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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week. That just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ADS package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. If I know one thing about diseases, it's that they're home bodies. No, it's fine, we make it. They just want to Netflix and chill. We just line up the entire population of the US in a line across the US and we shoot any deer that tries to cross the line. I think we should do the reverse and have deer shoot people who try to cross the line. It's the only thing that can protect us from the dangerous E look, look. Well, I guess it works in east and in the West. We have to maintain the right to arm bears. Yep, I'm I'm of the opinion, given how dry it is in New Mexico, that we need to sink every part of the country east of New Mexico to give it a coast that can that can keep it moist. I wonder how much of this is going to get in the final cut. If you live east of New Mexico. Welcome to the ocean. That's my suggestion. Speaking of people east of New Mexico, this is it could happen here, a podcast where some of the listeners are east of New Mexico, even though I don't recommend that. I'm Robert Evans. On on the call with me is Christopher Wong, Garrison Davis, Shereen Lani Yunus and then our producer Sophie. Today we're talking about terrorism. We do it in a little NPR voice. So recently, the same week as the Supreme Court leaked a document stating that they would be taking out Roe V Wade and ushering in an era of theocratic fascism in a number of states. An individual or individuals unknown in Wisconsin attacked an anti choice headquarters building with a Molotov cocktail and spray painted graffiti on the side saying if abortion isn't safe then you aren't either that same group or individuals claiming to be from them. Later reached out to me through an intermediary and sent a manifesto of sorts about the attack, promising a follow-up attacks within 30 days. But they wrote, but they wrote in cursive. So who can say, who can say if this actually happens? So we'll talk 1st. I'm going to just go over first what what happened in like factual terms and then we'll talk about the discourse around it. So basically there's this attack on this anti choice like advocacy organizations headquarters in ******* Wisconsin. It was a seemed to be a pretty good Molotov and that, like Garrison, you and I have have watched a number of people fail to properly utilize. I've watched a few people get ignited by. Define guided. I watched one not cop get ignited by him all time. I've seen a couple not cops get ignited by Malik tops. Yeah, they're they're they're not like people can **** them up easily. Whoever did this did not **** them up. It was seemed to be at the moment, no one has been arrested. Now, it's possible by the time this drops, Wisconsin police will be like, Oh no, there was totally surveillance footage and they ****** ** and we just caught them. But at the moment it doesn't look like that's the case. So it looks like this is somebody who carried out. Or some buddies, because it is entirely possible as multiple people, but carried out a very effective like action that did material damage to. Part of kind of the physical infrastructure of the anti choice movement and ended without anyone getting caught. So that's the fact of the actual attack itself. A person. Who claiming to be affiliated with the individuals or group who did this? Uh, reached out to a source of mine who I'm keeping anonymous, but somebody who I've known for a while with a very good track record of being accurate and said, hey, these individual slash individuals have a communique they would like put out and I was sent an an on files link, which is a link. If you view it in a normal browser you'll get some ****** ** ****. Don't put it in a normal browser, I specified. It's like you're supposed to. If you put it in Tor, it will download a text file, right? And the text file is the communique. So using the Tor browser for that link, you can get a text file in which they lay out number one they name themselves and the name they've chosen for their group is Jane's revenge, which is a reference to the Jane Collective, which was a pro-choice group in the late 60s, early 70s that provided women with access to contraception and abortion illegally. A bunch of them went to jail. They were pardoned after Roe V Wade if I'm not mistaken or at least otherwise know more about it. Listen to Margaret killjoys. Cool people get cool stuff too. Parter on the gin collection, yeah yeah, very well timed. So they're calling themselves James revenge and they basically said, hey, if you are an organization in the anti choice movement you have 30 days to close down your operations. Otherwise there will be follow-up attacks. They specifically noted the long and it's at this point like a 40 years long history of terrorist attacks from the anti choice. Movement, many of which have assassinated doctors. Something like 16 people have been killed, dozens of bombs and bombing attempts, something like 100 acid attacks. So they made a note of all that and said that, like, basically we will be, we will be responding in kind, and attacks after this initial attack will be correspondingly more severe. They also claim to have a pretty wide geographic reach that they had folks in a number of cities. And that, yeah, there's going to be follow-up attacks and they're prepared to defend their bodily autonomy with violence. So that's that's the gist of what was claimed in the communique. In terms of what I think about its legitimacy, UM, I don't have any reason to believe they're not representing the individual or individuals who carried out that attack in Wisconsin based on the timing of when the communique was made and based on the fact that the communique is pretty consistent with what we saw from the actual action, right. So among other things, what you can tell from the physical action that was taken is that the the individual or individuals who did this were pretty well. Organized they carried out a competent action and they thought there was a value and very clear message because there's clear messaging surrounding the attack. The communique is very clear messaging. It does not sound like a right winger writing up a fake communique. It's very takes great pains to both connect itself to history to frame its violence within the context of the violence perpetuated by the anti choice movement for decades. And just in general it's the communique seems consistent with the. Action that we saw in Wisconsin now cannot say, we cannot say, I cannot say to a, a, a statement of certainty whether or not it's legitimate. One helpful thing they did is place state that there would be another more attacks in 30 days. So we're kind of waiting. If 30 days pass and there's never any kind of follow-up attacks by this group, then we can probably assume that this was either somebody ************ or that the heat got to too much for them and they decided not to carry out follow-up attacks. But we're all kind of in this holding pattern now to see what happens. My personal speculation is that they were exaggerating a number of things. I think that the their claims about having members in a number of States and the capacity to strike in a number of states was more aspirational than literal in that I suspect the people behind this attack in this communique are hoping that by carrying out attacks they can inspire other people to carry out attacks. Credit to the same organization, right? Yeah. Which is not an uncommon tactic in the history of of terrorism. And again, this is terrorism. Like, that doesn't mean I don't think they have a point or that it's like fundamentally unjust. Terrorism is just like a set of tactics that different groups can use, and it can be ethical or unethical depending on how you you choose to do that. You can attack purely infrastructure in a terrorist manner, and I don't think that's necessarily unethical. And you can also attack civilians in a terrorist manner, and I think that is unethical. At this moment, these people have not done anything I view as inherently unethical. They burned the building, which I think is often justified and is in this case justified. So that's that's my opinion on the matter. Let's open it up on the point you kind of closed within. Yeah, they showed effective direct action. They they did a physical thing. Multos are not the best way to do, like to like Arsenal building, but they are good for a very quick attack. It caused this whole media thing, right? There's a lot of people talking about it and releasing the communique through someone who can give it a lot of. Visibility and then by by doing it with this with this name James Revenge and saying in 30 days there will be more attacks in different cities the the message is that yeah like you can one way to look at this is if if they don't have tons of like you know members or allies that they know across different cities is that any anyone can do this like anyone can do this and call themselves by that name and be a part of this larger thing like it's you if you if you spread it around then that it can become like this this thing that anyone can. Glom onto it doesn't need to be. You don't need to be a part of a member of a specific group. You can just do stuff and release communiques safely and add add on to the to the to the spectre. Yeah, it's not hard to set up like a text drop in the same manner that they did. It is relatively secure, like there's no perfect if you are committing terrorism, there is no perfect manner to issue a statement. But of the different things they could have chosen, this is relatively secure, especially doing it through an intermediary. I haven't had direct contact with these people, but we should probably note that there's a huge discourse that started before the communique came out arguing that this is like a false flag. Attack. Yeah, that's yes, the. In in a long line of calling a pretty, pretty well planned out direct action when it actually happens, people will default to calling it an OPP or calling it a false flag of from a variety of people. Like there's there's like, there's like libs who say, oh, this is a staged thing to make our movement look bad. There's Tankies who think it's like the CIA planning something. There's random other folks who are like, I don't know if it's legit. I think maybe it's like some. It's a lot of people get very various. Justifications for calling pretty effective acts of direct action and in questioning, questioning their legitimacy. I think some of this comes from because there's obviously there's the bad faith elements of this, but I think the good faith folks who question it, there's a lot of learned helplessness there. This idea that because somebody did carry out a pretty successful direct action attack that that kind of did what its intention was, then it has to have been. The FBI or whoever right? Because obviously the left could never have pulled off something as as cunning as throwing a single Molotov at a building and spray painting the side of it, you know? And I I do think that that's a problem. Whether or not you think the solution to issues like the right wing attack on reproductive healthcare come from direct action, the fact that folks almost can't conceive of effective action being taken by the left without the feds being involved is really an issue. Yeah. And this was a huge thing during 2020, like one of the things that we saw where there were so many just weird conspiracy theories. And then the other thing that happened very quickly was. People became convinced almost immediately that anyone doing anything was was a federal infiltrator. And you've got people, you got crowds turning people over to police. You got people on Twitter, like trying to track down like, who was throwing ball tabs and videos and like one of the people they caught, they turned over to the police, it turned out had been, had been the girlfriend of someone who got killed by the cops. And so, I mean, this stuff has has. This stuff has real world consequences. It has already like sent people to jail. It has. It has this enormous demobilizing effect. I mean, I don't remember people, two people remember that. OK, the the the the two to two big 2020 can spoil, OK? The two big Twitter conspiracies. Were bricks Brexit? Who's dropping off the Brexit protest? