course the
Speaker 1: US is like all about it, um, which of course
Speaker 1: later later on the return of the tankies will use
Speaker 1: to um to confuse everyone on the US left and
Speaker 1: destroy all solidarity with Syria anyway. Um, But that's neither
Speaker 1: herener there. Um. So then then in then in that summer, um,
Speaker 1: you get this this wave of early summer like May
Speaker 1: in June, In fact, the fifteenth of May was when
Speaker 1: the movement started in Spain and then it starts student
Speaker 1: again in Greece. And it was similar to occupy and
Speaker 1: that there was these people coming together in these sort
Speaker 1: of encampments in the center of the city. Uh. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if people remember um or or know
Speaker 1: this history economically, but Spain and Greece had recently been
Speaker 1: sort of going through these like big big booms, economic
Speaker 1: booms just for about five or six years that turned
Speaker 1: out to be real estate bubbles funded by their entry
Speaker 1: into the EU, and two thousand ages smashed that and
Speaker 1: they were just like incredibly impoverished. I mean like Spain
Speaker 1: was facing something like fifty youth unemployment. Greece was like similar.
Speaker 1: Spain has recovered more than Greece has in the intervening years,
Speaker 1: but it's still bad. Um So so yeah, so you
Speaker 1: had all these it was it was you know, predominantly
Speaker 1: young folks who were um you know, had been pushed
Speaker 1: out of the economy, who had been pushed out of
Speaker 1: their homes, whose families had loft their homes, um gathering
Speaker 1: together and it was all over both countries and it
Speaker 1: was huge. Um. I happened to just be in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: I had been on a planned vacation with some friends. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that we had we had planned like sort
Speaker 1: of six months earlier when it while popped off, and
Speaker 1: I had also just started my writing Um, I would
Speaker 1: say career, but that's very generous. Um. I had started
Speaker 1: technically being paid for writing things. And they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: right about it, Like, let's like cover it while you're there.
Speaker 1: And because no one in the US was talking about
Speaker 1: what was going on in Spain when my article popped up,
Speaker 1: like and this is like, this is really strange. But
Speaker 1: it was like the early days of Twitter as well,
Speaker 1: um two eleven, Like I guess Twitter started two nine
Speaker 1: or something, and so like so the the one of
Speaker 1: the accounts from the camp tweets out my article. So
Speaker 1: I went there the next day. I was like I
Speaker 1: wrote that article and then I was like embedded for
Speaker 1: a week. And I was there for like kind of
Speaker 1: the height of the popular power of the movement in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Only for a week, but I was there on the
Speaker 1: day when there was a two and a half million
Speaker 1: person march through Barcelona just like still probably the biggest
Speaker 1: march I've ever been part of it and probably who
Speaker 1: ever will be UM was like lat and so you know,
Speaker 1: so that goes on for for a few months in
Speaker 1: Greece and Barcelona, it sort of hits similar limits that
Speaker 1: occupy would eventually hit, which is that like you know
Speaker 1: that that if you can take the space away from people,
Speaker 1: that's that's the common ground, and like you can't really
Speaker 1: have the movement without the encampment. And also all the
Speaker 1: way in which the camps sort of force a kind
Speaker 1: of internal naval gazing and people like get really obsessed
Speaker 1: with maintaining the camp rather than the struggle with the
Speaker 1: city at large. All of those, all of those contradictions
Speaker 1: sort of like came up in Spain and Greece as well.
Speaker 1: But at the time, you know, I was there for
Speaker 1: the height of it. I come back to New York,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is going to happen in the US,
Speaker 1: like it has to. UM. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: folks who had been watching felt that way as well. UM.
Speaker 1: I actually took part in this thing called bloomberg Ville,
Speaker 1: which was like, yeah, fifty people on a sidewalk. Um
Speaker 1: was quite from Michael Bloomberg, right, Um, fifty people on
Speaker 1: a sidewalk fifty people was general. I was like, when
Speaker 1: we were doing really well and mostly fifteen of us,
Speaker 1: It's like fifteen of us on a flidewalk um in
Speaker 1: the financial district, like getting yelled at by cops, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sleeping on cardboard, you know, occupy style, but
Speaker 1: without any attention or solidarity. Um. And but because I
Speaker 1: had been in Barcelona and I still have these carbrads
Speaker 1: in Barcelona, I was like, oh my god, we're doing
Speaker 1: it in New York. So we had this thing where
Speaker 1: bloomberg Ville, which is like twenty people like got to
Speaker 1: talk to a general assembly in Barcelona at the height
Speaker 1: of its power, like on a like internet link, like
Speaker 1: a really early internet link, you know. Um, and you
Speaker 1: know so so so, so there was all this energy
Speaker 1: that was happening. And then I think, really crucially, the
Speaker 1: London riots pop off, and that doesn't get talked about
Speaker 1: very much and anymore partially because of the UK left
Speaker 1: really stabbed here's the bath during that and and and
Speaker 1: have and and repressed the memory of it largely, um,
Speaker 1: and have suffered ever since, in my opinion, strategically. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know that was for us in the US,
Speaker 1: that was huge. It was huge watching um, watching those
Speaker 1: riots unfold. Like you know, again, this was like early
Speaker 1: live streaming, so like we were like watching live feeds
Speaker 1: of the riots, you know, which is like it was
Speaker 1: not a thing that you could really do without a
Speaker 1: TV before. There was just like there was a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on that felt exciting and and it
Speaker 1: was and really important and inevitable that it would come
Speaker 1: to the US because things were so messed up over here.
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about what a general assembly
Speaker 1: actually is because I think a lot of people aren't
Speaker 1: you We're going to have like never actually ran into
Speaker 1: what exactly is going on, or have sort of forgotten
Speaker 1: in the last ten years after they sort of fallen
Speaker 1: out of favor. Sure, yeah, I mean it's UM. It
Speaker 1: was never my favorite either, honestly, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a meeting style UM designed UM. It actually does largely
Speaker 1: actually come from from European anarchist traditions, UM from from
Speaker 1: Spain and 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
Speaker 1: UM it's a meeting style in which, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with the exception of a facilitator which is occasionally but
Speaker 1: not 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 with like really specific
Speaker 1: goals in mind. Often although there will be sort of
Speaker 1: like things that are trying to get settled UM. But
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's designed to allow, you know, a
Speaker 1: very very multi vocal approach and for everyone to sort
Speaker 1: of put in their their thoughts and their ideas UM.
Speaker 1: And often is connected, although not necessarily, but is often
Speaker 1: connected to consensus UM operation where UM things can't get
Speaker 1: 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 words, 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 a rest whoever was on the megaphone
Speaker 1: because 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 old 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 up 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 people'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, So this, this I think
Speaker 1: gets us back to where we open this episode, which
Speaker 1: is add Busters 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 in 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 energy 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,
Speaker 1: it's okay. UM. The yeah, so so so so a
Speaker 1: bunch of people I don't actually know who calls for
Speaker 1: an August second, you know, general assembly to talk about
Speaker 1: the call for September seventeenth to occupy Wall Street UM
Speaker 1: and at that at that point, that's when the thing
Speaker 1: I was describing earlier like happens where where UM, you know,
Speaker 1: we a bunch of folks and and I really want
Speaker 1: to underline this, most of them were people who had
Speaker 1: been in Spain or Greece. UM. David Graeber was also,
Speaker 1: There was like a lot of old heads. There was
Speaker 1: like a there was a comrade from Japan. UM. It
Speaker 1: was a very international crew who had like had experience
Speaker 1: in these movements. Over the summer, UM came and had
Speaker 1: this general Assembly and sort of ran it that way
Speaker 1: and broke out. We had we broke off working groups
Speaker 1: and then there was meetings sort of once a week
Speaker 1: and then working group needs within that UM and general
Speaker 1: assemblies from August two until September seventeenth, at which point, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, occupy the date, the date that Adbusters had
Speaker 1: called for actually happened. So my my impression of this,
Speaker 1: and I was I was very small. I had very
Speaker 1: limited idea of what was going on. The way I
Speaker 1: remember in the media is that like the there, the
Speaker 1: media was weirdly interested in it in a way that
Speaker 1: I've never seen them. I've never seen them cover another
Speaker 1: social movement that wasn't like literally burning their offices down,
Speaker 1: and it was like it was like in the beginning
Speaker 1: it was I mean, you know, obviously the right wing
Speaker 1: media is losing their minds, but they were kind of
Speaker 1: kind of supportive of it, and I think, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I always say you think about this. One of the
Speaker 1: things that that happens in both in both Greece and
Speaker 1: in Spain is that the product movement of the squares
Speaker 1: is these electoral movements, and these electoral movements just fail
Speaker 1: like catastrophically, like Starsia takes power, like like the they
Speaker 1: like you, they they have they have they have a
Speaker 1: like their their finance minister is a left communist. He's
Speaker 1: like he is the most fire left person ever like
Speaker 1: to hold office since like the Spanish anarchists in ninety
Speaker 1: six and they employed austerity. Anyways, in Spain you get
Speaker 1: put 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 of 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 it. 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 from autun seventeen,
Speaker 1: and I think it it's like it weirdly worked. But
Speaker 1: it worked because they were able to create the anti
Speaker 1: occupy people. Yeah, so it's like yeah, and so they
Speaker 1: did finally get their like cadre of like pseudo left
Speaker 1: organizers so they could used to build Democratic Party. It's
Speaker 1: just it was 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,
Speaker 1: UM and those of us who were there, remember they
Speaker 1: hated Occupy. They would show up, but they like would
Speaker 1: critique it constantly. They would write all these articles about
Speaker 1: how it was terrible, how there were no demands, it
Speaker 1: was too disorganized, And then I think, you know, when
Speaker 1: Black Revolt got put on the table, they were like,
Speaker 1: bring back Occupy, we like that better. But but I
Speaker 1: think to be as harsh as possible, but um, I
Speaker 1: think like, um, you know, yes, there was there was
Speaker 1: a lot of media coverage. It didn't feel super friendly
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, there was a lot of there
Speaker 1: was a lot of media coverage, Like the media was
Speaker 1: very curious, it was very interested, but a lot of
Speaker 1: that coverage was like why do they have no demands?
Speaker 1: Like why are they so disorganized? Why are they so smelly? Whatever?
Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of like there was a
Speaker 1: lot of slander in the press, but also a lot
Speaker 1: of attention, um, which you know, it turned turned out
Speaker 1: was as good as you could get, but at the
Speaker 1: time didn't didn't feel very good. Particularly, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yes, those those forces, those forces were already present
Speaker 1: um in you know, in in occupy itself, um, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of denouncing it um for its disorganization, um and
Speaker 1: then eventually claiming that it was the reason that Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders happened, um, which isn't totally wrong. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to be really clear, like I think, and I think
Speaker 1: what we'll get into this more. But I think like
Speaker 1: the thing that about the thing that was important about
Speaker 1: Occupy and the thing that the people who in my opinion,
Speaker 1: like my comrades during Occupy or people I who were
Speaker 1: like doing Occupy stuff but like who I didn't know,
Speaker 1: but like now we I you know, I roll with them.
Speaker 1: Most of us have the have the you know, the analysis,
Speaker 1: like it was really important that we were doing politics
Speaker 1: in the street. It was really important that we were
Speaker 1: back together they were talking politics. And then there were
Speaker 1: really really intense, extreme limits to what Occupy could have done.
Speaker 1: Um and I think Oakland really pushed those um and
Speaker 1: and you know, and got to those but um and
Speaker 1: I think the folks who are like no, no no, Occupy
Speaker 1: was good at the time, we're like Occupy is terrible.
Speaker 1: Um And I think that's worth notice, noting and thinking about.
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, before we sort of go into
Speaker 1: talk a bit about what happened Oakland, to talk about
Speaker 1: some of their stuff so on on day to day basis,
Speaker 1: like what is occupy actually doing? Because I think that's
Speaker 1: also been sort of lost in this whole, Like everyone
Speaker 1: remembers like the slogans, and every remembers the fact that
Speaker 1: there's a thing, but you know, like that there's there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of working groups and they're doing things like
Speaker 1: what was that like like day to day and then
Speaker 1: on a sort of brought our little yeah so so
Speaker 1: um So, first of all, again I was only in
Speaker 1: New York. I spent some time at occupied Boston as well. UM,
Speaker 1: but like I don't have a sense of what other
Speaker 1: places were like, so I really can't, I mean other
Speaker 1: than having heard from people, So I want to be
Speaker 1: very clear that I'm like mostly addressing that. UM. I
Speaker 1: think the thing that was going on was that Zuccatti Park,
Speaker 1: Like the park was like total chaos. UM. Part of
Speaker 1: that was because there was a drum circle that basically
Speaker 1: was going twenty four hours a day um there, which
Speaker 1: meant that whenever you were down there, and it was
Speaker 1: like a canyon. Zacotti Park is surrounded by skyscrapers, so
Speaker 1: it was just this incredible cacophony all the time, UM,
Speaker 1: which I think was cool. It really ruined a lot
Speaker 1: of finance bros, like like like orally with an a
Speaker 1: there um. But I think like, but it also was
Speaker 1: pretty intense and unpleasant. Sometimes you were like please stop,
Speaker 1: oh 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
Speaker 1: Zuccati parks that which is another important lesson. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. So, you know. Also, because I had
Speaker 1: been in bloomberg Ville, because I've been in Barcelona, I
Speaker 1: didn't invest myself very heavily in camp management stuff, so
Speaker 1: I mostly was doing um work. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think it's forgotten about is that there were
Speaker 1: snake marches basically three or four a day every day
Speaker 1: after after the first week when we were really small,
Speaker 1: when it got big, they were just constant, constant marches
Speaker 1: through the city, just like always going off, like you
Speaker 1: would run and you'd be on one march, you run
Speaker 1: into another march, like on a Saturday or Sunday, when
Speaker 1: like people were really like out there like it was
Speaker 1: it was really like there was a lot of mayhem.