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this whole thing that people like, people would see a polishing never seen in a major American to instruct right next to it, right next to a construction site. They'll be like, how are all these pallets of bricks showing up this like a construction site a block away? You're like, OK. Who's distributing the fireworks? How do these fireworks get here? Never mind. It's June 29th. History of like like the FBI. Some people will mistakenly like, throw the CIA in there. The CIA doesn't really tend to do like the domestic ******* they're international *******. But like if you look at the history of the FBI ******* with left wing social movements, it's not by handing out brick pallets. Yeah, but that's not what they do. We have a lot of documentation about what they do, and it's not bricks. And if there is some secret group who's maliciously giving out bricks so people attack, throw them through windows or throw them at cop cars. Who cares? Yeah. Like bricks are getting three cop cars. It doesn't matter where they come from. Like, the like, people are still choosing to do action. Yeah. The best example of this is, is that the Russian Revolution in 1905, the Russian Revolution of 1905, was started by a guy who was a police agent. Like, his whole thing is he was, he was, he was working to create like, like unions that could be controlled by the state. And he marched a bunch of people into a square and the police shot them. And that's how. And that's that's literally how the Russian Revolution started. Like. It doesn't. It doesn't it like, there's a there's a point, OK there, like there's two layers of this. One is that like they're they're almost is never a conspiracy going on. In two, if the conspiracy is we want to push people towards doing things, it almost it doesn't. There's a point at which it stops mattering because a lot, a lot of people forget about Occam's razor. We're talking about these types of things, usually. The the more simple the answer, the more likely it is. The more the less involved parties, the more likely the the more likely it is. So if there's a choice between rad people ******* up an anti choice headquarters versus a government conspiracy to do false flag operations to make the anti Christ, to make the the abortion movement look bad like one of those is much more simple and much more likely. And it's people just deciding to do stuff because guess what, you can actually do that. You don't need to. Yeah. All these these weird narratives to, to like to justify your uncomfortableness at, at, like at forms of radical direct action. Because it's it's if people use that false flag idea so they don't need to actually engage with what direct action will mean. And if it is someone's moral imperative to physically attack, like, physical manifestations of these sources of oppression, yeah, I think you're right on the money there. I think one of the things that's most frustrating to me about this is it. It kind of suggests that a sizable. Bunch of people who are ostensibly consider themselves on the left are like focusing their time not on doing anything and not on taking any action to materially change the conditions they're angry at, but are instead looking for reasons to disavow other folks on the left. And that that's like the primary, which is, if you again, if you like, look, look at what we know Herbert Herbert Herbert Hoover was saying about the FBI's COINTELPRO program was the goal of COINTELPRO, right? That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm just like. I feel like this promotes, I don't know, a morality like race or like just like competition where. The only thing it does is just promote infighting when you have this like you're on your morality horse. But. I think if you actually support. Real change you have to come to terms with, like you have to do illegal things and like holding on to like these made-up laws that someone made-up about, like how to achieve change is useless and there's. I mean, like dividing up a side that's supposed to be going for the same thing, like, that's exactly. Yeah. It's just it's missing the point and people don't really, yeah. If you look at the right, you've got all these folks who were, like, legal and and whatnot. Proponents of of ending reproductive health care access. And then you have the folks who are doing repeated acts of terrorism and the folks who were on the legal side of things didn't disavow those people. They were often affiliated with churches that did **** like auction off the possessions of, like, extremists who had murdered doctors and **** like they were like, even the most they would do is just not directly talk about those people. They didn't disavow them. They didn't like attack it because they understood. That a diversity of tactics was going to be how they achieved their goals. That it was a mix of pushing for these legal changes and carrying out so many terroristic attacks that it frightened people away from supporting abortion service providers and other kind of reproductive health care service providers. Difference between the right and the left, though, like Democrats, like Republicans are really good at. Uniting on this big picture, and I feel like Democrats are not. I feel like they just. I don't know. It's too there's too much infighting, and that's why it's always fractured. Part of it is that on the Republican side you have Republicans and you have the far right who are also Republicans. And even though a lot of folks on the far right ***** about the centrists, and they're like the folks who are closer to the center, they all get in line for really radical stuff, like the center of the Republican Party always yields to the radicals, whereas Democrats do not acknowledge leftists. As having anything to do with with the Democratic Party or democratic politics other than the yell at them when they don't vote. And on the other hand of things, there's a lot of folks on the left who hate liberals more than they hate fascists, you know? It's it's I think one of those is a bigger problem than the other. I think the the failure of the democratic establishment to like deal with the left at all or make any kind of progress that could be seen as as actually left wing actually be a much part of the problem. But I think, I think there's, there's there, there. I think there are structural reasons for that too, which is OK if if you look at like what is the basis of conservative alliance, right, if you're a conservative. You know, OK, if if you're from the sort of like moderate business wing of the party, if you're from the fascist wing of the party, right, you can have one judge who gives both of you the things that you want, right? Because if you're, if you're like the Koch brothers, the thing that you want is deregulation, right? You want to be able to just, like, dump poison into the environment. If you're on, if you're on, if you're an evangelical, the thing that you want is, you know, to no one can ever have an abortion again. And you know, if you, if you're like a fascist, I don't know if you want, like, we don't give food to immigrant children anymore, so they starve to death and one judge can give you all of those same things because the, the, the, the, the sort of the. The class and social issues of the Republican base can all be fused together without harming each other. But the problem with this, with the Democratic Party, is that like the Democratic Party's basis is like. What's left of the union movement, but then also like a bunch of corporations and banks and like weapons manufacturers and stuff, but then also like a bunch of angry students and also like a bunch of people from different minority groups. And all of these people, like, have different interests. And, you know, in the Democratic Party, ultimately, like the thing, the thing that they care about is keeping capitalism going and, you know, if they have to like. If, if if if that means that, yeah. I mean, well, OK, if you if you think you want to capitalism going like, of course you're gonna throw your left wing out to the wolves, right? Like it. It makes sense for them to do this because the part of their base that actually matters isn't like the labor movement. It's. Like, it's Goldman Sachs. I I think one of the other things that that causes people to have this, like, immediately, anytime someone does, someone does. Like if people remember, like when when Nancy Pelosi's driveway got graffitied, Oh yeah, yeah, like now, see that was like, that's never, never. That's horrible. Don't graffiti. Nancy Pelosi's driveway. That's evil. Yeah, like it's an ISIS. You did an ISIS there. Yeah, everyone lost their mind and was like, oh, this is obviously a false flag and it's like, what? You know? But the reason they do this is because they have, they have like, Democrat optics brain or like I said, if anything, being about politics every everything is just about optics and optics. How does it look? How does look? How does it look and like the only people who care about this are like weird pundits. But because because everyone sort of absorbed in like, the Twitter media sphere, like, they they think that, like, the actual general public cares about the things that pundits care about because the only thing they're seeing is pundits writing angry articles. Like nobody cared like 0 people, especially the graffiti thing because man yeah. People like dissect how someone sprayed an anarchist. A yeah. And it's like, if you're not aware like a big chunk of the discourse RE it being a false flag or whatever, was that the they spray painted? Yeah. Which that they they did they did like a they did like the anarchy a inside the inside the circle. And it's wild. Because we spray painting what they said, like, if abortions aren't safe, then you are either. In cursive is a genius move. It's great because if you spray painted in some like, random punk font, that's easy to be ignored. Like, oh, it's just people doing like, whatever. You get people saying stuff, but doing it, like, methodically in cursive is is a is actually a really good choice because you're like, oh, it's like we're dealing with adults. It's like, like the type of things that people will go through their minds when they look at it is great and it's just a weird. Dial to assume that no one who takes radical direct action would ever write in cursive is just it's like the most the most brain worms thing. And it's also like, it's also very clear, like, like, OK, so I am very bad at spray painting, right? But like I have, I have used a spray paint can and allegedly used a spray paint. Well, this isn't. I was, I was, I was making, I was making banners for stuff. So this wasn't even like this wasn't even crying. But this is just like regular spray painting. It's like, that is hard. Like writing that in cursive and having it look that nice with the spray paint can is like difficult. Which you know, if if if you think about this about 5 seconds. This makes it more likely that it's actually left is doing this because it's like, what? OK, hold on. So the anti abortion people have one person who's really, really good at graffiti. And this train them that they've decided, yeah, they they they sent him to the anarchist school in secret to like learn. It's like it's nonsense but it's like people people just people want everything to sort of like like and I think this is the other angle of this is that people think that like. Have this wild over assessment of the capacity of the state. Yeah, and they think that anytime something looks slightly weird, it's like, oh, it must be the state. Like, like one of the one of the things that happened with the Brooklyn shooting too was like. You had all these people that there was a tweet going around that was like, oh what the the cameras just happened. All, all the cameras. All the cameras in New York were working except the exact one that would have caught the shooter. And this is like, everyone circled around this and everyone was like, Oh my God, this is a false flag. And then no, it turned out that, like, the guy had literally called the police, but the police were so incompetent that, like, other people, like, saw him on the street and got to him before like the cops did. And and the the camera, it turned out, wasn't even like the camera that was out wasn't even the camera that like, like, they had him on camera. It was a different camera, but it was like everyone. Everyone just immediately has this, like, conspiracy brain thing where they see, like, one thing out of context that looks slightly weird and they go, Oh my God, this whole thing is, is, is a state like CA like, yeah, it's so depressing. It's so depressing because it's such, it's so depowering you're specific, you're like it. It ties into the learned helplessness thing that Robert mentioned. Like, you're convincing yourself that we don't have power to change things, that we cannot take any physical action to change things, and that's. Not great mentality to have if you want to improve the world or if you want to. If you want to destroy the things that have you, you do. You don't want to fall into that to that specific. Like I don't have any power mindset because you turns out you can do stuff. It things happened, you can people through them all off and broke windows into graffiti, shall we say. Cool people sometimes do cool things. Like the podcast do people stuff? Yes. Gonna plug the show. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. One of the things that's interesting to me, and it it it might hold some lessons for folks thinking about radical direct action and and what gets attention and what doesn't. So obviously this attack has garnered a lot of national attention, right? The fact that, and I think it's because there was both an attack and a message, there was another attack. And it's not 100% that this had anything to do with the, uh, pro-choice movement, but I suspect it does. The Attorney General of Virginia, Jason Miyares, on the 10th of May, there was a someone shot into his office like a bullet was found in the office. It was probably fired when no one was there. We don't really know more than that. It is unclear as to whether or not this is involved with things, but three days before the shot was fired into his. Office he had basically Catholic groups had been planning big masses to celebrate the leaked draft opinion, and protesters had been organizing to protest the Catholic masses. And he had threatened to charge people who protested masses because he believes the right to freedom of religion Trump's the right of free speech. So it's kind of like a ****** ** situation. People got angry at Miyares. And it seems kind of noteworthy that someone shot into his office three days after this. And also, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff. I mean, like on on May 8th, there was an attack on the Oregon right to life building. Yes. Yes. There was certainly appropriate pro-choice. Yeah. Yeah, there was there, there was, there was at least two moltov cocktails thrown and there was a break in inside. So it's like. You could do things you don't have no power like you physical you can interact with the politics in a physical way. People do interact with politics in a physical way. And people have this assumption that like this is going to be incredibly unpopular. And again, I want to point out burning the Third precinct had a higher approval rating than both presidential candidates. Like, which I mean I I again tend to advocate in 2024 we should elect the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis as President. Look, every look the, the, the, the, the, the way that works is the burning of the precinct takes office. And then every day you burn another precinct so that. So that you can actually have a president. Well, that is how you fill the cabinet there. Needs to. Yeah. Yeah, you have to. Well, yeah. All, all the, all the staff positions filled with the health and the Health and Human Services Secretary will be the West Los Angeles police station and so forth. Yes, I'm really excited to see which one gets picked for the housing secretary. I. I'm just on my on on my tails just yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting. Democracy can be really quite fun. Electoralism has some, has some really cool, really cool points. Yeah. Hey, you, you two could go in front of the National Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Board is just seven. It's just seven on fire police station. Yeah. Chard, really wind. So yeah, we just, we just want. We wanted to at least talk about this because if whenever a cool thing happens and a large swath of of of people who are ostensibly leftists or even or even anarchists defaults to calling anything cool a false flag or an op, it's like, well. Like, what do you want? Like, do you want people just to stay at home all the time and not do anything? Like, what's what's the end goal here? We're calling everything that happens enough. Yeah. And and also just like, if you're going to, if you're worried about OPS and thinking of suggesting that something might be, what is your line? Is it just that people broke a law? Are you saying that if people do illegal things, that's always like a government opt? Because that doesn't seem like illegal yourself an anarchist? So where does it seem like a good strategy? Yeah. Especially when it comes to reproductive rights. Like, you're gonna have to do illegal things if people are gonna have to break should exactly. Shereen. Yeah. Pick and choose. Yeah. Yeah. I'm. I'm 100% convinced that, like, all of these people, if they'd seen John Brown, would have been completely convinced that John Brown. Ohh, John Brown was for sure the FBI. He founded it. The original app. John Brown. I think that there's an aspect there of also, like. OK if if if you're on Twitter, right mostly or not doing politics and the the the thing that you're actually doing on Twitter is trying to feel smarter than everyone else. And if you're the person that's like, oh hey look all these sheeple believe that this thing wasn't an op or like oh I've I've all these contrarian yeah it's like it's like OK you you very quickly like spiral into just like every all all the all the sheeple who are smart person finds this suspicious. Like yeah it's like it's. It's just a bad like. Looking at an element of events and going oh, this is weird, but in a way that is. Ohh. Huh? Isn't this weird? It must be the government. Like, that's that's just a bad way of thinking. Like in in the mere hours in the mere minutes after anonymous people broke into the Portland Police Association headquarters. Back in I think, was July of 2020. Just in mere hours. People were calling it a false flag that the police were dressed up as black block, breaking into the feds. As they said that people had started protesting the feds, yes, they alleged that this was like I guess the FBI or Homeland Security trying to get protesters angry at the cops again. Which is, I mean for one thing, if that actually winning strategy happened, that's great. If if there were to be a point where the left wing had the FBI fighting or the FBI or Homeland Security whatever, fighting with local police over who was getting protested, that's a win. That's a that's a win. Solid capital dub for the people. The team, like the FBI, is the block. Breaking into the police union building and trying to light it on fire. You're like, well, doing, doing less physical, let's be honest, doing less damage to that police union building that I have seen my friends do when attempting to deep fry French fries. Like I have watched people do more damage to their living rooms than that protest did to the PC because like there was so many people at that action and so many, so many people using the moment to to actually gain like physical political power for. A brief, a brief moment and to take that away from them is just a is a bizarre impulse. And I I would like to see it end. Especially as we're going to see, hopefully see that people will realize that that that direct action is going to become more and more important for securing your personal rights and securing your personal freedom. And also I would say these people, OK, if you want to be completely sure that something is happening, it's not an option, do it yourself. Stop yelling about it on Twitter. Look, do it yourself. Then you'll know it's not an option as a general rule. As a general rule, look at France. What did the French do whenever something they consider a right gets taken away from them? They burn downtown Paris town. They light banks on fire. They like Paris. Everyone who has gets elected to a position of power in France knows that if they cross certain lines, the capital will be ungovernable. And there is a reason why French people have. Much quality healthcare. Well with with with that no I mean I can't believe we're ending on the note be be like the French I just is that is the French have made a lot of good calls a lot of bad ones too. Not trying to whitewash France but there's a there's a number of things they got spot on. So and anyway we will we will be counting down the days until that 30 day marker and who knows maybe other attacks will happen with people also calling themselves Chang's revenge because obviously this is something that we as journalists. With no opinion on one way or the other, we're just reporting. Just pure reporting. Anyway, listen to listen to people who did cool stuff to to to hear about the Jane Collective, and maybe also recreationally read about what different civilian groups are doing in Ukraine and the degree to which a wide variety of incredibly available tools can can be repurposed in neat ways. All right, I think, I think that I think that's the code. That's a good sode sode. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager. Risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. Your miraval mate courage already runs in your blood. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Please, please help us has blood on his hands. From executive producers Dania Ramirez and Eva Longoria. That's me comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Tura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Hey, everybody, welcome to it could happen here, and it continues to happen here. I'm Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart and what to do after that happens, and we are all currently dealing with the falling apart of several decades of progress on reproductive justice, the Supreme Court leaking that. They are coming for Roe V Wade, and yeah, today I'm here with Christopher Wong and Shereen Lani. Eunice and my producer Sophie. We have two guests from the Bridget Alliance and the Midwest Access Coalition. We're going to talk more about what they do in a second. Broadly speaking, both seek to. Attach people who are looking for reproductive healthcare and abortion access but cannot get it easily in their area with clinics and the things that they need in order to get to the clinics, including transit and, you know, time and hotels whatnot, in order to make it easier to get access to that kind of healthcare in places like the Midwest where folks have been spending decades making it much more difficult even prior to this recent ruling to get that kind of healthcare. So I'm going to let our guests introduce themselves. You've got the floor. Well, hi, I am Odell Shelly. I am the executive director at the bridge at Alliance and I'm going to introduce my counterpart here. I'm Diana Parker kosta. I'm the executive director of the Midwest Access Coalition. And yeah, so y'all have been in some ways kind of dealing with elements of the post Roe world because obviously like you know, we're all focused on the Supreme Court decision that's in the pipeline, but anti choice activists have been working very hard to essentially create a post Roe world in chunks of the United States. Prior to this point. So you all have been kind of dealing with the reality that a larger number of people are going to be living under for a while, right? Yeah, yeah. Missouri has been able to effectively ban abortion in that state for years now. I think there's maybe a handful of abortions that the one clinic there are able to do because of all of the trap laws, Umm, which is the targeted restrictions for abortion providers and the waiting periods. So people have to go to another state, Kansas, Iowa or Illinois or Missouri, and we've been helping those folks for years. And I'm going to guess this. I mean, just because you've been living in with this for a while, I'm going to guess the announcement last week did not come as a total surprise. The timing of it certainly did, which for Diana and I came at the heels of a conference that we were at thankfully together, which is was kind of just pure luck for us. So we could actually commiserate together. But no, ultimately this is not a huge surprise. I mean I think we're all still waiting to see what actually happens in June, but the writing has been on the wall for months and years, if not longer and you know as you were. Just pointing it out essentially for organizations like the Bridge Alliance and the Midwest Access Coalition, we have been existing already because the protections of Roe are insufficient to actually secure abortion access for all in this country. So this has been our lived experience and preparing for this moment has it has been a long time coming and I'm sure there have been a number of conversations that have been going on about what to do and how to prepare for this. Because the primary change is going to be, at least initially, until some they make some sort of federal push that states that have some sort of functional access to abortion are going to be flooded with an even higher number of people in need of care. Could you kind of walk us through what sort of steps have been taken to in order to kind of brace for that impact, so to speak? I think a couple of things. And and the first to sort of pull back on that for a second is to say that part of preparing for what's to come has been our orgs and the Community that we exist in this, this incredible expansive landscape of different types of organizations that have existed for decades to secure abortion access, where the laws were insufficient, where people were faced with barriers like income and equity and geographic inequity. And the unavailability of providers. This network though has existed largely unseen and so a lot of preparing for what is to come is really embracing our existence, feeling affirmed in that and in our value, not shying away from the expertise within this Community which is held both by volunteers as well as staff. And so I think a lot of the last couple of years has been focusing on really trying to harness that expertise and that knowledge and compassion and the fact that. Many of the people who are leading a lot of the efforts in the reproductive justice movement are people who have had abortions themselves, which is a enormous and valuable part of how this movement moves and hopefully will continue to center the people most impacted by the fall of Roe. I think more specifically for Bridget and orgs like Mac, preparation means deepening our relationships with the clinics that we work with. They are critical, of course, and their sanity is critical to abortion. Access is making sure that we have the sufficient funding to continue to staff train that volunteers systematically and mindfully and ideally do so in a sustainable way, so that we're not all overwhelming ourselves with the sudden surge of need and the sudden surge of impact. And then, you know, for Diana and I, even personally, it means deepening the relationships that us practical support organizations have with one another, because no one organization is going to be able to help every single abortion seeker who will need to travel. It will rely upon really strong and transparent collaboration. So those are some of the things that we've been focusing on. One of the things that strikes me as a problem that's going to be, if not immediate, then then pretty imminent for you all is. We've already seen threats and promises from legislators in some states to attempt to criminalize leaving a state where abortion is illegal in order to get access to healthcare. How? What what kind of preparation is even possible for that sort of world? Because it does seem like we're staring down the barrel of that. Yeah, I think the only preparation we can have right now is to expect that the courts will allow them to do that. They're very creative now that they've seen SBH go into effect and. Hold on as the law of the land, even though it's in direct violation of federal law. SCOTUS the highest coda court of our country is the one that has been allowing that to happen. And so that sends a huge message to all these four Spurs legislators that, you know, bring us your worst take on the law. We will find a way to let you keep it where we're working with you on this and you just need to get bolder and bolder. And see what you can get away with. So we can't really predict how they're going to do that. Although Missouri has indicated that they're going to consider an egg as soon as it's fertilized. A resident and a resident of the state that they have, you know, responsibility for protecting, completely ignoring the fact that it's growing inside a complete human being that has rights. But that's that's. The latest that I've heard of them figuring out how to restrict someone's someone's travel. But it would require a significant shift in how we understand constitutional law and. Basis for our legal system. Yeah, and that that seems like something that. I don't know, like really genuinely seems to be on the table in this moment. I mean we have, I think it's Louisiana who's trying to like part, part, part of their bill is that they. Like, literally it says that they can disobey the federal government. Which? We had a civil war about that. We had, we had a nullification crisis about that we like. So yeah, I guess I'm wondering what your impression is on. Like, how far this can go? Like, do do we get to the point where states can just, like, tell the federal government? No. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what the architect of the estate law essentially told the court is that they don't have jurisdiction and all the laws that they have passed in the 1800s are actually enforceable and the federal government has no authority to stop them and. They're the 5th district, and SCOTUS has indicated that maybe you are right. Maybe that is the correct way to interpret our Constitution. So I I feel like. All of that, all of. Are decades centuries of? Figuring out what the law means for this country is just up in the air, and we may be looking at laws now that are just more and more buzar as long as. You know, the GOP and the right have control over so many bodies of our government. You it really is. I can't even fathom. I don't think we can predict what's going to come, honestly. Umm. I mean, I'm also wondering. To put it crudely, will legislators in states that are currently committing, because we have seen a number of States, California kind of leading the pack, committing to maintain access to, to, to abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare that are being threatened right now. Do do you like, do you feel like you have a good chance that they are going to back you, especially in the event of you know laws that would potentially open people like you up to criminal charges? Just for trying to support people in getting, you know, reproductive health care outside of their state. Is your question. Do we think that elected officials that are pro-choice are going to back us? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you like, it's entirely possible that we're going to see some sort of federal law that not just criminalizes abortion or even, like prior to that criminalizes aiding people in seeking abortion outside of states that have banned it? Right? Like that's all on the table. How does that change the landscape for you? Do you suspect that, like, in kind of a similar way to how some of these, some of the legislators and states trying to ban abortion? But like, we're just going to ignore federal law if it contradicts our state law. Do you think that, Umm, do you think that pro-choice legislators in states, you know, like California are going to be willing to go to the mat and protect you? Or are are we? I mean, yeah, I guess, I, I know this is kind of an unknown, but I'm kind of these must be conversations that y'all are having, right? I mean, I really freaking hope that they are. And if they're listening, please, please prepare to do so. And it's been really heartening to see states like California and Oregon and Illinois and New York and Connecticut, for instance, come up with really clear language around their support of not just choice, which was the language of the past, but abortion, and are saying that and are starting to invest in things like. Abortion funding and travel to themselves, actually, you know, put forth their own efforts to contribute to the people who will need to travel into their States and and, you know, Diana was just speaking the other day with a bunch of elected officials in Chicago. So I I think, I think this is also why what I was talking about earlier in terms of orgs like ours coming, coming into the light is so important, is that we, we're going to need those relationships with those politicians. We're going to need them to know us and see us and understand that we're a critical part. Of how we're going to serve their constituents and that, yeah, we're going to need them to back us. Will they? I can't say definitively, but I really freaking hope so. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully those, you know, as I said just now, I was. In a press conference yesterday, the city, the mayor's office announced this fund to support abortion procedure funding and practical support. And my hope is with municipalities we'll talk to each other and give each other the models for doing this protective, preemptive support for people traveling to our state for abortion care. And yeah, I'm in with talks with the ACLU in Illinois to talk about. Potential bills that are floating around to even further protect abortion in this state. Specifically, I know of one that wants to explicitly protect providers from being extradited or sued or shut down by prosecutors and other states that want to claim that they have jurisdiction because, like they, like I said, they figured out a way to give residency status to fertilize eggs or something, you know? It's taken over that. Just completely ****** that. That's kind of what we're staring at, right? Like that that's that's the thing that you have to be concerned with is like. Out of state law enforcement, I don't know, like, and that's the thing, no one knows what it's going to look like, right. Like, we know that they have a vested kind of interest already in in doing parts of this through bounties, which is kind of like the thing that I'm worried about. Are we going to see like out of state law enforcement, bounty hunting, people trying to put folks up with reproductive health care? And I guess that's just kind of an unknown at this point, but it's. Right. And it it really depends on like our local protected state jurisdic like how far are they going to? Go to protect us from those entities that are going to try to come in for us. Just this. Just today one of our staff members tweeted about practical support funds and who to support throughout the country that provides the sort of travel logistics help for people and they got followed by a Sheriff department in Missouri. Yeah, so they're already, you know, targeting and surveilling. Of abortion seekers and the people who support them. Yeah, and of course I'm sure that there's a degree to which some of these folks are working with, shall we say, like non state actors in order to like. I know they've been prepping with that for a while as well. Italy. What is, I mean one of the things that I, I know because I've been having some conversations with friends of mine who are in like, I guess we could say adjacently adjacent organizations to, to where y'all work and who were at in some cases the Convention you were at who are concerned that. As providing people with reproductive health care becomes illegal, there's going to be a lot of Fair weather, friends kind of revealed. And I I, I am interested, like. Is this a thing that in order to be engaged in providing people with reproductive healthcare, you have to be willing to engage in a legalism at this point? Like, is that really where we are? That's really interesting question. Yeah as as member like AS501C threes, you know looked at by our state governments, our federal governments, we can't engage in anything that's legal but. People have forever on their own dumb things that the state has considered illegal in order to have bodily autonomy. There are people who can't afford it. There are people who are just so far from the nearest clinic that they can't even fathom how to make that trip. They're undocumented folks. There are people near the borders that can't even. Physically move past a border checkpoint because they're just trapped there and can't take care. In other parts of their state where it's available, so there that that will be a thing. I think that is going to increase because the need will not decrease. And I I do not. Like, my organization can't really say anything about that, but, you know, personally, I'm like you do whatever it takes to live your life and thrive. Calls are made-up, especially now. Yeah, that is nice to hear because I, you know, I I try to keep abreast of. The the sides of this fight that are, you know, working through 501 C's and and the like and and engaging electoralism the people who are, you know, doing stuff like trying to figure out ways to. Provide access to like, meso pills and whatnot to people, because that's just where we are. We've talked about the degree to which you guys have already been living in some people's future. You know, just because of the specific nature of what your organizations have been doing and the degree to which, you know, you knew some of this is coming. What has surprised you outside of just like the fact that it got leaked ahead of time about kind of what we've seen in the last week and change? Umm. Hmm. I think I am. I'm not so much surprised by the response from folks. I'm a little. Frustrated that it took. This moment for people to realize what has been happening in this country for the past. Decade, few decades. Honestly, this is this is a very long game for the antis, but ever since Trump was put into office and started just flooding the federal courts with. Very young, very anti conservative judges. And SB-8 was a huge. Flag. But I think. I I was surprised that. There was a mass amount of people that were going to step up when the decision came out. It's it gives me hope. I hope it's sustained for the many, many years we're going to need practical support and abortion funds while we fight for our legal rights. Yeah, so I guess the surprise is a mixed. It's a mixed bag for me. Yeah, I was going to say something similar that I think. I've been pleasantly surprised at how well educated and informed a lot of our supporters and newer supporters are about. As Diana mentioned, the existence of abortion funds and practical support organizations. That practical support is even being talked about is huge. We couldn't get this conversation into the media couple years ago, so like this is really remarkable and important. But what's more, there seems to be also like a deeper understanding of why we have to exist. It it doesn't seem to be shocking people quite as much although there certainly are still tons of people who are shocked by this. But for many they're not shocked that for some abortion has simply been inaccessible and what those reasons are and and you know that's thinks obviously to a lot of the really hard important conversations that have been had over the last couple of years about racial justice. And I think that you know it's a silver lining for sure but I'm I'm grateful to find that the. The depth of the conversations is there now, and hopefully that means that the commitment is going to be sustained and long term, because this is a little bit of deja vu for us in the sense that we've had little moments like these ever since our organizations existed. When a single ban goes into place or is threatened to go into place, this, like swell occurs using my hands a lot, which obviously you can't see if you're listening to me right now, so I'm going to put my hands down. And, you know, and that, and that brings out a lot of really incredible donors and a lot of really incredible offers for volunteers. And and then they tend to go away. And especially when when Biden was, you know, elected, there was definitely this, like, moment where everyone was like, OK, we're cool, right? We're chill. This guy hasn't said the word abortion, but we're still fine and we're not. We're like the furthest from fine. So, yeah, again, like pleasantly surprised that people seem to. Have a sense of why we're here? Yeah, I just wanted to bring up that website, didbidensayabortionyet.org, I think. One of our big no it's just like it's so unfortunately hilarious to me, but I'm just really glad it exists. And then they someone reached out to the someone in the Biden administration to make a comment on this when the when the the draft was leaked and they said well we tweeted it or like whatever it's and it's like it's he said it once in a tweet and like once in like a statement or something. So I just think it's there you go. I don't know what more we want, but like, I just think it's important to what you were saying earlier, how legislators in like Oregon or California, like, it's so important they're saying the word abortion, not just pro-choice. Because I think a lot of people are. A lot of people are scared about that word for some reason, or it sounds scary to them if they're not that educated about what pro-choice means or what abortion means. So I think I have a little bit more hope seeing more people even saying that word. We really have to take a pass. Yeah. Yeah. I think the statistic is something like the antis have been using the word abortion three times as much as we have. And that is why it's so stigmatized and difficult to talk about. And I definitely try to encourage people to say the word abortion, to talk about abortion with everyone they know, just so we can stop hiding, I guess kind of the last thing I'd like to ask. And we can, we can cut this bit if this winds up not. Doing something you want to get into but have you have you felt an additional need to worry about given how public you are in your advocacy personal protection as things kind of have heated up. You know we were we were recently at the the conference that you mentioned before and. It's definitely. With all of my colleagues in one place, it definitely made me feel a little vulnerable for myself in them. But honestly the the the people who are targeted are the providers by far. Not worried about my physical safety. I'm worried about the physical safety of our of our providers and the fact that our government is responding to peaceful protesters outside Kavanaugh's house and. Talking and and asked for, I think, Susan Collins