Speaker 1: There would be big planned marches that would then be bigger. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was like a lot of like um, what
Speaker 1: people now would call direct action, when I would call
Speaker 1: largely like sort of symbolic practice for direct action. Mostly, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't mind, I like marches. I certainly got my
Speaker 1: miles in then like I don't feel like I need
Speaker 1: to do that again. But 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 house people. Some in New York because of
Speaker 1: all the media spectacle and all the money that came in.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of nonprofit grifters by the end
Speaker 1: 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 them the you
Speaker 1: know the corners of the park, you know, with with
Speaker 1: signs and you're yelling at people. And it's also important
Speaker 1: to remember that like Zuccati Park in New York is tiny,
Speaker 1: it's tiny. We had originally wanted to do it on
Speaker 1: this big plaza like City Bank plaza. Um, and the
Speaker 1: cops had heard about that and fence it off. So
Speaker 1: on the seventeenth we just like we just, um, what's
Speaker 1: the word we get? We we did a oh my
Speaker 1: god football metaphors. This 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
Speaker 1: said that skyscrapers. It's in this really weird part of
Speaker 1: the city that no one would ever spend any time
Speaker 1: and if they didn't have to otherwise. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of So there's all this stuff going on, and
Speaker 1: they're all these their general assemblies twice a day, um, which,
Speaker 1: as I said in New York, were particularly unhelpful. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think anarchists and a lot of cities who
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 ssemblies 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 our twenty four hour right
Speaker 1: like experience. And I think that was really what UM,
Speaker 1: what separated it from from other 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 impression that
Speaker 1: I got. And part of us also was when I
Speaker 1: when I was in college, like every once in a
Speaker 1: while you just get assigned like some person writing but occupy,
Speaker 1: and it was like most of them were just extremely
Speaker 1: cranky about the whole thing. But sure, you know, one
Speaker 1: of one of the things I think was interesting about
Speaker 1: it is that everyone seemed to engree, at least to
Speaker 1: some extent, that part of what was going on was
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's this way to do I don't
Speaker 1: know if I did any new formation is quite the
Speaker 1: right word for it, but it's it's this way to
Speaker 1: sort of like rebuild social connections and rebuild like social
Speaker 1: sort 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 call the
Speaker 1: Cops table, and I'm really mad about that, like because
Speaker 1: this is Chicago, Chinatown and I would like go there
Speaker 1: star in front the library, and there's a sign sign
Speaker 1: on the table that says, if you loiter 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 embarrassingly about Heart
Speaker 1: and negre is sort of like multitude stuff. Really, I
Speaker 1: really 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: control the like the concentration of workers within within production
Speaker 1: in such a way that they could be agitated by
Speaker 1: students and then like sort of radically unionized wildcat and
Speaker 1: sort of like almost overthrow a government, right, Like the
Speaker 1: neoliberalism is like you know it smashes the unions, yes,
Speaker 1: but it also all so 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 the long period, like
Speaker 1: you know, you had stuff like in the US again
Speaker 1: that 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 globe the summit hopping
Speaker 1: movement and anti globalization, which you know what could attack
Speaker 1: a target. But there wasn't really a sense of like
Speaker 1: how it felt hard to do a local struggle um
Speaker 1: beyond like literally like a revolutionary riot like l A,
Speaker 1: which you know you can't really precipitate um And you
Speaker 1: can't really precipitate a movement either obviously. But I think
Speaker 1: like but like but like uh a political political movement,
Speaker 1: a form of political organizing that didn't require something on
Speaker 1: the level of George Floyd, which is what the l
Speaker 1: A rebellion was, right, UM. But that also didn't require like, uh,
Speaker 1: an action from capital that you were like striking against, right,
Speaker 1: like the the you know, the Summits or whatever. UM.
Speaker 1: And that that again, and like all of these eras
Speaker 1: are very important. This is not to like you know,
Speaker 1: obviously 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 capital p party to
Speaker 1: 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 enough 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 I think that was like I
Speaker 1: think that was very much like an important thing. Was
Speaker 1: was just like and you know, um, I graduated college
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, um so I was like part
Speaker 1: of that millennial generation that like, you know, had gone
Speaker 1: into incredibly deep debt. Like we'd have a college degree
Speaker 1: and then like the bottom fill out of the economy
Speaker 1: there were no jobs. Um And Like I think there
Speaker 1: were a lot of you know, like people who like
Speaker 1: 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. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let's let's talk about the police, because you know,
Speaker 1: like that's you know, that's that's one of the other
Speaker 1: extremely 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 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, you used to be
Speaker 1: sort of involved in sort of industrial production that are
Speaker 1: just like the economy is now just there's a prison
Speaker 1: there and right. And I think this is also looking back,
Speaker 1: one of the things that looked 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 you actually believe that this exists, like, try getting
Speaker 1: like seventy people into a space and see how like
Speaker 1: just like I don't know, like into a street or
Speaker 1: just just like into into like have one people on
Speaker 1: a park and just like see how fast the cops
Speaker 1: show up, because you know, it's like yeah, the first
Speaker 1: time yeah that I was, I was at any kind
Speaker 1: of protests, cops immediately wanted to take anything I was holding.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not allowed to. The first thing if
Speaker 1: if if if you have anything in your hands, that's
Speaker 1: that that is a that is a problem. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the First Amendment is just it's super completely superseded
Speaker 1: by traffic laws, like laws about like sidewalk maintenance, like no,
Speaker 1: it's it's all fair like none if it like you're
Speaker 1: you're not you're not allowed to. And this is this
Speaker 1: is I think is partially what this is kind of
Speaker 1: a talk about this parts I think why there's so
Speaker 1: much focused on the right about the first minute because
Speaker 1: they want to they want to draw attention away from
Speaker 1: the fact that, like the actual thing that's fake about
Speaker 1: it is that you can't gather people and meet anywhere,
Speaker 1: and they want to draw it into these like inane
Speaker 1: like this professor like said the N word a bunch
Speaker 1: of times in class. Isn't it bad that people are
Speaker 1: mad at them? But but if I think also go
Speaker 1: to time, this sort of back to occupy, you know. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so occupy functions right insofar as there is a a
Speaker 1: physical location where people can go and physically interact with
Speaker 1: each other. And that's a problem because at some point
Speaker 1: the police are just like no, and they start clearing
Speaker 1: the encampments. And I think this is this is the
Speaker 1: other thing that occupy is that outside of like parts
Speaker 1: of Oakland and that that's a whole other thing that Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's incredibly studiously non violent in a
Speaker 1: way that like nothing I've ever seen before since is yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so so there's a lot there. I'm gonna I want
Speaker 1: to talk about it because that's there's a lot um
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I think I think the militarization of
Speaker 1: the police thesis um is is incomplete if you don't
Speaker 1: 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 them of the carstral state. Part of that is
Speaker 1: also a response to the Vietnam War um and and
Speaker 1: mass resistance within you know, the troops they were like
Speaker 1: in the Vietnam the in like the last two years
Speaker 1: when ground troops are there in Vietnam, there's like four
Speaker 1: hundred fragging incidents where where um you know, where where
Speaker 1: privates and recruits killed their officers. The U. S. Army
Speaker 1: during the during Vietnam was on the brink of of
Speaker 1: collapse in the way that like like the Russian Army
Speaker 1: was looking in it was like like like the numbers
Speaker 1: I think I think still number one point. There was
Speaker 1: like forty of the army by the end of Vietnam
Speaker 1: was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was. It was complete. There was the re in
Speaker 1: the that Nixon pursues vietnamalization, which is when they just
Speaker 1: start doing air campaigns, bombing and napalm is because they
Speaker 1: couldn't 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
Speaker 1: occupy um, one of the acrohistories that I think it's
Speaker 1: forgotten is that like I mean, because because it took
Speaker 1: a week, and like, who remembers this week except for
Speaker 1: like weirdos like me who were there. Um is it
Speaker 1: like there was no one at Zuccatti in the first
Speaker 1: first week. And one of the big things that happened
Speaker 1: was these these these you know, young white girls got
Speaker 1: caught in a police net and pepper sprayed, and there
Speaker 1: was this video that went around with them getting pepper
Speaker 1: sprayed and screaming. Is particularly this this woman on her knees,
Speaker 1: you know, screaming with with tears and pepper sprayed going
Speaker 1: down her face, and that really outraged people because you know,
Speaker 1: they were you know, it was police depression and police violence.
Speaker 1: So 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
Speaker 1: like but but another thing that happened though was that
Speaker 1: like 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 first, 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 it
Speaker 1: was a big deal at the time. Now it happened.
Speaker 1: Can I put a note doubt though, specifically for the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge if you're because people I've seen every every
Speaker 1: single time there's one of these movements, people try to
Speaker 1: take the Brooklyn Bridge and they all got arrested. It's like,
Speaker 1: can can you all, like please, I am begging you,
Speaker 1: if you're going to try to take a bridge, make
Speaker 1: sure you have a way out, Like, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to hold one of the sites to get arrested. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you got a way out. A bridge is designed to
Speaker 1: not have a way out, exactly. Please please don't all
Speaker 1: get arrested. It's it's in fact bad and yeah, sorry exactly.
Speaker 1: I have seen it. Few people successed. We take bridges
Speaker 1: a few times, but that's because there was like three
Speaker 1: cop cars and like fifteen thousand people. If you have
Speaker 1: like a block with two hundred kids, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to hold the bridge. Yeah, welcome to
Speaker 1: it had happened. Here a podcast about a crumbling empire
Speaker 1: and planting seeds in the spaces between. Here's part two
Speaker 1: of our interview with Vicky Oustle while about the legacy
Speaker 1: of Occupy Wall Street. But but you know, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, like that that you know, don't
Speaker 1: get arrested, it's bad. So I think when occupy really started,
Speaker 1: you know, we were mostly people who had been educated
Speaker 1: by the co optation of the civil rights movement, which
Speaker 1: is that it was all non violent and that the
Speaker 1: whole thing was getting arrested and Martin Luther King was
Speaker 1: like the only voice that made any sense, and that
Speaker 1: was what was affective. Blah blah blah blah blah. Um.
Speaker 1: We had all learned that in school, right, we had
Speaker 1: all been trained that like non violence was like the
Speaker 1: only thing that made sense and that worked. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think like those of us who learned about it
Speaker 1: at all in school, which is certainly not everyone. But
Speaker 1: like I think, like like the the experience of occupy
Speaker 1: of like every day just getting beat up by the
Speaker 1: cops every day, like getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people
Speaker 1: got really some people got really nihilistically nonviolent, Like some
Speaker 1: people like really dug in and they're like like like
Speaker 1: we're like no, like there is nothing we can do
Speaker 1: except be beaten and turn of this like real masochistic game.
Speaker 1: But that happens. That still happens all the time. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one. That's one common response. But another thing
Speaker 1: that happened was that people started breaking through that that
Speaker 1: that ship. People. People started on the ground, Like I
Speaker 1: remember a march, you know, early on, you know, the
Speaker 1: police would attack and everyone would sort of like de
Speaker 1: try to de escalate, and people would try to like
Speaker 1: you know, like like talk to the cops or whatever.
Speaker 1: And like by November when right before the camps got cleared,
Speaker 1: I remember being on a march where we stole all
Speaker 1: of their orange betting there using and you're just holding
Speaker 1: it over our head at a large and like trapping
Speaker 1: cops in it. So like even in New York where
Speaker 1: things never got that intense, um like in some ways
Speaker 1: in terms of direct action like that lesson on the ground,
Speaker 1: like you have to be you have to be very
Speaker 1: ideologically committed to get hit with the baton three times
Speaker 1: and still think the police are on your side. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to, like really, you have to really be
Speaker 1: drinking the kool aid. And some people are like some
Speaker 1: people really do want to believe that. But I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that was one So during occupy, like those
Speaker 1: of us who hated the police were pretty lonely even
Speaker 1: though the police were beating us up. But by the
Speaker 1: end of occupy, the seeds had really been sown for
Speaker 1: a lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily immediately so fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but
Speaker 1: I think, like, I think like folks who stayed in
Speaker 1: struggle from there grew more and more anti police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that in general, that was well, okay, so
Speaker 1: mystres was less with occupying more with like the two
Speaker 1: dozen beteen stuff in Turkey, but it like that that
Speaker 1: was because I was brought up in that like the
Speaker 1: sort of like Foe Gandhi and like, yeah, MLK civilis
Speaker 1: a Beans and then it was like like I watched
Speaker 1: Turkey happened and it was like, hey, here's my friend
Speaker 1: just like getting his ribs broken by a cop. And
Speaker 1: then like there's Raba and you know, and Ba is
Speaker 1: sort of where with the Egyptian movement dies and Ba
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, yes, it sucks.
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous, Like just this is like it's being
Speaker 1: complacent for abuse. UM. Anyone Too Studios has a really
Speaker 1: good video on why non violence helps the state UM
Speaker 1: and how basically activists that try to force other you know,
Speaker 1: demonstrators to adhere strictly to non violence, that's basically that's
Speaker 1: that's them, and that's them basically saying that if like that,
Speaker 1: that's them endorsing the police beating somebody up like like that,
Speaker 1: Like that's it's it's not actually tied to any kind
Speaker 1: of movement, and it doesn't actually help, Like I and
Speaker 1: we could actually see this last year with like the
Speaker 1: first few weeks of like you know, abuse from the
Speaker 1: state actually making headlines and actually changing people. But after
Speaker 1: a while it just didn't matter, Like a cop could
Speaker 1: put someone down and pummel their face in like August,
Speaker 1: and like who gives a ship? Nobody, Like it doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, you know, Like that's that's why I
Speaker 1: found it funny when you talked about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: people getting mad because cops were like macing people when
Speaker 1: they surrounto them, And I'm like, if that happened, no one,
Speaker 1: no one would give a ship, Like yeah, well, like
Speaker 1: I think, not 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 I think has been one of the
Speaker 1: things that's been the core of the whole sort of
Speaker 1: nineteen like late sort of cycle revolutions. Is that like
Speaker 1: if if you're just like a dude in a grocery
Speaker 1: store and some guy runs in, is like running away
Speaker 1: from the cops and then like fifteen riot cops and
Speaker 1: just start beating the showout of them, which is the
Speaker 1: thing that happens like a lot. Like if you just
Speaker 1: see that, right, there's no way you can actually like
Speaker 1: like if you ordinary person just witness the cops running
Speaker 1: up and just beating the show someone, like, there's no
Speaker 1: way you can't not be sort of radicalized against the
Speaker 1: police by it. But like, yeah, but there's there's a
Speaker 1: certain point where you hit it. The decentilization happens more
Speaker 1: quickly than what it should. Um, and we stopped caring.
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree with both of you that like that,
Speaker 1: Like both it is shocking and radicalizing and we get
Speaker 1: desensitized because there is so much spectacular pressure to naturalize
Speaker 1: the police and non violence ideology is part of that
Speaker 1: is part of naturalizing police violence, right, Like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do about the police violence. Um, so all
Speaker 1: you can do is control yourself, and therefore you should
Speaker 1: you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah, Gandhi
Speaker 1: had this whole fantasy about Um, the perfect army would
Speaker 1: march unarmed into machine gun fire, um and would just
Speaker 1: be mowed down. It's it's he's a fascist, frankly. Um
Speaker 1: And and yeah, and you only need to look at
Speaker 1: his opinions about black Africans when he was when he
Speaker 1: Africot to see that even if you even if you
Speaker 1: just read like like even if you just read like
Speaker 1: self reliance, it's like this is you know, it's what
Speaker 1: everything I want to talk about with with the peace
Speaker 1: police though, which is that like they're also like in
Speaker 1: 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 see in a pro that does happen
Speaker 1: very well, maybe maybe not the most like it does
Speaker 1: happen like like they beat people up. Like yeah, I
Speaker 1: was 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. UM.
Speaker 1: On that march, Um, We're marching around even march arout
Speaker 1: all night, UM. And I'm just dragging a trash can
Speaker 1: into the street because we're being followed by police cars,
Speaker 1: and I'm literally attempting to like do some education at
Speaker 1: the same time. I'm like pulling in the trash can
Speaker 1: in the street, and I'm yelling, you know, I am
Speaker 1: doing 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 barakat.
Speaker 1: I'm like literally trying to like yell this because, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because pulling a trash can the streets incredibly
Speaker 1: and effective ultimately, so it was like literally it was
Speaker 1: literally just like for education purposes. At that point, basically anyway,
Speaker 1: especially since a lot of people would like pull them
Speaker 1: back out of the street. Whatever. This guy runs up
Speaker 1: on me and grabs me by the collar and lifts
Speaker 1: me up and like threatens me with this fucking fist,
Speaker 1: and he says, if my mom can't get to work
Speaker 1: tomorrow because of you, like I'll beat the ship out
Speaker 1: of you. And we're like we're marching in Manhattan, and
Speaker 1: like one a m I'm like, what the hell are
Speaker 1: you talking about? And like he would have he would
Speaker 1: have hurt me, like pretty bad if a friend of
Speaker 1: mine had like luckily had my back and like de
Speaker 1: escalated a bit. That's the only time I've ever been
Speaker 1: like physically like brought up like into a fight um
Speaker 1: with by by another protester. Was was a guy insisting
Speaker 1: that me dragging a trash can into the street was
Speaker 1: beyond the pale. But I want to just talk a
Speaker 1: bit more, but like how systematic the violence was, like
Speaker 1: because Okay, So originally I was gonna try to get
Speaker 1: someone from Occupy Oaklands to come talk about this, and
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of people and the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that I got was that no one would talk
Speaker 1: about it on the record because they got because Oakland
Speaker 1: had Oakland had a blacklist, and if if you were
Speaker 1: inoccupy and like anyone else found out about it, like
Speaker 1: people like people couldn't people spent half a decade just
Speaker 1: not being able to find jobs because they just play
Speaker 1: black listed everyone. And like to this day, like the
Speaker 1: thing I was told was like, yeah, I'm I won't
Speaker 1: talk about this because you know, like if if I
Speaker 1: talk about this, like I will be fired. All of
Speaker 1: my family everyone around me will be fired. And there's
Speaker 1: like I think, like this is the ever thing. But
Speaker 1: when we talked about sort of the collapsive occupy, the
Speaker 1: the extent to which after Obamba in the f bare
Speaker 1: ordered the camps closed, the policy is that the cops
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 the police attacking basically,
Speaker 1: and um and um and yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was you know, I think like a lot of
Speaker 1: um the people who now claim that that occupy is
Speaker 1: the reason that they do politics or whatever, for burning
Speaker 1: Sanders or whatever. Um. At the time, they were saying
Speaker 1: that 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 exactly
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 Jocattie got cleared. But for
Speaker 1: a while, there was the 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, and
Speaker 1: I know it was like that everywhere else or most
Speaker 1: everywhere else, and that that came down from on high
Speaker 1: that like the police were just like, oh, what was
Speaker 1: dangerous about this was people gathering in public? So we
Speaker 1: really need to like we really need to like enforce
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment being meaningless now, we really need to
Speaker 1: stop meetings from happening in public. UM. And that violence
Speaker 1: was super intense and super real, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people got beaten out of the movement, you know, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people got really demoralized and left. And
Speaker 1: I understand why. Um, 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 oppression 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 to talk people are talking
Speaker 1: about that occupies it. Like the first thing if you
Speaker 1: have a group of people who are just they're the
Speaker 1: first thing the cops trying to do is a point
Speaker 1: a leader so that they have one person that they
Speaker 1: can do to with this 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 lead 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. And 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 and everyone was so angry. I was like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? And like they had this like big
Speaker 1: press conference and their leader was a Golden Retriever. It
Speaker 1: was like a who knows to Occupied Denver? Whoever organ
Speaker 1: is that prank? I love you, I guess. Yeah, speaking
Speaker 1: thinking of kudos to a place. The last thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about was the giant like port occupation
Speaker 1: strike thing in Oakland, because I mean that that wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time people had done it, Like I know,
Speaker 1: I know during the anti war movements even do like
Speaker 1: two eight there's one of people trying to occupy ports.
Speaker 1: But in Oakland they like did it. They really they
Speaker 1: put like footy I was in people like in this
Speaker 1: in the Port of Oakland and they shut it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that was like that was one of
Speaker 1: the things. One of the stories kind of been lost
Speaker 1: from 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 Oakland. Also Oakland is also way the walking by
Speaker 1: Oakland bood is way way less white than any other movements,
Speaker 1: and they get like the kind of police oppression they
Speaker 1: get is like it's just like yeah, you know again
Speaker 1: like people people being repeatedly drugged by informants, like cops
Speaker 1: shooting people in the face, like the you know, you
Speaker 1: have you have the black list, you have all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, part of it, yeah, 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 people like sort of
Speaker 1: got involved in in like longshoreman union politics. But that
Speaker 1: sort of like fusion of of give all the people
Speaker 1: in the street and then they start showing down ports
Speaker 1: and that, like like the cops like lose their minds
Speaker 1: over that. Like that that I think was like extremely
Speaker 1: scary to them in a lot of wiz. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I would you know, I would defer to
Speaker 1: anyone from Oakland who was who was there during that.
Speaker 1: You know, I have comrades there, I've talked to you
Speaker 1: have read about it since. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think part of the heightened police oppression and the
Speaker 1: heightened power of the Oakland occupied Oakland folks was Oscar
Speaker 1: Grant rebellion. Like I mentioned the two thousand nine which
Speaker 1: had happened, which had you know, I have been a
Speaker 1: few hundred people, but it had been really rowdy. They'd
Speaker 1: been like looting and smashing. Um maybe maybe more than
Speaker 1: a few hundred, maybe near a thousand people on the
Speaker 1: big on the first snight. UM. And you also obviously
Speaker 1: have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland. So
Speaker 1: you know, the Black Panther Party, you know, forms in
Speaker 1: Oakland at last, in Oakland a decade and a half
Speaker 1: 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 textrification in 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 don't remember near the end of the
Speaker 1: near the end of the cycle. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: like the other thing about um about that though, that
Speaker 1: that was very similar to the altar globalization movement, right
Speaker 1: where the unions had sort of teamed up with you know,
Speaker 1: like in Seattle there's a lot of trade unions on
Speaker 1: the ground next to all the black blocks, right, um.
Speaker 1: And I think like that that image, Um, I think
Speaker 1: really it's really interesting. It really terrified the police, and
Speaker 1: it really it could be it could have been a
Speaker 1: vector for a certain kind of like labor first politics
Speaker 1: that could have emerged, but instead, like the labor first
Speaker 1: people have turned out to be all electoralists. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems that that's sort of a weird blip that hasn't
Speaker 1: really returned. Um. Yeah. And it's interesting too because like
Speaker 1: because now like you know, like the like 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 buying off of the
Speaker 1: unions and the New Deal, um, you know, with some
Speaker 1: brief you know, with brief windows of like wildcat action
Speaker 1: in the seventies and the nineties. Um, the buying off
Speaker 1: of the unions has has never really gone away. Industrial
Speaker 1: un is UM in the US has has long been
Speaker 1: and in and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where those
Speaker 1: developed in the early twenty century, that labor movement UM,
Speaker 1: they've really been successfully bought off. And I don't think
Speaker 1: there is. Uh. I don't think that those unions are
Speaker 1: like a big easy route to power anymore than I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't like I think they're going to 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: O over through a end a like yeah, like like
Speaker 1: they they they there are people on the ground were
Speaker 1: like directing like like we're directing a bunch of the
Speaker 1: anti a end a stuff and it's like and it
Speaker 1: was the and it was the union bureaucracy is like
Speaker 1: more recently in two thousand one, who are in the
Speaker 1: wake of September eleventh, who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric
Speaker 1: into buy American, which it turned out was often buying
Speaker 1: prison made materials. But like that was that was the union,
Speaker 1: the union sort of um defanged defanged alter globalization into
Speaker 1: buy American. And there's there's a thing, like there's a
Speaker 1: whole another story there about how that like how anti
Speaker 1: orbalization turned from like you know, the Zapatistas too, like
Speaker 1: Trump which is incredibly depressing and yeah, goes goes through
Speaker 1: this line of sort of like the replacement of internationalism
Speaker 1: with nationalism and that kind of like by local stuff
Speaker 1: and the fact that like these people sort of just
Speaker 1: decided that, you know personally after Seattle part steption at eleven,
Speaker 1: they're just like we're not doing direct action again. And
Speaker 1: in Oakland's like Oaklands like like that. That's like that's
Speaker 1: like the one big exception to that was that moment
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of just has never happened again.
Speaker 1: And that's partially because that that union that I LW
Speaker 1: is I l W I think out there is on
Speaker 1: the on the poorts that was a particularly like radical
Speaker 1: union that had happened in Wildcats like and and was
Speaker 1: like like more democratic than any of the many of
Speaker 1: the other unions and in in those those hips. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, but that's that's also like a big story
Speaker 1: for another time. The connotation of global anti global nation
Speaker 1: over the twenty year period. Yeah, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of corny, but like what what can we actually
Speaker 1: learn from what happened there, what went wrong and sort
Speaker 1: of what the limits of it was. Yeah, Okay, So
Speaker 1: the legacy, So I think one legacy that um, the
Speaker 1: legacy that is most widely accepted and known, which we
Speaker 1: 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 part of the 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. It's 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 spaces. But
Speaker 1: like so like a lot of folks, you know it
Speaker 1: each of these waves that has come has left, you know,
Speaker 1: some people leave, some people swing right, but like there's
Speaker 1: a residue of folks that like becomes the base for
Speaker 1: the next movement. And I think like occupy really did
Speaker 1: provide a lot of people in a way that the
Speaker 1: gap between alter globalization and occupy didn't produce nearly as
Speaker 1: large a contingent of people, although of course there are
Speaker 1: those people, um. But I think also like really importantly
Speaker 1: like the tactics of occupy. Like one of the things
Speaker 1: that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising was that
Speaker 1: every tactic that we um have tried in the last
Speaker 1: ten years re emerged. Right. There was a prison strike,
Speaker 1: there were indigenous blockades, there were me Too style callouts UM,
Speaker 1: which of course developed out of um punk and queer
Speaker 1: scene callouts that have been going on for a decade.