on the sidewalk outside her residence resulted in legislation being passed to protect immediately. They all somehow got together for once in their lives to do something about the terrorist who chalked sidewalks outside legislators homes. Is it's it's really demoralizing because we have our providers have seen violence and. Yeah, they've seen violence almost every day. Murders, acid attacks, bombings. Yeah, Chris, Shereen, do you have anything else you wanted to get into? Yeah, I wanted to ask one thing. So, you know, OK. Seeing this sort of increasing fecklessness of our politicians, even by their standards and. You know, they're their response to this being let's give more power to the US Marshals, which is. Maybe. Great idea. Yeah, worst idea I've ever seen. But what, what can just people do about this in, you know, I mean, we we talked about, like, giving to abortion funds, but like, what? How? How can people get involved and how can people get involved in a way that's sustainable over the long term? Yeah, I mean definitely give to abortion funds, give to practical support organizations like the Midwest Access Coalition and the Bridget Alliance. And if you are interested in volunteering, reach out to your local organization. And there are a couple of really great resources for lists of those organizations and where they are like the national Network of abortion funds. And and you do bear with all of us because we are handling a flurry of emails and that's incredible. But we won't be able to plug you in immediately, and it might even take a little bit of time. But then I think that, you know, voting is still critical, especially in local, in any local elections, especially if we're thinking about how we're going to prevent the possible criminalization of abortion seekers and of abortion providers, we need to make sure that we've got the judges and good local elected officials at the very least. So do not stop doing that. Yeah, I think those would be the things that I would say focus on and the thing that I always say, which is just like, talk about it. Like I'm totally that person who is like the downer at the dinner party talking about abortion. But be that person and go and talk about it and share why it's important and how it's not just about abortion and it's not just about women. It's about families. It's about parents, it's about queer folks. It's it's about immigrants, it's about minors. And we've got a lot to be worried about. Right now, so don't stop talking, listening, reading, consuming, whatever you can. Yeah. And just to jump off that, if you are in a safe state, you're not going, you're not going to be safe forever. They're going to come after us. They're going to come after the legislators, the the Supreme courts of those states. They're usually a thin margin as far as conservative versus progressive judges on state Supreme Court. So find out who your local org is that is leading that. Voter turn out to make sure that people are voting for the right judges to go in and also I want to lift up escorts. Escorts are on the ground many days of the week. They will put you to work and they're going to be needed more and more. Yeah. I think that's that's all very important and a good note to to end on. Does anyone else have anything else or are we should we should we let y'all get back to your very important work and thank you again for for making the time for us. Absolutely. Thank you for covering this and talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate it. Happy to do so. We'll be, we'll be continuing to. To do that and I hope you all. Umm. Geez, I don't even know what to say. Like, I I hope you. I hope you **** **** up for the people who are ******* **** up, you know? Very, very bad. Absolutely. Support doesn't, like, dissipate as like, yeah, the trend goes away or whatever. You know, I think that's so disheartening if that happens. And like, hopefully the flood of emails, but not necessarily remains a flood for you. But like, I hope that people are actually serious about doing something. And I think this time they might be just because I keep being surprised about little things. So I'm not going to expect anything anymore. Maybe people were surprised me. Yeah. But I really appreciate the work you do. So thanks for coming out to talk to us. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Football is back, and better GM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter a bonus. Vote champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 188853235. 100. You're miraval matte courage already runs in your blood. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Please, please help us has blood on his hands from executive producers Dania Ramirez and Eva Longoria. That's me comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Toura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Talk to your zoom H6 about crack cocaine abuse. Some amount of crack cocaine is perfectly normal for a recording device you to use. It is part of the recording industry, but everyone can overdo it and if you're zoom H6 starts not reading cards or for example stealing from you in order to upon your stuff to buy more crack cocaine, you might need to do an intervention. This has been Robert Evans and a public service. Announcement about the zoom H6 handhold recorder. How's that? Are we good? Yeah. Is that a good way to introduce a podcast? What? What podcast depends on your answer. That's a great question, Sophie. Scholars have debated for decades which show this as. But personally, it is the opinion of myself and a large body of researchers at Oxford and Cambridge that this is it could happen. Here a podcast about how things are falling apart and how maybe put them back together one of these days. Figure it out. I'm here with Garrison and Chris. How are you guys? How are you all doing? Just just absolutely splendid. I I'm extremely excited that every time I leave Twitter there's a new mass shooting. There's there was like, boy this has been past weekend. It's there have been quite a few mass shootings in the last 48 hours and there's a non zero chance there's been at least one between when we record this podcast and when you listen to it. I'm not trying to be flippant. That's just a reality. So I think we're going to talk about the two most recent ones, one of which was the mass shooting in Buffalo, NY by a 4 Chan ************* white supremacist, very much patterned after the 2019 8 Chan shootings, particularly the Christchurch massacre and then the day after. I guess it's not technically a mass shooting because only one person was killed, thankfully, but there was a shooting that was certainly an attempt to be a mass shooting because he attempted to close the exit and stop people from leaving. At a a Taiwanese church in Southern California, which was stopped by the congregation before nearly as many people could get killed. And it appears to be it's just come out motivated by nationalist hatred of Taiwan by a Chinese man. That's it. Brought understanding of both. It's complicated. Yeah. I'm sure we'll get into that. But we should probably deal with them chronologically. UM, the Buffalo shooting is. It's one of those things I made a big chunk of my bones as a journalist in the field that I used to spend most of my time reporting and covering the 8 Chan shootings, and after every one of those in 2019, I had an article within about 2 hours. I haven't written anything about this one. I don't plan to because there's not much to say. It is what we've seen before. I know there's some debate over how much of the man as there should be over, like how much of the manifesto you can take at face value, which is none of it, and as to whether or not there might be. Something more going on here, but it is kind of my opinion from the information we have that this is the kind of attack we've seen before and the kind of attack we will probably see again more than once before the years over. You know, this is someone who was radicalized primarily against the immigration or the existence really of people who are not white in the United States and believes that the best way to cleanse the country of people who are not white is to. Carry out mass shootings that will radicalize other people and that will lead further to the breakdown of civil society in the United States by pushing it kind of like hot button issues like gun control in order to further, you know, it's an accelerationist sort of attack. So yeah, that's that's what I'm seeing here. Yep. I mean it's yeah, like like we said, it's very, very much riffing off of the Christchurch, I mean at least over half of his manifesto was like specifically plagiarized manifesto, which of course that manifesto itself was was ripped from a lot of other manifestos. It's kind of just just a series of like launching memetic language from one shooting to another, just kind of compiling into this massive conglomerate that's all based on trying to. Convince more people to do the same act. That's really, yeah. That's that's why when people are like talking about this and people try to limit the attention on the manifesto and that kind of stuff, because it's all crafted specifically to get other people to do the exact same thing. It's filled with themes filled, filled filled with in jokes, full of like in Group out group stuff to convince people to kind of go down a similar path. And all of it's carefully crafted that way. The one really interesting thing about this is that there's not only manifesto, but also like almost 700 pages of Diaries. That he posted as well, yeah. And logs from from like over like, like, like from a long, long, long time tracking his inner thoughts. But also like, again, he posted it and he knew he was going to do this. There's no telling how, how accurate that is. Yeah, it's all, it's all in this package that he wants to present to people. So a lot of the nitty gritty here is not even worth talking about in a lot of a lot of cases, and I'm not, I think there's, broadly speaking, things you can learn. And I'm also, to be clear, I'm not against researchers. Study and I think it should be absolutely. I am against just finding a thing in there and like posting it. Like when I when I made my post I was pretty careful to note a couple of things that seemed consistent based on other aspects of the like things that he claimed about his radicalization that seemed consistent with what we were seeing. Like he noted that he was primarily radicalized online. That seems plausible to me because of how ******* online the manifesto is like and it's one of those folks are not entirely wrongfully bringing up the fact that the. The great replacement white genocide sort of conspiracy theory that seems to motivated this fellow is basically identical to ****. Tucker Carlson says that's not not relevant. What radicalized him though, but that's not what radicalized. Yes, this is. This is not a dude who was watching Fox, right? That's something I've been frustrated by looking at the discourse. Cause, yes, obviously Tucker shouldn't be talking about this because he's normalizing this very rhetoric that you find in these manifestos. But he did. He did not find this from