Speaker 1: But there were occupations, right. You had the chairs in Seattle,
Speaker 1: which we can you know, well, well what we're yeah,
Speaker 1: we will get to that one day in any case,
Speaker 1: in any case, like I think like that that has
Speaker 1: remained in the repertoire of poltarian struggle, like as a
Speaker 1: result of of occupy and and and if it had
Speaker 1: just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't as a result of
Speaker 1: the global movement of the squares, which obviously goes until
Speaker 1: Terrier Squareen and Turkey. I think it's probably the Gezi
Speaker 1: Park in a Turkey, um, which is like the last
Speaker 1: big moment of the squares really um, But that five
Speaker 1: year wave, like it was really really important, um globally,
Speaker 1: really really important locally as well, UM in terms of
Speaker 1: building activists, building a class of of well, I don't
Speaker 1: you know whatever, building revolutionaries, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: the good version of the thing, not the bad version.
Speaker 1: You produced a lot of them, um and um. And
Speaker 1: I think like in terms of its limits and like
Speaker 1: what we can learn from it, Like, I think I
Speaker 1: think taking the police more seriously it was really important.
Speaker 1: I think taking police violence more seriously it was a
Speaker 1: really important legacy of occupy, I think, Um, I think
Speaker 1: pushing towards the limit of what total democracy meant a
Speaker 1: lot of people and Occupy remember that like a lot
Speaker 1: of Ron Paul people are like weirdo like and the
Speaker 1: Fed cranks and like right wingers like spoken Occupy and
Speaker 1: like that. That that total open populism of of Occupy
Speaker 1: I think was both probably its greatest strength and its
Speaker 1: ultimate limit, right, which was that like it was never
Speaker 1: going to be able to really like sharpen itself into
Speaker 1: the into the knife and it wanted to be to
Speaker 1: like really change the face of global capital or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: because of because there were so many white, yeah, middle
Speaker 1: class and like like a bunch of the like a
Speaker 1: lot of the like the current for right media people
Speaker 1: came out it like Center Fairbanks was like an occupy
Speaker 1: streamer Spool, Yeah, you're welcome. For Tim Poole UMO was
Speaker 1: filming on the last day, a bunch of us um
Speaker 1: doing some things, and Tim Pool did not manage to
Speaker 1: continue filming, is all I'll say. And after that is
Speaker 1: when he started swinging right, So you're welcome over. Um anyway, Sorry,
Speaker 1: that 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, were already disliked in the movement. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, um, but yeah, I think I think so,
Speaker 1: I think you know, there is there there are all
Speaker 1: these different legacies um from it that I think, um, Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the legacy things that emerged are much more important than occupy. Um.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, one of the things about it
Speaker 1: was that it really was just like the reemergence of
Speaker 1: street politics, and like, like as the re emergence of
Speaker 1: street politics, like it was pretty limited, and it was
Speaker 1: not that effective at changing things, um. And also it
Speaker 1: was incredibly effective at leading to those last decades of
Speaker 1: struggle in the US. And I think you can't, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a tendency to want to judge movements
Speaker 1: by the immediate results that they produce, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, I think was it is? Am
Speaker 1: I about to quote now? I think I am? Was it?
Speaker 1: Like when when he gets asked, you know, what was
Speaker 1: the what was the you know, in in the twentieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, he gets asked, like what
Speaker 1: was the what was the outcome of the Chinese Revolution?
Speaker 1: He says, it's too early to tell, right, Like, I think,
Speaker 1: like that maybe that's I don't remember who that is.
Speaker 1: They were right, Yeah, they were right. A lot more
Speaker 1: people died than what we thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: successfully transitioned to capitalism and they yeah, yeah, it was yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: so what was the result of occupy. It's too early
Speaker 1: to tell, um, but I think like I also think
Speaker 1: like the things that we've talked about here um, where
Speaker 1: we're core components of what what why it matters. I
Speaker 1: do think one other kind of effect that it's had.
Speaker 1: And It's hard for me to gauge this because I've
Speaker 1: only been around post occupy, but I feel like now
Speaker 1: when people try to get stuff started, they really fall
Speaker 1: kind of into an occupy mindset where they're like, the
Speaker 1: only way to make this successful is to hold this space.
Speaker 1: And I think that is really a default way that
Speaker 1: even more experience, like both experienced organizers and new organizers
Speaker 1: really kind of keep you saying the word default. It's
Speaker 1: because like that's just that's just really like what they
Speaker 1: go into. You saw this in a lot of different
Speaker 1: cities last year. Really they like people trying to set
Speaker 1: up spaces to hold um. A lot of them did
Speaker 1: not work, you know a lot of them. A lot
Speaker 1: of them were like, oh, yeah, we're trying to try
Speaker 1: to hold the space for like an hour, because then
Speaker 1: the cops pushed us out right and you know, in
Speaker 1: a place like the chairs they got extended out a
Speaker 1: bit longer that Chad has had its own problems. Um
Speaker 1: and other cities in the Pacific Northwest. This happened a city,
Speaker 1: it happened. 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 I saw a lot of
Speaker 1: people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this like
Speaker 1: kind of occupy mentality because what that kind of results
Speaker 1: in is people just setting up outside of a police
Speaker 1: headquarters and trying to stay there for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: which is like that's not doing anything, You're just kind
Speaker 1: of waiting to get beat up. Um. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: 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 Florescence 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 smile. I was big here in Philly, it
Speaker 1: was it was massive here in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so like there were moments when that tactic really does
Speaker 1: like it's important to have a space to meet in,
Speaker 1: and I think we did learn that, but I also
Speaker 1: agree that it has become like any tactic that works
Speaker 1: once it becomes a fetish, right. Yeah, it's always trying
Speaker 1: to balance space because like you know, the two big
Speaker 1: things that have happened the past ten years, it's occupying
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. So people try to balance these two kind
Speaker 1: of almost opposing things like hold this space and be water.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the two things that people yell at
Speaker 1: the street back and forth, and no one really knows
Speaker 1: what to do because we're just yelling slogans and and
Speaker 1: and I they're saying about this. So they're like the
Speaker 1: one time the people in Hong Kong got pinned down
Speaker 1: when when they had to they had in versity siege,
Speaker 1: it was a ship show, like you know what I
Speaker 1: was 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 like it just
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. And I mean and part partially personally, 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 asssocal we've been 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 this that that
Speaker 1: the whole problem with with friend to hold space because
Speaker 1: really apparent there 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're 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 that Like the head of who
Speaker 1: wasn't it was a big in the in the National Police.
Speaker 1: In the National Police, uh you know whatever, um said
Speaker 1: that like we can very easily handle one march of
Speaker 1: ten thousand people, but we can't handle ten marches of
Speaker 1: one people. It was you gotta see this in Chicago,
Speaker 1: feel like this is this is this is how the
Speaker 1: police lost control of of of the miracle Mile was
Speaker 1: like yeah, it was just there's people everywhere for everywhere
Speaker 1: and yeah I don't know, yeah I know, And that's
Speaker 1: and that's how that's that's what you know. I mean
Speaker 1: certainly in Philly where it was where it was very
Speaker 1: very powerful. That's what the George Floyd rebellion looked like,
Speaker 1: was with people were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: You know, people didn't you know, like we were out there,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, um and like they're like people didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going on three block South, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like it was like that, like there
Speaker 1: was just there were fights happening everywhere and under those conditions,
Speaker 1: the police can't can't, no matter how militarized they are,
Speaker 1: they can't act um effectively anyway they can act, they
Speaker 1: certainly will. They will act like pigs. Um. But but
Speaker 1: I think, like, yeah, so I think that that that
Speaker 1: sort of dispersion, But I think the other there's so
Speaker 1: there's I'm going to promote a really really weird o
Speaker 1: crank book right now twentie century like literary weirdos. Guy
Speaker 1: uh alias Connetti um Italian wrote this book called Crowds
Speaker 1: and Power, where he attempts to he attempts to describe
Speaker 1: the entirety of human history and anthropology in terms of crowds.
Speaker 1: This is obviously impossible and ridiculous. But that book has
Speaker 1: the best descriptions of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere.
Speaker 1: And I like, I like people who take big swings
Speaker 1: because they end up they miss 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 Yeah. So anyway, one of the things that
Speaker 1: Connetti 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 in terms of both movement and like a
Speaker 1: momentary protest or riot, right is like really real, I
Speaker 1: 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 under
Speaker 1: my ning the very thing that made it powerful, which
Speaker 1: was the sudden, rapid growth, the sudden like you know,
Speaker 1: like like big explosion of power and self recognition that
Speaker 1: comes in the beginning of movement. And I think, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a way to will that problem away,
Speaker 1: Like I don't think we can just like think our
Speaker 1: way out of it, like it's just a problem. But
Speaker 1: I do think that like one thing that we could
Speaker 1: take from the experience of occupy and the experience the
Speaker 1: last decade is that like if you do, you know,
Speaker 1: consider yourself someone who wants to participate in these kind
Speaker 1: of movements, which is probably why you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Um right now, Um, don't try and defend, Like, don't
Speaker 1: try and defend. Like some things will need to be
Speaker 1: defended sometimes obviously, but like if your main thing is
Speaker 1: like the thing, we should never defend something we've achieved
Speaker 1: so far. Um, we should never not be willing to
Speaker 1: destroy it in order to like build something bigger, right,
Speaker 1: Like we should never no movement thing that we have,
Speaker 1: be it an occupy part, be it be it like
Speaker 1: a take in space to sending that should never outweigh
Speaker 1: the possibility of expanding. And if that's our strategic mindset, Obviously,
Speaker 1: moment to moment you can't just be thinking that constantly.
Speaker 1: But the strategic mindset is like what we have now
Speaker 1: is only good to the extent that it can turn
Speaker 1: into something more UM rather than we have to defend
Speaker 1: what we have now. If you can think that way,
Speaker 1: I think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's what has worked over the
Speaker 1: last decade that I've seen is UM when people attack,
Speaker 1: when people expand, when people try to do try to
Speaker 1: do new stuff. It doesn't always work and it doesn't
Speaker 1: always hold. But that's what When that stuff stops happening,
Speaker 1: the movement is doomed. I think. I think that I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good way to wrap things up.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice, beautiful sentiment. I kind of
Speaker 1: view this type of thing in more than just protests
Speaker 1: and you know, and into different pastors of life. I
Speaker 1: think you can always learn from past experiences, from past struggles,
Speaker 1: but if you try to perfectly replicate them, your as
Speaker 1: totally gonna fail. You can you should always learn and
Speaker 1: move on, but you should not be focused on any
Speaker 1: kind of replication. Is there any of your bookstore writings
Speaker 1: you'd want to plug before we wrap up here? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I wrote a book that came out last year,
Speaker 1: UM called in Defensive Looting. UM. Came out UM with
Speaker 1: bold type. UM. I am currently also writing. UM. I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with movies. I write a movie review UM column
Speaker 1: for the Al Jazeera plus UM I did not know
Speaker 1: news letter. Yeah, the news letter sub stack. UM. If
Speaker 1: you want to read. I mean it's really it is
Speaker 1: really movie reviews. So if you want, you know, cranky
Speaker 1: anarchist theory, it's not the spot for you. UM. Otherwise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm on a pretty long social media break right now,
Speaker 1: but good for you there. Eventually I'll probably come back
Speaker 1: inevitably unfortunately. Yeah, you know, I just have I have
Speaker 1: writing popping up every every now and then, and UM,
Speaker 1: and if you read it, I would appreciate it. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally wonderful. Thank you, and yeah, thank you for so
Speaker 1: much for coming on to talk about UM occupying stuff
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people hear about, but
Speaker 1: you know, at least all of my generation does not
Speaker 1: fully kind of grasp it. Um it is. It is
Speaker 1: literally my pleasure. Like I you know, I wasted so
Speaker 1: much of my life thinking about this. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: to be able to share some of it with some people.
Speaker 1: I'm so so glad you're able to join us too.
Speaker 1: This is I've I've been looking forward to us for
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, that's very excited. All right, that wraps
Speaker 1: up us today. You can find us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at cool Zone Media and Happen Here pod. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in for a few more episodes this week. Audios. Uh,
Speaker 1: that was the introduction, I did it, Sophie. Sophie is saying,
Speaker 1: that's an acceptable introduction. You know what podcast this is.
Speaker 1: You clicked on it, so I don't need to tell
Speaker 1: you the title. I don't need to say who we are.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to dive right into the fucking episode.
Speaker 1: No I'm not. This is It could Happen Here a
Speaker 1: podcast about things falling apart and uh and what to
Speaker 1: maybe do to to arrest that and do something better
Speaker 1: in its place, and uh. You know, folks who are
Speaker 1: are regular listeners who listened to the original scripted episodes
Speaker 1: of it could happen here the first fifteen episodes, which
Speaker 1: I certainly recommend to everybody. Know that one area in
Speaker 1: which I kind of separate from a lot of particularly
Speaker 1: more liberal folks and even some folks on the left
Speaker 1: is an embrace of the fact that, uh, firearms are
Speaker 1: sometimes necessary tools, especially in times of collapse when things
Speaker 1: get bad. Um. Now that said, we're also not uh
Speaker 1: kind of gun culture people here. We try not, for
Speaker 1: one thing, recommend that everybody necessarily pick up a gun.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people, perfectly nice people who shouldn't
Speaker 1: have them, who don't need to have them, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with suicidal ideation or whatever. We're not.
Speaker 1: The point is, we try to be very careful about
Speaker 1: how we we talk about firearms as a potentially useful
Speaker 1: you've been potentially necessary tool in the times that we're in.
Speaker 1: And today, since we're a few weeks into this, we've
Speaker 1: covered producing food, We've covered some medical stuff. We've talked
Speaker 1: about uh, community organizing, and a number of other things
Speaker 1: that I think our priorities for most people before you know,
Speaker 1: getting strapped. Today we're gonna talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: getting strapped. And my guest today is Paul. Paul, do
Speaker 1: you want to kind of introduce your background in brief
Speaker 1: so people know why why you're on here. Sure, Robert,
Speaker 1: I was in the Marine Corps and infantry, and after
Speaker 1: that I went to security consulting and then to the
Speaker 1: Federal Protective Service and finally the A T F some
Speaker 1: of our funnest agencies. Yeah, all my favorite organizations there. Well,
Speaker 1: they're better than the the what is it, the f
Speaker 1: d A. Yeah, they beat the f d A. I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of body count, they're certainly better than
Speaker 1: the f d A. And what what do you do now,
Speaker 1: Paul that you're 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, uh, the side gig is we
Speaker 1: run 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 efficlessly do require training. In practice. You
Speaker 1: can't just um, 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 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,
Speaker 1: like um that I think traditionally training is supposed to
Speaker 1: help allay to some degree. Uh. Well, probably number one
Speaker 1: is uh Grandpa has gone in the closet that's been
Speaker 1: there for forty years unfired, and somebody just picks it
Speaker 1: up and throw some ammo in it to go Huna deer,
Speaker 1: and you know it's got a barrel obstruction or something
Speaker 1: that just blows up, you know. Um. But number two
Speaker 1: and and the one that can be mitigated by training
Speaker 1: rather than just general uh not being stupid, because it's
Speaker 1: kind of stupid to pick something up that's really old
Speaker 1: and just try to shoot it is um not shooting yourself.
Speaker 1: And when you do go out to the range, not
Speaker 1: shooting other people, and then not shooting people in your
Speaker 1: own home. Um, you know, you don't as much as
Speaker 1: you might want to, say, defend your own home. Do
Speaker 1: you want to shoot your wife when she comes home
Speaker 1: at two thirty in the morning, uh, after work and
Speaker 1: wakes you up? And there are ways to mitigate that,
Speaker 1: and and it's really easy and it's really cheap. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's start with some of those just if
Speaker 1: you're if you're new too, if you've decided I need
Speaker 1: a gun for whatever reason, you purchase a gun. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the most basic first things are
Speaker 1: in terms of like actually making that relatively safe. Is
Speaker 1: number one, knowing which which kind of firearm to purchase?
Speaker 1: And number two, And these are not in order of importance,
Speaker 1: These are both very important. Number two is securing that
Speaker 1: weapon properly, as opposed to just having it laying loose
Speaker 1: in the house, which is never the best place. The
Speaker 1: best way to store a firearm, is it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I I own a number of personal firearms. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in my office right now where I
Speaker 1: got a locked door where nobody can get in, and
Speaker 1: I got a gun safe back behind the monitors. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm comfortable with that. But if if
Speaker 1: it was in a place where kids could get at it,
Speaker 1: you don't want to just stuff it in, uh, in
Speaker 1: a sock in the closet, which is actually what my
Speaker 1: mom did when I was a kid. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: safe storage and I mean really being able to identify
Speaker 1: your target is probably the biggest preventer of like inter
Speaker 1: family accident because I know, you know, we do talk
Speaker 1: about safe storage, kids and all that. But um, back
Speaker 1: to the wife coming home, if you just put a
Speaker 1: light on your gun, a hundred dollar light, you can
Speaker 1: look at the thing that you're shooting in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and uh not shoot someone you don't
Speaker 1: want to shoot. Yeah. I would go so far as
Speaker 1: to say that, like, if you've got a home defense
Speaker 1: weapon without a light on it, um, you don't fully
Speaker 1: have a home defense weapon. Yeah, you know, Um, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be useless in roughly half of the situation. And statistically,
Speaker 1: like if you're looking at when people are actually tend
Speaker 1: to be endangered in their own homes, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the situations in which you might be in danger. Um,
Speaker 1: when it comes to weapons selection, Uh, this is another
Speaker 1: area where like if you go on maybe one of
Speaker 1: the worst places in the world to have this discussion
Speaker 1: as Twitter, because everybody has the opinions on Twitter. Um.
Speaker 1: I tend to say because I think most people when
Speaker 1: they're looking for a first gun, if they're if they're committed,
Speaker 1: just like thinking of personal defense, they're going to go
Speaker 1: for like a lock or something. And I think unless
Speaker 1: you're planning on carrying a gun, And you can correct
Speaker 1: me if you disagree here, but I tend to think
Speaker 1: a handgun again, unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon,
Speaker 1: is the last thing that you should own as a
Speaker 1: gun owner. Um. I got a mixed opinion on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think that, uh, the handiness of
Speaker 1: a handgun can outweigh some of the issues. I know
Speaker 1: you guys dealt with fires up there, we have hurricanes. Um,
Speaker 1: being able to stick a handgun into a backpack you
Speaker 1: know it can go a long way, or being ab um,
Speaker 1: keep keep it on you in your car because here
Speaker 1: we're depend on state laws. Everything you say depends on
Speaker 1: state laws. Yeah, there are states where you can yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're in California and you're in one of the
Speaker 1: counties that it doesn't issue a concealed carry of license
Speaker 1: like l A. It's really hard to get one. From
Speaker 1: what I understand, you got to get to San 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 roster. But for what's most usable against
Speaker 1: our most handy, it's probably a handgun. But if you're
Speaker 1: expecting a threat more than like thirty feet away, have
Speaker 1: something other than a handgun. Handguns they suck at hurting people,
Speaker 1: they suck at killing people. Yeah, they're they're ineffective. They're
Speaker 1: hard to use, I mean, say thirty ft away. But
Speaker 1: if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in a
Speaker 1: stressful situation at thirty with a hand can be difficult.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. Yeah, um, it's not easy, and I
Speaker 1: tend to recommend number one. There are some options, like
Speaker 1: even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are different
Speaker 1: kind of um like uh options for that. Like I
Speaker 1: I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the size of a small rifle so you can
Speaker 1: 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 and without much difficulty. And because they're so
Speaker 1: When you're talking about what makes a weapon easy year
Speaker 1: to use, number one of the number one things is size.
Speaker 1: So the longer the barrel, the more accurate it is.
Speaker 1: The heavier the gun, the less recoil is a problem,
Speaker 1: the easier it is to use it. Range um and
Speaker 1: a pistol caliber carbine. You know, you stick a light
Speaker 1: on that. 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 handgun, UM,
Speaker 1: and you know all the same AMMO. You're not having
Speaker 1: to uh figure out and read a bunch on on
Speaker 1: what kind of AMMO you need and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: 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 availability? Um, which is the
Speaker 1: 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 seven te um or it's thirty six
Speaker 1: but whatever, UM and then five five six slash two
Speaker 1: to three and those are the rounds that's like five
Speaker 1: six is the standard. That's what's in your bog standard
Speaker 1: a r UM. And so almost no matter what happens, UM,
Speaker 1: including you know Ammo crunches, you will be able to
Speaker 1: find some amounts of the calibers genital through your neigh
Speaker 1: and you're going to find a box of bullets. They
Speaker 1: might not even own a gun and they got a
Speaker 1: boxing nine millimeter. Yeah, everybody's got nine millionaire and UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that the basics of like, um,
Speaker 1: what to get if you're looking at kind of just
Speaker 1: a basic defensive arm. UM, you know how to store
Speaker 1: it safely? You know, those kind of questions are important,
Speaker 1: UM when it comes to training. Uh, what are some
Speaker 1: of in your opinion, like the mistakes that you see
Speaker 1: people make when it comes to kind of of practicing
Speaker 1: training with their weapon. Um, going to an n R
Speaker 1: a basic like four hour class and thinking that you
Speaker 1: are a god. Um, they're there are people who have
Speaker 1: spent um five days a week going to classes and
Speaker 1: doing training. Because there's practice and then there's training. Training
Speaker 1: is where someone teaches you something. Uh, practices where you
Speaker 1: go with what you're already taught. Right. Um, So there
Speaker 1: there are people that spend all that time and there's
Speaker 1: still not the best in the world. Um, there are
Speaker 1: people who do a ton of practice. Jerry Micklich, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever seen him shoot, but
Speaker 1: he's uh, he's like the fastest gun in the world
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um, his videos are crazy. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he'll he'll outshoot a full auto gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with with revolvers and it's just like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just absolutely mind blowing. Um. But now he's like he's
Speaker 1: like he's like Michael Jordan or something. You know, you
Speaker 1: just get people who have it's just that natural ability. Um,
Speaker 1: certainly married with a practicing But yeah, continue, if if
Speaker 1: you had a fight, a gunfight, which they really don't
Speaker 1: happen that much, but if you had a gun fight
Speaker 1: between Um, a guy with a high point C nine
Speaker 1: who had taken the cheapest quote reliable handguns on the
Speaker 1: face there if you had a guy with that that
Speaker 1: had had paid five hundred dollars for a training class
Speaker 1: over weekend and still went uh went to the shooting
Speaker 1: range every week and practiced, and um or not even
Speaker 1: every week, just every month, and then did dry fire
Speaker 1: drills once a month in his garage or whatever. Versus
Speaker 1: a guy who went out and bought a Wilson Combat
Speaker 1: three thousand dollar nineteen eleven but had only taken the
Speaker 1: n R A class. I will bet on the guy
Speaker 1: 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 the guys you see, you know,
Speaker 1: with in all of their tactical gear and whatnot and
Speaker 1: their spare mag's taking a three hundred rounds out. If
Speaker 1: you actually look at most defensive shootings, um, it's very
Speaker 1: common and I think like like three to five rounds,
Speaker 1: three to five rounds generally closer than thirty feet, sometimes
Speaker 1: closer than like ten or fifteen that sits in my
Speaker 1: pocket most of the time. It's nineteen It's so tiny. Um.
Speaker 1: It has more bullets than I'll ever need to gunfight. Probably,
Speaker 1: I 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 very my personal Twitter. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're you're quite politically active now, um in a way
Speaker 1: that I think is surprising people for someone with your background.
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable with kind of tracing sort of the
Speaker 1: broad strokes of your journey there, because I think that's
Speaker 1: instructive um for folks oh at FPS specifically, well, just
Speaker 1: 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 morning,
Speaker 1: and I was literally shuffling through some some paperwork and
Speaker 1: and was getting ready to file a warrant and just
Speaker 1: kind of realized I I didn't think that it needed
Speaker 1: to happen, And you know, I talked to my supervising
Speaker 1: agent about it, and UM, was kind of told too bad,
Speaker 1: and and I put in for some vacation time him
Speaker 1: and ended up putting him a resignation while I was
Speaker 1: on vacation. I mean that that's the gist of how
Speaker 1: 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 convinced like that was a good shoot. Um Castillo,
Speaker 1: what it was? Philandro Castillo? Yeah, oh god? And he was, man,
Speaker 1: if you've if you've gotten lost track of this shooting
Speaker 1: in between all the others. Filando was a black man,
Speaker 1: a legal gun owner with a legal concealed carry permit,
Speaker 1: who was pulled over with his girlfriend and child in
Speaker 1: a car and hands on the wheel, told the officer
Speaker 1: he had a gun, uh, and got shot. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: and it did the thing you're supposed to do. Although
Speaker 1: now actually since then, you will get like some states
Speaker 1: will and some training classes will recommend if it's not
Speaker 1: legally required and you're carrying a gun, don't say anything
Speaker 1: for that reason. But I mean, yeah, the command to
Speaker 1: not reach for the gun to being shot multiple times
Speaker 1: in the chest was like under two seconds. Hum. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the decision was already made as
Speaker 1: soon as as soon as he gave the command, the
Speaker 1: decision was made. And here's what that brings me to
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 and 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? Buck 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, Plane, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm from Capel, so I would have argued with you
Speaker 1: about them being the same place when the same but
Speaker 1: 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 UM violence is like like when you when you're
Speaker 1: willing to accept violence to kind of maintain your your
Speaker 1: your social position or something. UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: has a huge amount to do with with the kind
Speaker 1: of 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: of declaring themselves security and what does that mean shooting
Speaker 1: other kids within guns for graffiti? Like, but it is
Speaker 1: it is a matter for it's they're not doing it
Speaker 1: to protect anybody. They're doing it because they've declared themselves security.
Speaker 1: Somebody doesn't listen to what they say and their ego
Speaker 1: is hurt. It's the same thing that again cops do.
Speaker 1: It's this it's a human mindset. It's not just a
Speaker 1: a cop mindset. And UM, I think you when you're
Speaker 1: talking about like, I think there's a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Number One, if you're going to be armed and if
Speaker 1: you're going to be armed in a community self defense role,
Speaker 1: one of the things you have to accept, is that,
Speaker 1: like you're not, as a person who is armed and
Speaker 1: cares about the defense of your community, you're not a
Speaker 1: separate thing from them. I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: areas where which policing goes wrong. May view yourselves as separate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know you guys have a big problem with that. Um,
Speaker 1: we do here too. I live in a metro and
Speaker 1: our metro police, like them, don't even live in the county.
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 differently community
Speaker 1: self defense, you know, UM, which should community? Yeah, yeah, community,
Speaker 1: And you're not the gun isn't what you are. You're
Speaker 1: not you're not security, you're not self defense because you're armed.
Speaker 1: Your self defense because you're a member of the community.
Speaker 1: And if you personally choose to be armed, that is
Speaker 1: an option that is expanded to you specifically because you're armed.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't change fun. It shouldn't change what you are.
Speaker 1: And if it does, there's a phrase that I think
Speaker 1: is really useful, um, the finger pulls the trigger and
Speaker 1: if you want to avoid or the trigger pulls the finger. Sorry.