Tucker. This is like it's a whole. Whole different ball game. And when there's that conflation, I do find that to be slightly frustrating. Yeah, and some of the problem with discussing this is the problem with discussing. Basically any of these attacks is that the mass media coverage of it is nearly always going to flatten it to a degree that works in the favor of the people who are using this as propaganda of the deed. Yeah and we can talk about maybe are there ways to detern that, you know, I've I've definitely that's something that I've spent a decent amount of my career kind of struggling with. It's it's a tough thing to do because. One of the things that's very frustrating that we've we've seen in the wake of this attack and that we see in the wake of basically every politically motivated attack is. A whole bunch of people from a whole different bunch of belief systems insides immediately trying to spin it in order to push the narrative they think is useful for the attack to have. And some of them believe legitimately what they're saying with the. I think most of the people who are like this is you know, Tucker Carlson's doing are generally just folks who have not spent as much time in the fever swamps as we have and see oh, Tucker Carlson's talking about this guy carried out a shooting. They must be related, right? I don't think that's like that's wrong, but I don't think that's malicious. And then you get folks who are. Malicious with it, right. Like you have liaison Battalion stuff is the the folk. Yeah, right. One of the one of the narratives we've seen form, particularly from what I like to call the ******** left, is folks being like, well, there was a sauna in rod the black sun. It's a Nazi occulti symbol. People who are more nerds about Nazis were equipped that. But that's that's the broad strokes of what it is, and it's it's a symbol that's definitely on some Azov gear. It's also on a has been on a bunch of **** well before there was an assault battalion since the 30s, since the 40s. It's all over the ******* place. And the reason he did it, the reason he had a black son on some **** was not because of the Azov battalion it. In fact, he talked about wanting to break up NATO a bunch, but it was because the sanrad was on the chest of the plate carrier of the Christchurch shooter. Yes, yeah, but there's always a big fan of the Christchurch shooter. There's all of these people who are like, yeah, authoritarian left or whatever, who are being like, oh, how can Americans condemn this attack? When this guy is, is, is using Azoff imagery. And there, there's no telling how genuine they are with this. Like, there's there's no telling if they actually know what they're doing or if they're just or if they're just being like if they're purposely misinformed or what's going on. It's like, it doesn't. It doesn't matter. But yeah. My my. Assumption with those folks is that they are doing it because if you are a competent paid propagandist, you want to always be pushing the narrative in a way that furthers whatever it is your job to push. And if your job is connecting Ukraine to every bad thing that happens in a mass shooting, that has nothing to ******* do with with Ukraine or the Ukrainian government. If you can connect it back to them, then you're back in your wheelhouse, right? Because maybe you're not so strong talking about the fact that you and some of the people around you have been friendly with ******* Tucker Carlson and he pushes a similar narrative to the one that's mass shooter used. Maybe that's uncomfortable. What is comfortable is saying, no, this guy who did this bad thing is tied to these other bad people who are tied to this group that my entire career is about attacking. That's a much stronger position to be in. You know, if you're, you know, a propagandist, it's just like you see folks. On the right, who don't want to grapple with the fact that this was a right winger who carried out a terrorist attack based on an ideology that even ****** ******* Ben Shapiro has pushed elements of. You don't want to deal with that. So you call him a leftist because we saw the same thing with Christchurch. He. Yeah, he made a couple of vague. He's not a leftist. He repeatedly identified himself as right wing and as a fascist, as a Nazi, as an ethno nationalist. But he made like a couple of vague comments that they're taking out of context and being like, see, he was on the left. Wanted to happen. That is like what she wanted to happen. That's why he put it in there, right? It it's it is like it is all part of the bit. It's all this. It's it's it's it's all of this. Like, I like irony. Poisoned thing that they do on purpose to give anyone a propaganda out or give anyone a propaganda in. It's all. Yeah. If you'll remember before, it's not it's not new, but it's frustrating. In the Christchurch Manifesto, Tarrant said that he'd been radicalized by Candace Owens, who's like a person who says a bunch of ****. He ****** ** stuff I don't like. So once, but like had nothing to do with that guy's radicalization, right? Like, that's not, that's not where he's ******* coming from, but he did it because he wanted to, because it's ******* it's shitposting, you know, it's to muddy the water. It's to get people like it's to, it's to reduce the ability of people trying to grapple with what has happened, to accurately see what has happened and accurately identify the problem and respond to it big a big motive for this stuff is to cause this kind of social and discourse chaos, right, that they want. People, they want everyone to be confused and they want everyone to be fighting each other and and distance agreeing on basic terms, right. The whole point of this is to like encourage gun control legislation, which will get the right match, cause people to be more willing to do mass shootings or to do attacks against government, right. It's all part of the very basic accelerationist like talking points and and tactics. So the confusion is not accidental. It's all, it's all if you. I think a good way to look at this. Who, like fighter planes and helicopters in a combat zone, will have a type of countermeasure. They will launch if someone shooting a missile that's like a tracking missile, heat seeking or whatever at them. It's called chaff, and it basically it looks to the missile the same as a helicopter does. So you shoot a bunch of these out and the missile goes and hits something that's not the ******* helicopter, but to its sensors looks like a helicopter. That's what they're doing. They're shooting out shaft. They're getting you to like box with shadows rather than potentially. Landing a blow against like the central problem and the central problem is. And not an easy one to grapple with without all that stuff around it, right? Because the the issue here is. How? The way in which the Internet enables radicalization. The way in which online communities are prone to radicalization. The way in which the conservative media and aspects of like just basic American history play into this. Specific people who want to do violence in this way for this reason. Which is why the cops don't notice them even when they're on their radar. Which is why that, like the the warning signs don't get spotted. And the ways in which. I think more than anything, the ways in which the Internet has created a perfect incubation chamber for radical violence, and that is one of the stories here, right? You know, people are focusing on gun control, which this guy bought his gun in the state of New York, which has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. What's more relevant, even if you're on that end, is this guy was deeply involved in, like, tactical Reddit. This guy was heavily involved in in tactical videos and training videos and talking with other people about the best weapons, the best ways to use them, and if you watch the I don't watch the video. But he was competent. He engaged competently, he did. He maximized his ability to do damage. He took out somebody with a gun who was attempting to stop him. That ****. The stuff. That he did to prepare tactically worked and the kind of tactical chunks of of of Reddit, of the Internet, which are not all right wing, but a hell of a lot of them are and a hell of a lot of them have gotten a very scary directions in the last couple of years. Not only do I suspect contributed to his radicalization, but I can say certainly contributed to his ability to effectively kill people. Yeah, I mean he had like over 5 pages just on what helmet he picked out. He had pages on what socks he was wearing, which is not which is. For multiple reasons. It's one, to make the actual act more effective. It's two, to inspire not like discourse like this, but also to to get people to replicate what he did, right. It's crafting all of these symbols that people can replicate. Be like, oh, he picked out these socks. That means I'm gonna get these socks, I'm going to get these socks. It's all this branding thing we should take, we should take a break. And then I want to come back and talk about some memetic language stuff. You know who else can give you good advice on socks? They bought. All right, here's adds, OK, I want to talk about some memetic language stuff because this was all heavily riffing on and I I specifically used the term riffing off of the Christchurch shooting, which itself was ripping off other stuff, right? But he he he went so far. I mean the the Christchurch shooting was a copycat shooting of the Anders Brevik shooting, or at least descendant of whatever term you want to use, but that's what inspired the Christchurch shooting and it's. He was the first for the Buffalo shooting. He was testing out different live streaming platforms. He was doing all the stuff to craft a very specific image and like images are very are very powerful. We've talked about like magic before if we want to get silly about it, but he was very, very much involved in crafting these things that could be replicated visually. That's that's why he wanted to live stream it so bad. It's just the same way the same way of Christchurch was. And this is like really important for why we don't share this type of stuff. Why we why we specifically clamp down on this, on this, on this style of propaganda and why we really encourage people not to share it, not to look at it, not to do that stuff. Because he he does in in the few parts of the manifesto that he did write, he does. He did say, like watching the Christchurch video was very impactful for him, which I don't disagree with. I'm sure. I'm sure it was he. He did change the course of my life. Yeah, he did. And he did great lengths to recreate it. And This is why we the people who are like researchers and people who kind of. Hand try to handle this kind of stuff in like in their time on Earth are so particular about this. Like I think last year like a year and a half ago there was this film company based in New Zealand who wanted to make a Christchurch film and they want they were going to film a recreation of the shooting but they said like, oh but it's to to show the horror and to show the impact it had on the victims. Doesn't ******* matter. It matters zero amount because once you