Speaker 1: And it's this idea that when you show up armed,
Speaker 1: and you're showing up armed as someone like your purpose
Speaker 1: there is to be armed, you're at at heavy risk
Speaker 1: of the weapon guiding your responses. Um. And that's the
Speaker 1: most important thing in any circumstance to avoid if you're
Speaker 1: carrying a weapon. If um, if you've got a hammer,
Speaker 1: everything's a nail is yeah. Well and and uh, the
Speaker 1: last twenty years we've had kind of a with the
Speaker 1: War on Terror. You've seen a proliferation in media around
Speaker 1: UM making Navy Seals and all that ship look really
Speaker 1: really really cool. Uh, every other movie is about that,
Speaker 1: even though like really they're just drunk guys who yell
Speaker 1: at people a lot and who occasionally commit murder to
Speaker 1: protect Or Was that was that the Seals? Was that
Speaker 1: the Green Berets who killed that guy to protect a
Speaker 1: drug trafficking Greg? I mean probably both. Oh you know
Speaker 1: that that was the Green Berets in North Carolina? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it crosses all all borders. Um. But one
Speaker 1: thing that's come out of that is we we've started
Speaker 1: to call those guys operators. Right, So you've gone from
Speaker 1: a gun being a tool that someone trains there to
Speaker 1: use too, they are merely an operator of a weapons system. Um.
Speaker 1: And it it's kind of dehumanizing, like it it allows
Speaker 1: you to get out of the thought on that. Um,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you were talking about. Where where the
Speaker 1: triggers really pulling the finger at that point? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's I think there's a number of I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's a number of tactics and more than
Speaker 1: we can get through, and that we'll be talking with
Speaker 1: some other community to self defense people at some point
Speaker 1: in the near future about this, because this is a
Speaker 1: big topic, right, and it's not one I haven't seen
Speaker 1: anyone do it super well yet in the United States,
Speaker 1: like we anytime you have kind of persistent right wingers
Speaker 1: do every once in a while. Yeah, yeah, they take
Speaker 1: over blm Land. Yeah, but then they die. I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah they did die, get killed. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's a it's a really messy
Speaker 1: topic because of you know, what you brought up is
Speaker 1: a valid point, all the everything that all the kind
Speaker 1: of social baggage there is around weaponry in this in
Speaker 1: this country and in our in our culture, this kind
Speaker 1: of like worship of the gun. And if you think
Speaker 1: like the left is any more immune to that than
Speaker 1: the right, you're wrong. You see the same you know,
Speaker 1: toxic behavior all around. You have to be extremely cognizant
Speaker 1: of it, even if you know it's something at the
Speaker 1: risk for there is um weapons in general have a
Speaker 1: mental impact on us carrying them. Um. And there is
Speaker 1: there is a level of just like being around weaponry
Speaker 1: that is entrancing. It's it's a human thing. You know,
Speaker 1: we make weapons, it's we're tool using apes and weapons
Speaker 1: are some of the first tools that we made that
Speaker 1: that are responsible for why you know, we get to
Speaker 1: 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 Harold,
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 s f afterwards. And he has a
Speaker 1: couple of videos where he talks about it and he
Speaker 1: gives I think, pretty good advice on that that is
Speaker 1: that is completely without ego, because it's it was a
Speaker 1: nightmare for him. It was the worst experience of his life,
Speaker 1: which is what it's going to be if you ever
Speaker 1: have to use a gun, and that should be like,
Speaker 1: that should be the top of your that should be
Speaker 1: the top of your mindset. You know, I've been in
Speaker 1: this situation a couple of times at protests where like
Speaker 1: someone pulls a knife and starts lunging at people and
Speaker 1: I have a gun and I'm fifteen feet away, and
Speaker 1: I never drew in part because it never quite crossed
Speaker 1: that line for me, and I knew that giving people
Speaker 1: the chance to deescalate was vastly more important than um
Speaker 1: introducing a second weapon to the situation immediately. And if
Speaker 1: things had gone differently, perhaps I would feel differently about
Speaker 1: my choices in that moment, But um, they didn't and
Speaker 1: nobody got hurt. And that's always the best case scenario,
Speaker 1: even if it's somebody you really dislike who is who
Speaker 1: is threatening people with a weapon. I swear that happened
Speaker 1: up in Olympia like two weeks ago. Yeah, well the
Speaker 1: shooting in Olympia, which was a guy named Tiny who
Speaker 1: got shot. Um, and there's video of it. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: not a legally justified shoot for sure. Like, yeah he
Speaker 1: was he was like forty feet away, you know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's really tall. He is big, he is I
Speaker 1: think that counts for something. He was tall, he was tall,
Speaker 1: he was chasing them, he was armed. Um. Not making
Speaker 1: a moral case here. I think legally they would have
Speaker 1: had a trouble had they stayed around. Now, of course
Speaker 1: they've got I believe they've been arrested at this point.
Speaker 1: Oh have they? I just heard visits think so so sorry.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to crash it for a second. I
Speaker 1: think I saw our best friend Andy post something about
Speaker 1: three days ago. Three Yeah, okay, so they did. They
Speaker 1: did arrest the guy. Yeah, And it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: another thing if you, um, if you feel if if
Speaker 1: you're involved in like a shooting that you feel is
Speaker 1: a justified legal shooting, Um, you don't. You don't leave
Speaker 1: the scene. Uh. And in fact, one of the better
Speaker 1: videos you'll get on like what to Do and uh,
Speaker 1: this guy's life has gone to ship because of the
Speaker 1: political nature of your shooting. But the guy in um
Speaker 1: in Denver who shot that dude at a protest, the pinker,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, you know, no, no matter what you
Speaker 1: want to say about whether or not it was a
Speaker 1: good shoot, yeah that that he dropped that fucking guy,
Speaker 1: he dropped head down on his knees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. You know, again, the court case is not
Speaker 1: settled out, so I don't know if that guy's story
Speaker 1: is going to end happily. But in terms of if
Speaker 1: you want to not get shot yourself and you want
Speaker 1: to have the maximum chance of defending yourself if you
Speaker 1: have to shoot somebody in a situation that's legally justified,
Speaker 1: what that guy did after the shoot is how to
Speaker 1: handle it, um, And I mean the evidence for that
Speaker 1: is he did not get shot. And obviously your mileage
Speaker 1: with that's going to vary depending on your skin color.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's a big factor. Yeah. In terms of
Speaker 1: actual training, people can like pay for if they if
Speaker 1: they want to take that step, which I think is
Speaker 1: a good idea. UM who do you do. Do you
Speaker 1: have kind of like broad recommendations for how people can
Speaker 1: know if some things you know, because there's this is
Speaker 1: certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters and whatnot. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean most of the beginner level uh, how to
Speaker 1: fight with a gun classes are two to three days
Speaker 1: long like that. That's a good starting point is the
Speaker 1: fact that you're going to pay probably three to five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars per day, um, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: multiple days long. You can't because you're going from a baseline.
Speaker 1: You know, they know you already know how to a
Speaker 1: point and shoot a gun, but they're going to go
Speaker 1: up from everything on how to draw, how to move,
Speaker 1: how to reload. Um, you're gonna have some classroom time
Speaker 1: going over their specific safety instructions and stuff like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But anything you can do in one day or four
Speaker 1: hours or forty rounds or whatever, it isn't going to
Speaker 1: cut it. Um. You need to go get something, and
Speaker 1: you need to listen because they're going to ask you
Speaker 1: to do things that might not be the way you
Speaker 1: want to do it. You might say, yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: the way my dad taught me how to reload a handgun. Um.
Speaker 1: A good example is actually um Tactical Response in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: They a lot of people hate them, but they have
Speaker 1: a very specific way that they say, everyone reloads this
Speaker 1: way in our class. You know, you put it in
Speaker 1: and you sling shot the slide. Um. And and people
Speaker 1: will argue and go, well, I want to just press
Speaker 1: the button. Well the button is cool and all, but
Speaker 1: we want you to sling shot the slide. Just do
Speaker 1: it for this class. Um. Sorry, I got a little
Speaker 1: off topic there. No, no, no, that that's a good
Speaker 1: point too, because I mean, just go and listen, um.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to take everything away. 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 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 uh um, and
Speaker 1: having a state a good foundation like taking some real
Speaker 1: professional classes will help a lot in that as opposed
Speaker 1: to just kind of going out to the range every
Speaker 1: now 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 um it functions. And 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 A R,
Speaker 1: and you can you can replace every part of that
Speaker 1: are over the next five years and have a six
Speaker 1: thousand dollar gun. I I did um minor price checking
Speaker 1: last night because I was like, you know, I haven't
Speaker 1: checked the price the retail prices on stuff right. So
Speaker 1: in like your your budget tier normal price that that's
Speaker 1: out right now, you've got like a Ruber a R
Speaker 1: five five six. There's seven hundred bucks. That's that's dirt cheap,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna go bang just the same read gun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who who's who's a R is
Speaker 1: A five five six and they're very solid. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just they go bang every time. You're not going to
Speaker 1: break up. Um. I mean, as long as you don't
Speaker 1: use it like a baseball bat, you're not going to
Speaker 1: break up, especially now that the Russian steelcase damo has
Speaker 1: been banned. But then, like the the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum is you got a sick right, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple. Okay, So you know what the rattler is?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a fun one. I do not own
Speaker 1: a rattler, but they are They are cute. Do you
Speaker 1: know how much? Well, first off, the rattler it's a short,
Speaker 1: bare old five five six. It's not really an air
Speaker 1: of fifteen, but like technically it kind of is. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and it's well, how about this, how much do you
Speaker 1: think that the rattler costs? Right now, don't don't go
Speaker 1: look it, just just ta probably bucks would be my guests.
Speaker 1: Now it's uh now, I actually put it in my
Speaker 1: category of honorable mentioned slash meme because it's kind of
Speaker 1: a meme gun. Uh it's so tiny, um, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to get shot with it. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of the spread we were talking about, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: you can get a seven dollar gun and it'll go
Speaker 1: bang the exact same way as the rattler. UM. It
Speaker 1: fires the same bullet um, and you can build up
Speaker 1: to something not like a rattler, but you can build
Speaker 1: up to um a bunch of Novesky parts. You can
Speaker 1: throw a bunch of Novesky parts into that ruger lower
Speaker 1: and upper that you bought and build a really awesome
Speaker 1: gun that will be you know, reliable. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can you know, I think generally if you're buying
Speaker 1: like a again, you're you're getting kind of a bargain basement.
Speaker 1: Are one of the first things that that it's going
Speaker 1: to behoove you to replaces the optics. You know, it'll
Speaker 1: probably start with ion sights. But these don't even come
Speaker 1: with anything. Yeah, usually they come with nothing on them
Speaker 1: and you have to stick the irons or you stick
Speaker 1: a reflex site. There's a whole world of um of optics,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the actually one of the
Speaker 1: websites I recommend people check into if you're looking and
Speaker 1: kind of reading up on this and and doing your
Speaker 1: due diligence is Pew Pew tactical Um. They do not
Speaker 1: written from like a super you know, chutty or whatever. Like.
Speaker 1: You get a lot of very political gun websites that
Speaker 1: may have some good information but are frustrating to read.
Speaker 1: They're not that way. They're written. You know, four people
Speaker 1: who are not super aggro about guns, but who are
Speaker 1: are are interested in guns, and you can find really
Speaker 1: good reviews on stuff. But as a general rule, modern
Speaker 1: optics beat iron sights every day of the way, 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 and fifty dollar a point pro
Speaker 1: which which is uh the budget version of a high
Speaker 1: end optic, if I can put a four D and
Speaker 1: fifty optic with the mountain everything onto a rifle and
Speaker 1: just go, hey, just just put the dot on what
Speaker 1: you want to shoot, You're done. Um. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: lot that goes past that, but we got rid of
Speaker 1: the entire proper site alignment and all that. They just
Speaker 1: got to put the dot on the box and squeeze. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean even even the Marine Corps famous for for
Speaker 1: fielding marksman has gone we're going to switch over to
Speaker 1: optic based training. Yeah, they're just I mean you look
Speaker 1: at even guys in like id Lib Province, which is
Speaker 1: like one of the rebel provinces in Syria that's been
Speaker 1: persistently under siege for most of the last decade. Um,
Speaker 1: they're all using fancy optics now like that generally alfin
Speaker 1: Ali Baba versions of like brand optics. But does the
Speaker 1: trick you know, I mean it's a it's a sig
Speaker 1: Romeo that never got the role market for cig on, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and they paid a hundred bucks instead of Yeah. Um, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's most of what we can responsibly get through.
Speaker 1: I do want to end on the caveat we started
Speaker 1: with this with, which is that um deciding whether or not.
Speaker 1: And I we advocate, uh, firearms is an option both
Speaker 1: as a legal option and something that can be for
Speaker 1: your community and for you as an individual potentially practical.
Speaker 1: I don't blanket advise people to buy guns. I think
Speaker 1: in many cases it's going to be counterproductive. I think
Speaker 1: you should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone
Speaker 1: who struggles with suicidal ideation, they they can be a
Speaker 1: very dangerous thing to have in your home if that's
Speaker 1: something that that you battle with. I do think that
Speaker 1: they can be owned and used very responsibly. In addition
Speaker 1: to I think shooting can be a really enjoyable pastime. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think more than anything in 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah they're not. They're not ideal. Um. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we can, we can talk about over penetration and stuff,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean just being able to move lead
Speaker 1: in a direction. They're very bad at it. Yeah, um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not. They're not. I mean again, something
Speaker 1: like uh an a R or a pistol caliber carbine
Speaker 1: is in a lot of situations going to be a
Speaker 1: much more practical and and have less risk of hitting
Speaker 1: stuff you don't want to hit necessarily get get the
Speaker 1: high point? Um, yeat the yeah they eat cannon. Well
Speaker 1: we'll discuss that on our whole episode of about high Points.
Speaker 1: So you've shot yourself in the dick the high points story.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, um, do you wanna Paul, you've got
Speaker 1: any got anything to plug before we roll out here? Uh?
Speaker 1: Give food to homeless people? Well houseless, houseless I think
Speaker 1: is yeah. Um, and if you're in an area with
Speaker 1: a based d S A joined the d S I
Speaker 1: and then vote out the ship libs. That's what's happening
Speaker 1: here in Orlando. Um, but yeah, embrace anarchy. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. This has been a podcast and uh and
Speaker 1: remember as we sail out, there's a reason the episode
Speaker 1: talking about guns came after the episodes talking about storing
Speaker 1: and growing food. Welcome back to the it could happen here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the podcast we're doing right now. It's a podcast
Speaker 1: about how things are kind of falling apart, but maybe
Speaker 1: they don't need to, or at least not as much
Speaker 1: as they have been. I'm Robert Evans with me, as
Speaker 1: often is my co host Garrison. Davis Garrison, UM say
Speaker 1: something inciting to the audience. I'm on my second cup
Speaker 1: of coffee. Yeah, because it is. It is the early
Speaker 1: morning for you, by which I mean to eleven in
Speaker 1: the afternoon. UM, also with us today. Our guest for
Speaker 1: this episode is David van Douson. Uh. David, you are
Speaker 1: the president of the State Labor Council for the Vermont
Speaker 1: a f l c I O and there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that's interesting about your organization. Will dig into
Speaker 1: it in more detail in a second, but first I
Speaker 1: just want to say hello and thank you for being
Speaker 1: on the show. Now, David, the big thing, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Vermont a f l c I has been in
Speaker 1: the news a couple of times recently. The most recent
Speaker 1: one is y'all issued a statement making you the coverage
Speaker 1: I've seen has said the first labor organization of the
Speaker 1: US to like support gun rights. I mean like as
Speaker 1: is stated in a lot of the stuff you've put out,
Speaker 1: like Blair Mountain. There's a long history of labor organizations
Speaker 1: making use of the Second Amendment. But UM, I certainly
Speaker 1: haven't heard of a labor organization stating at the way
Speaker 1: you did, which is basically the case you've made, is
Speaker 1: because far right fascist organizations are so heavily armed and
Speaker 1: any gut all of the gun control policies being heavily debated,
Speaker 1: at least among liberals, are likely to ignore those people
Speaker 1: while restricting the ability of working class and particularly marginalized
Speaker 1: people to arm themselves. Um, you do not support those
Speaker 1: regulations because you support the rights of those groups to
Speaker 1: be able to defend themselves from fascists. That more or
Speaker 1: less correct. Well, Look, we believe in the right of
Speaker 1: the people to defend themselves, but our policies, including that one,
Speaker 1: are not adopted by the elected leadership, including myself. They're
Speaker 1: adopted by our members. We believe very firmly and democracy
Speaker 1: participaty democracy. So with issues like this, we're happy to
Speaker 1: bring into our convention, which we recently did, and facilitate
Speaker 1: a full debate on the issue. So that's exactly what
Speaker 1: we did. We talked about it, our rank and file
Speaker 1: members talked about it. They made amendments, They debated passionately
Speaker 1: different sides of the issue in a respectful way, in
Speaker 1: a productive way. A number of amendments were made they
Speaker 1: were adopted, and then ultimately the resolution was passed with
Speaker 1: over a two thirds majority of our right file delegates
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 is so interesting here that this
Speaker 1: isn't like um UM a kind of a group of
Speaker 1: activists at the top making declaration declarations. This is an
Speaker 1: organization that is really um dedicated itself. Increasingly too, I
Speaker 1: think a kind of progressive ism that we we haven't
Speaker 1: really seen in an organized way, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the American labor movement until recently. Well, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about democracy in the labor I mean we could be
Speaker 1: just as well talking 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, our progre us of slate called United,
Speaker 1: is one where we increased the means for direct protruciserary democracy,
Speaker 1: both within labor and within our society. So of course
Speaker 1: we're going to go to our members and our rank
Speaker 1: and file and ask them to debate the issues of
Speaker 1: our day and ultimately to make a decision on these
Speaker 1: major political and social issues. This was one we again,
Speaker 1: we do believe that people need to have a rite,
Speaker 1: the working class needs have a right to defend itself,
Speaker 1: and we can't bury our head in the stand. Anybody
Speaker 1: that's even followed a little bit of the news lately
Speaker 1: will know that between November up until late January, we
Speaker 1: were one general shy of a coup in this country,
Speaker 1: in the upside down world that we're now living in.
Speaker 1: It was because of the joint chiefs of Staff and
Speaker 1: the head of the c i A not supporting a
Speaker 1: coup that a neo fascist cou didn't totally in fold
Speaker 1: materialized in a more mature form. Let that sink inform
Speaker 1: it our democracy, or the vestiges of the democracy we
Speaker 1: have in the United States right now is precarious. Uh.
Speaker 1: They just because they've been there for two hundred years
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're gonna be there tomorrow. The new playbook
Speaker 1: from an increasingly far right Republican Party is to limit
Speaker 1: as much as they possibly could a people's right to
Speaker 1: vote and to participate in the political process. We see
Speaker 1: this happening in Texas, We see this happening in Georgia.
Speaker 1: We see this happening in Florida. We see this happening
Speaker 1: in Red. Uh. I shouldn't say red, but I should
Speaker 1: say Republican states all throughout the US. So these are dangerous,
Speaker 1: dangerous times, right, so dangerous that our top generals were
Speaker 1: trying to decide what their position would be and make
Speaker 1: plans in case a coup, a full encoup, not just
Speaker 1: a hint of a coup, came into being within the
Speaker 1: last year of our republic. Now, given those realities and
Speaker 1: giving the eyes of the far right, given that our
Speaker 1: former president Donald Trump told the neo fascist Proud Boys
Speaker 1: to stand what did you say, stand back and stand by? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And now at least they claimed that forty
Speaker 1: thous members around the United States and they are armed. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't just rest in our hurelds and
Speaker 1: and pretend that the state as such is going to
Speaker 1: keep us safe. So it seems prudent and reasonable for
Speaker 1: us to have taken the action and say we defend
Speaker 1: our constitutional right to bear arms as intended to defend
Speaker 1: our communities. They defend our unions, to defend the working class.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that because we were just
Speaker 1: talking about the the coup that very nearly got pulled
Speaker 1: off your organization, at least in UH I believe it
Speaker 1: was right after the election, issued a statement that if
Speaker 1: the president illegally attempted to stay in power, the former president,
Speaker 1: you would participate in an attempt to help organize a
Speaker 1: general strike. Now that's something we talk about a lot
Speaker 1: on this show. We're big believers in the potential of
Speaker 1: a general strike. Were also big believers that the kind
Speaker 1: of general strike that we need to i don't know,
Speaker 1: potentially get climate justice and a number of other major
Speaker 1: things is an undertaking on par with the space race.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking about an enormous task. I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in picking your brain on when we talk about
Speaker 1: a national general strike, what is the kind of infrastructure
Speaker 1: that's actually necessary to make something like that feasible, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of talk on like Twitter and Facebook
Speaker 1: of like, let's just do a general strike on this
Speaker 1: day in October I six months doesn't go by, as
Speaker 1: President f l C I o ver month where I
Speaker 1: don't left this group of some kind of contacted me
Speaker 1: to endorse their general strike, right going to shut down
Speaker 1: on datas and it's yet to happen, at least in
Speaker 1: our country. So that's a great question. A couple of things.
Speaker 1: When we voted, and again this wasn't a decision of
Speaker 1: myself and the leadership. This was a decision we went
Speaker 1: back to the rank and file with to our to
Speaker 1: one of our conventions of our delegates, after our long debate,
Speaker 1: voted to authorize the elected deecutive Board to call for
Speaker 1: a general strike in the event of a coup, in
Speaker 1: the event that there wasn't transfer power on January as
Speaker 1: the constitution requires. It was our feeling that in that
Speaker 1: very specific space and time, in that very specific political climate,
Speaker 1: um we would be able to call for such a
Speaker 1: strike and with a serious amount of work and a
Speaker 1: serious amount of organizing, pull that off and make that happen.
Speaker 1: And the thought was if we could do it in Vermont,
Speaker 1: because the call was a further mon 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: talked about climate issues, when we talked about the fact
Speaker 1: that millions of Americans don't have healthcare or aren't paid
Speaker 1: little Way ages, all of these issues are at least
Speaker 1: these issues together certainly warrant us looking at things like
Speaker 1: a general strike, but they're a bit it's a bit
Speaker 1: phind this guide to think that, hey, we got ten
Speaker 1: grade issues that we want to see progress on, we're
Speaker 1: gonna call for our strike 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 union, let
Speaker 1: alone the majority of workplaces at this point that aren't unionized.
Speaker 1: So what our top priority is as far as the
Speaker 1: Vermontney fail diegos over the next two years is to
Speaker 1: build a network of local union contacts in every single
Speaker 1: shop and every single shift that we represent folks here
Speaker 1: in Vermont. So we see this as a way to
Speaker 1: increase communication. Without communication, you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to pull off mass mobilizations and with and also you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to conduct mass education on issues X,
Speaker 1: Y or Z. So over a period of two years,
Speaker 1: we're looking to build this network that would function not
Speaker 1: as a one way means of communication, but almost a
Speaker 1: two or three way. Imagine that this is a way
Speaker 1: for the rank and file to communicate up to the leaders.
Speaker 1: This is a way for the leadership to communicate down
Speaker 1: to the ranks, I mean down to the lunch room
Speaker 1: level of what it means to be in a union shop.
Speaker 1: And also ideally it's going to be a way for
Speaker 1: local union leaders to horizontally communicate with each other. With
Speaker 1: such a structure in place on a grand scale, on
Speaker 1: a state scale, on a federal scale, then things like
Speaker 1: organized general strikes over political issues and social issues become feasible.
Speaker 1: And even when they're feasible, though, then we still have
Speaker 1: the political question of you know, will they be supported
Speaker 1: by the internationals, will they be supported by the executive
Speaker 1: board of the National a f c O. And that's
Speaker 1: a huge conversation, you know. So, Yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me hearing your perspective on this, because my experience with
Speaker 1: kind of activism UM has been much more of kind
Speaker 1: of the decentralized and kind of much more recent groups,
Speaker 1: you know, since occupy. Um, you're dealing with these these
Speaker 1: structures that in a lot of cases or I mean
Speaker 1: the A f l c I O goes back like
Speaker 1: what like a century, right one one way or the other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, UM, because of kind of how
Speaker 1: shall I say online, a lot of the discussion about
Speaker 1: this stuff seems to be organized labor often gets left out.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think is most
Speaker 1: important when talking about the value that organized labor has
Speaker 1: in any kind of discussion if a general strike is
Speaker 1: what happened during the during the Jet UH negotiations or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them in twenty nineteen, where
Speaker 1: you you had UM airline workers threatening a general strike
Speaker 1: that effectively brought it into too a president's saber rattling
Speaker 1: over over the budget like it's it's president Sarah Nelson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: headlines over that and that was the right thing to
Speaker 1: do about her and would love to sear in a
Speaker 1: stronger positional leadership the national level. Well, I'm interested because
Speaker 1: I I see a lot of potential in Obviously organized
Speaker 1: labor has had a lot of problems, particularly in the
Speaker 1: last you know, during my lifetime, UM, And I think
Speaker 1: part of it is what you said earlier, there's it's
Speaker 1: not as democratic as it should be at most levels. UM.
Speaker 1: What you guys have done with United is attempting to
Speaker 1: reform that, you know within Vermont. I'm wondering, first, how
Speaker 1: did that kind of come about? You know, twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: is when you first got got put into office, when
Speaker 1: when the United State got put in the to the
Speaker 1: office in Vermont? What was kind of the back story
Speaker 1: to that? And then my second is kind of what
Speaker 1: do you see as necessary to like what what what's
Speaker 1: what's the fight, as you see it, to get stuff
Speaker 1: like that done on a larger scale around the country.
Speaker 1: So our story in Vermont is probably a lot like
Speaker 1: the story of organized labor in many different places. Our
Speaker 1: starting point. So in two thousand and seventeen, not that
Speaker 1: long ago, ah, we had a convention with something like
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty five delegates there. Imagine that twenty delegates
Speaker 1: representing ten at the time, ten thousand we've grown since
Speaker 1: the 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 localeen in the northeast kingdom of Vermont.
Speaker 1: So when I got together with a number of other
Speaker 1: leaders from different unions different asked me locals, but also
Speaker 1: United Academics is part of a f T the building trades.
Speaker 1: A number of folks, there was a general recognition at
Speaker 1: the leadership level that something was very wrong. Member participation
Speaker 1: was weakest can be, and things have to change. And
Speaker 1: we continually as an organization, you know, with some exceptions,
Speaker 1: hitch our wagon to the shortcomings that are the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: So all of these things together led to inactivity, apathy,
Speaker 1: and lack of democracy. So we started going around, we
Speaker 1: started talking with workers, we started talking with shops across
Speaker 1: the state, and one of the first things that was
Speaker 1: striking people would say they would know what union there
Speaker 1: and be at a PW or asking or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: But we'd say, listen, we're talking. We're thinking about running
Speaker 1: a slate progressive slave for office with to take the
Speaker 1: a f l c i O in a new direction.
Speaker 1: The next thing they would say, is, what's the a
Speaker 1: f l c I M think about that? Right, workers involved,
Speaker 1: some of which were union stewarts and their locals didn't
Speaker 1: even know what the a f l c I O was.
Speaker 1: So that was our starting point. It was an excellent
Speaker 1: crisis of labor. And mind you, during these what I
Speaker 1: would call some dark periods, we would often endorse a
Speaker 1: hundred candidates for state House, nearly all of which being Democrats,
Speaker 1: and then we they would win. They would win their elections,
Speaker 1: like largely our candidates win, and then we get nothing
Speaker 1: in the state House. Right, There'd be no labor bill,
Speaker 1: there'd be no advance in a card check. Differently before
Speaker 1: the organized labor and yet we keep repeating the same
Speaker 1: mistake year and year out and not figure out that
Speaker 1: something was wrong. So when we formed the United State
Speaker 1: as a coalition of a number of different unions to
Speaker 1: recognized it was time for change, we really brought the
Speaker 1: discussion into the grassroots level. We developed a ten point
Speaker 1: program we called our little read Book. It's now the
Speaker 1: policy and the platform of the Vermont a fl c I,
Speaker 1: and we ran an organized campaign based on that right
Speaker 1: at a very local level. And here we did all
Speaker 1: the things that you know you should be doing, the
Speaker 1: phone calls, the emails, the shop visits, all of this
Speaker 1: and created a sense of excitement going into our two
Speaker 1: nine convention. Our two thousand nineteen convention with over if
Speaker 1: I recall over a hundred and five delegates and alternates,
Speaker 1: was the largest convention we had up here in in
Speaker 1: something like thirty plus years. So that was an exciting
Speaker 1: atmosphere where something was going to be different and something
Speaker 1: was going to change right. So we swept. We essentially
Speaker 1: slept those elections. We want all the seats except for one.
Speaker 1: We had a follow up convention in two UM sorry
Speaker 1: election in two where we won every single seat, and
Speaker 1: then in the last election UM we won all seats
Speaker 1: except for one where one person who's a good, good
Speaker 1: person from the building trades ran but was not part
Speaker 1: of our state. So the real question is what have
Speaker 1: we done in the intern How are we changing that
Speaker 1: direct and how are we changing trying to seek to
Speaker 1: change the capacity of labor, and what lessons does it
Speaker 1: add to the national room? How would suppose so on that?
Speaker 1: For one of the first things we did is we
Speaker 1: took money out of our lobbying operation and put it
Speaker 1: into an organizing department, whereby we would hire and we
Speaker 1: have hired on call organizers to assist our affiliates in
Speaker 1: either new organizing or internal organizing, therefore delivering an actual
Speaker 1: benefits to our affiliate unions. Now, mind you, we represent
Speaker 1: just about every sector of workers all across the state,
Speaker 1: but forever they very rarely got a concrete, measurable acts
Speaker 1: of solidarity from the Federation as such, right because all
Speaker 1: of a lot of too many of the resources were
Speaker 1: put in belomming. And we also took a critical eye
Speaker 1: towards the Democratic Party, and recently we've instead endorsed the
Speaker 1: Social Democratic for more progressive party slates and their runs
Speaker 1: for State House and state at 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: art issues where where they may have some common interests.
Speaker 1: So those are things that are very different that the
Speaker 1: national AFLC has not doing. Other state labor federations largely
Speaker 1: aren't doing enough. And we're hoping now to build that out.
Speaker 1: And we're engaging conversations seeking to form a national progressive
Speaker 1: Caucus within the National Act. And I think that's so
Speaker 1: important when you talk about kind of on the national
Speaker 1: level for progressives number one to not not continually kind
Speaker 1: of reflectively support the Democratic Party when the Democratics parties
Speaker 1: is failing progressives, which you know, we have a perfect
Speaker 1: case study right now in Congress with the the Reconciliation Bill. Um.
Speaker 1: It often does seem like such an insurmountable task just
Speaker 1: because the inability like a bill, the three point five
Speaker 1: trillion dollar infrastructure bill, is so widely supported by Americans,
Speaker 1: but it it just keeps coming down to this tiny
Speaker 1: number of folks with uh, you know, financial interests and donors, um,
Speaker 1: who are who are pushing against something that's widely supported.
Speaker 1: And I feel um optimistic when I look at state
Speaker 1: organizations like what y'all are doing and the fact that
Speaker 1: I can see something building, but I also it does
Speaker 1: it is such a titanic task to imagine translating that
Speaker 1: on a national scale in a way that actually gets
Speaker 1: us the things that you know, we we really can't
Speaker 1: wait for when you're talking about some of this infrastructure stuff,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about healthcare, when you're talking about climate justice, Like,
Speaker 1: I do feel the clock ticking um, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what you see as the hope on the national scale
Speaker 1: for actually putting some muscle behind the progressive movement. Well, look,
Speaker 1: it's not just the the issues of the Infrastructure bill
Speaker 1: and the budget bill. It's also the Proact right the
Speaker 1: bill that is language in the Senate. And let's not
Speaker 1: lose track of the fact that those efforts are all
Speaker 1: stalling and likely very likely to fail. And I hope
Speaker 1: they don't because of Democrats, because the Democratic Party is
Speaker 1: not united. They ran on a platform saying they were
Speaker 1: going to do X, Y and Z, and now when
Speaker 1: they're in a position to carry it out, they are
Speaker 1: not going to do it. And Joe Manchin uh far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned, uh column a class trader, but I
Speaker 1: don't think he's ever was part of the working class.
Speaker 1: He claims to support the Proact, but in the same
Speaker 1: breath he he won't get rid of the filibuster. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's absolute bullshit as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: So how do we change that? Well, the National a
Speaker 1: f l c I O puts millions and millions and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into elections. We have gotten so many
Speaker 1: of these people elected and back them in Arizona and
Speaker 1: West Virginia, you name it, and then we get nothing back.
Speaker 1: If we were to take that money instead and put
Speaker 1: it into a robust new organizing department or a recrafted
Speaker 1: organizing department and actually assigned reel on the ground organizers
Speaker 1: in 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: alliance as the social justice group, our power would be
Speaker 1: amplified 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 turned
Speaker 1: to meaningful, true, true um major reforms as a way
Speaker 1: to blunt that perceived threat that they have. And that's
Speaker 1: what we got to get back to. Not our power
Speaker 1: is never gonna grow from people who are wearing ties
Speaker 1: in Washington. Our power is gonna grow based on our
Speaker 1: solidarity on the shop floor and in our communities. So
Speaker 1: that's the direction we gotta go, and we got to
Speaker 1: do that rapidly, very rapidly. It's been clear to me
Speaker 1: for quite a while both that the reason workers gained
Speaker 1: so much in the way of the Great Depression and
Speaker 1: the only kind of hope we have for doing that
Speaker 1: 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 capacity. 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 going to have a job of some time and
Speaker 1: a lot of folks aren't getting treated the way they
Speaker 1: should in their job. Don't care if you 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
Speaker 1: help where you could do it on your own. Frankly,
Speaker 1: but if we're not organized as working people, and we
Speaker 1: are we are most of the world. If we're not
Speaker 1: organized amongst ourselves, we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: become that expression of power that we need to be
Speaker 1: in order to create the change. If we're just a
Speaker 1: collection 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, 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: could 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 in most nation states. Yeah, but so
Speaker 1: did the Carnegies and the Rockefellas and the folks like
Speaker 1: this and and arm and it's always been hard, uh
Speaker 1: too long ago in our country, maybe during our grandfather's day,
Speaker 1: where there was a very good chance to be shot
Speaker 1: or at least beat over the head with a club
Speaker 1: from the Pinkerton's if you try to organize, organizing has
Speaker 1: never been easy, and such as Columbia today trade unionists
Speaker 1: are killed at an unbelievable clip, almost on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: and yet still they organized. So I'm not suggesting to
Speaker 1: any of your listeners that if this is easy, what
Speaker 1: I am that it has to happen. It has to happen.
Speaker 1: And there's different models too, Like in some places, one
Speaker 1: of the models that's been effectively used as forming workers centers, right,
Speaker 1: So that's not a traditional union. It's a center in
Speaker 1: a city, or in a community or in a town
Speaker 1: where workers come together and strategized right at a in
Speaker 1: a location, to st atogize how to be effective as
Speaker 1: a group, as a whole, as a class on issues
Speaker 1: that are important to them, you know, be an economic,
Speaker 1: be its social, be it um, finding against racism, whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. That's a model that I suggest folks
Speaker 1: could could look into as an alternative way. If, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you don't feel that the time is right
Speaker 1: for a union in your shop today, although it needs
Speaker 1: to be tomorrow, take a look at workers center and
Speaker 1: see if there's one in your community. Get involved, if
Speaker 1: not get together a few people and see what it
Speaker 1: would take to start when where you live. But one
Speaker 1: way or another, we have to be organized, We have
Speaker 1: to come together. We cannot just be a collection of individuals.
Speaker 1: That's a great point, UM, and useful information. I think
Speaker 1: kind of the last thing I wanted to get into
Speaker 1: UM was one of the things I first learned about
Speaker 1: your organization that you issued a solidarity statement back and
Speaker 1: I think it was two thousand nineteen UM with the
Speaker 1: YPG and J and Rojaba. UM. And you've issued you
Speaker 1: know it stated your solidarity with Black Lives Matter, with
Speaker 1: the Zapatista's currently what they're undergoing in Mexico UM, which
Speaker 1: is massive repression from the government yet again. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know your support of Palestinian rights and of against
Speaker 1: sort of the U S occupation or not occupation, but
Speaker 1: a blockade of Cuba. UM. What do you see when
Speaker 1: we're talking about this struggle, this broad struggle we've be
Speaker 1: talking about all day, what do you see as the
Speaker 1: role of internationalism in both in both organizing people in
Speaker 1: organizing resistance. Well, our starting point today is capital is international.
Speaker 1: So if we're going to have a foundational challenge to
Speaker 1: the power of capital. We also have to be internationalists
Speaker 1: in our outbow. We supported the YPG, the YPJ and
Speaker 1: the newly elected government in Rojaba because they are struggling
Speaker 1: for economic equity and a direct history democracy in that
Speaker 1: corner of the world. We see this as the most
Speaker 1: significant revolution in in the world, uh in generations. I
Speaker 1: mean this in our mind is on far with the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War and what we saw around Barcelona and
Speaker 1: the c n T then or the Paris Commune of
Speaker 1: eight seventy one. If this was happening in Europe, a
Speaker 1: day wouldn't go by where this wouldn't be front page news.
Speaker 1: But in the Western world we often the corporate media
Speaker 1: terms of blind eye too many of those starters. So
Speaker 1: they're doing their part, and we have to do our
Speaker 1: part in our country to the Zabatistas are doing their
Speaker 1: part in Schiapas in broaderways in some regards in Mexico
Speaker 1: as such, but we need to reach our hand out
Speaker 1: and encouragement and say hey, we're here to support you.
Speaker 1: One of the things we sought to concretely do in
Speaker 1: the Vermont labor movement is in two thousand nineteen one
Speaker 1: of our Central Labor count Council's passed the resolutions for it.
Speaker 1: We said, look, if you go over to fight and
Speaker 1: volunteer with the YEPG and y PJ, because there's thousands
Speaker 1: of volunteers right uh, they're volunteered to go over, if
Speaker 1: you return and your American will hook you up with
Speaker 1: a union job, and we'll hook you up with three
Speaker 1: months of room and board so you could get reacclimated,
Speaker 1: you could get back into the community and get back
Speaker 1: into the local fight through the labor movement. And we
Speaker 1: were proud to actually have an opportunity to do that
Speaker 1: for one returning American fighter in our latest resolution in
Speaker 1: two one, and this one was broader because it was
Speaker 1: the whole vermonti a FO, not just the Central Labor Council.
Speaker 1: We again offered, we encourage folks to feel so inclined
Speaker 1: if they're in that place in their life to volunteer
Speaker 1: with the YPG and y p A. And if they're
Speaker 1: Americans and they come back, we're happy to hook you up.
Speaker 1: We'll do our best to get you a good union
Speaker 1: job when you return. So we felt that was a
Speaker 1: very small least we could do kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: concrete way to provide solidarity. We all have to stand together.
Speaker 1: It's really one fight. But the place we're going to
Speaker 1: be effective is where you live locally, in your town,
Speaker 1: in your city, and your state and in your country. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great note to end on and
Speaker 1: a great thing that you all are doing. And I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate that, and I appreciate you, David coming
Speaker 1: on and talking to us today. Um, is there anything
Speaker 1: else you wanted to to to get out or anything
Speaker 1: you wanted to like any you know, charities or or
Speaker 1: mutual aid funds or whatever you wanted to uh push
Speaker 1: before we kind of roll out today. I'd just like
Speaker 1: to push for folks to go to workout tomorrow and organize.
Speaker 1: Organize with your fellow workers and let's change the world solidarity.
Speaker 1: Thank you, David. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask for your health. There is a Portland area woman,
Speaker 1: Ruba to mem She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian
Speaker 1: liberation activist, and she is trying to save her home
Speaker 1: at the moment. She's got to go fund me. If
Speaker 1: you go to save Ruba's house, are you be a
Speaker 1: on go fund bank, you'll find it. Save Ruba's House
Speaker 1: on go fund Me if you've got a few bucks, um,
Speaker 1: she could really use it again. Save Ruba's House. Are
Speaker 1: you be a at go fund Me? Thanks? Hey, We'll
Speaker 1: be back Monday with more episodes every week from now
Speaker 1: until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.