put that language into. The photography. You are giving them basically ammunition to help create propaganda and you'll get more people killed. This is why the same thing we see the same thing on ******* Roblox. We see people recreate the Christchurch shooting on Roblox. There's actually a major problem. Like a year ago specifically, it was a huge problem of people recreating the footage inside this game engine. And it's it's specifically, it's, it's very it's a very powerful tool that they use to spread around. It's targeted specifically people ages 12 to 18. This this guy. Was 18 years old. It's he was heavily involved in online gaming. He was really heavy Reddit user specifically he loved to discord. So it's it's these are the places where it spreads even more so than eight chin now to yeah and I would say we called him like a 4 Chan shooter because number one he definitely was familiar with with poll and number he was on there. He announced his live stream there. I do agree with you. Reddit was a bigger part of his radicalization I suspect and and a lot of and discord probably and I suspect he did. Purposefully minimize the extent to which conversations on discord were part of his radicalization journey in particular. That would be my assumption at the moment, but for countering this type of rhetoric in this type of propaganda, right? Cuz they're trying to make themselves look cool. They're trying to make themselves look tactical. They're trying to look, they're trying to make themselves look like they're in a video game. They make it look like they're in a movie, right? Trying to be cinematic. There he was. He was testing on different cameras. He tested like a GoPro. He just said he tested out his phone camera, right, trying to get this specific look. And we just, we just talked about how he was tactically proficient in some ways, but in handling this type of thing, we have to, when we're crafting counter stuff to make this, to make this thing less likely, we need to not even focus on that. We need to make them look stupid, make them look juvenile, make them look like they're pathetic, make them look like they're stupid and silly, like they're larpers. That's one of the things that saved God knows how many lives at kind of the high point of the 8. And shootings in 2019. Was that ****** in Hall? Germany tried to carry one out and got the **** beat out of him by a dude at a mosque? Yeah, and was photographed the next day in court. Just covered. It's like beat to ****. That image probably saved some lives. They they want to be cool, they want to be memetic, they want to be spread around as a symbol, and we need like culturally needs to. Yes, this is obviously very scary. This is a very real threat for many, for many people, many people of color, many black people, many, many Muslims, people of different religions, Jewish people, poor people. But we need to when when specifically crafting rhetoric and propaganda against these things, we need to make them look pathetic, right? That that's what it needs to be framed as. Because if you make them look scary and competent, that's actually going to make these things worse. Because they they they love that, right? Like as if if you film it the if you do any kind of like movie about the Christchurch shooting, no matter how you shoot it, they're going to love it. If you're shooting people in pain, they they want that. They want that. It's that's the that's what they're looking for. You need to specifically frame this as these people larping and these people being pathetic and people being terminally online. And having bad social skills like you need to, you need to frame it in this way that makes them look not desirable because their whole point is to craft this desirable and visually stunning propaganda. And I think, yeah, that's that. That's I've been thinking about this for the past year or so because there's just been so much. But, like, identifying these people isn't the problem, right. Like this guy he was, he was talked to by by counselors last year because they were afraid he was going to do a school shooting. Like there was a lot of the red flags and stuff and like he was, he was talking, he was talked to by people before this happened. Like he wasn't an unknown factor. He wasn't an unknown of the vector to make to make this, to make, you know, to be this a person that. To do this. But there's there's no way people are very people are good at finding these people before they do it, but we're bad at actually stopping them from doing it. Once we found once we find them, there's there's really no power to stop it. And interrupting any kind of radicalization pipeline is really hard. So it's more about laying the groundwork to make the pipeline look pathetic so it's harder to happen again. But always counting the stuff is. Frustrating, because if there was a good strategy, we wouldn't be here. B, be deeply I I want to move on to the yeah, yeah, it's time to California. But at the at the end of this, to close out, be deeply suspicious, if not outright contemptuous of anyone who posits a simple solution to these shootings. Whether that solution is gun control, whether it's expanded police powers, whether it's ******* arming everybody so that they could shoot shooters. Anyone who proposes a simple solution to this, this is a. Deeply complicated problem because we let a number of horrible, horrible, obvious problems go on for way too long, and the solution to this will be painfully, agonizingly difficult and will take time. And there is there is not a simple, all-encompassing way to deal with this. One of the things that you can do right now to better prepare yourself to potentially deal with this problem is take a stop the bleed course, carry an IFAC and a gunshot wound kit as often as possible. And that continues to be my best immediate advice to people because that there's no downsides to doing that. And it it could and does save lives in other shootings. All right, let's move on. In other news, in other news, the next shooting. Yeah. Hurray, yeah, OK. This is a weird one. And I I think the thing we need to make clear of front is that this happened yesterday. As a child recording still, yeah, time of recording details are still emerging. And. It's weird. There's a lot of potential to do so for people who don't know. A Presbyterian Church in California was attacked by a Chinese guy. This is this is a Taiwanese church. It's mostly senior citizens. And I mean, OK, so there's there's a few important things up front that people probably understand about this. One, is that, OK, so Taiwan, Taiwan is ruled by military dictatorship for like basically the the better part of of the post World War Two, period. It is ruled by a military dictatorship run by the Nationalist Party, the KMT. The KMT is extraordinary in in this. It is extraordinarily violent. They sat, they assassinate people. All over the place they kill people. On American soil, they kill. They trained death squads in Latin America and. You know, they're, they're, they're known for the sort of human anticommunism, but eventually they're sort of. Toppled by revolution isn't quite the right word, but. As you know, the the Cam T as a party is still around today and is one of the two sort of major like Taiwanese political parties. But they're not like the sort of desk, they're not exactly the sort of dust squad mafia party that they were through most of the 20th century. The the sort of the the the sort of progressive forces that worked to overthrow the dictatorship. A lot of them coalesce into a party called the Dude. And one of the things about the GDP is, and there's a lot of sort of complicated how these political stuff here, but they are very, very closely connected to the Presbyterian Church in a lot of ways. And this, I don't know the specifics about this church, but there is there is a very strong connection between and then the the the DPR. OK. Pro independence is putting it too strongly, but if you're a pro independent like you, you want Taiwan to be an independent country and you don't want them to sort of like. Either continue well, OK. This is the problem with Chinese politics. It's enormously convoluted. There's a lot of stuff going on at some at anytime and people are going to get mad at you for the implications are making. But. Yeah, the short version of the story is that. The sort of anti CCP. Pro independence forces are. And the sort of, like progressive movement to sort of lumped into the DDP. And those are the people who are getting shot. Yeah, like, because, yeah, because again, there's a very strong connection between Presbyterian Church and ESP. And the KMT? Who again? I mean, OK, they've had an extremely complicated relationship with the Communist Party over the last 100 years. It's incredibly baffling, but they've basically swung around. Towards being more favorable to China. And there are there are some fact extremist factions of it that are that support unit, like just unification. What seems to have happened here is. OK, so this the the the shooters family seems to have been like deported from China to Taiwan. And he, like, did not like it in Taiwan. And and this is where it starts to get very murky, the police statement we have says that it, you know, it's about sort of racial like it's it's it's and anti Taiwanese animus, but that can mean a lot of things. And yeah, this again, I keep saying it's murky and it's because it's it's genuinely murky. There's a chance that this is one of the things that's been happening since the Hong Kong protests is a solidification in mainland China, sort of anti of anti Taiwanese sentiment as sort of lumped in in this sort of like nationalist anti Hong Kong thing there was. There was a hardening of rhetoric against Taiwan, but also there's a lot of there's a lot of people in Taiwan like like. Especially KMT hardliners and the hard right, who like really, really, really intensely hate. Like the sort of. Like the the sort of progressive anti CCP Pro independence people. Sure. And, you know, and this is something we don't we don't know what his affiliation is. He was like, he was like, it was like his 60s, right. Yeah. Well, and and this is this is, this is, this is weird because there's a lot of things that that could be true about this because of how old he is, like, again, you know, I mean, he he he is around when the KMT is straight up a Death squad party, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it could be that. It could be she's sort of like independently radicalized. There's been some like. Rumors might be too weak of a word, but. There, there there have been some kind of sketchy reporting that, like his ex was leaving for Taiwan and that that may have played a part in it. But, you know, I violence between the KMT and people who don't like the MTA is a. Thing that there wasn't, there was a very large amount of in the US for a lot of reasons and even though the camp is sort of like, I mean there are alignment that China has. Like flipped. In the past, about 40 years. I I don't know. I'm really, really desperately hoping that that's this isn't going to set off. I mean, there's already been a lot of, especially around Hong Kong. There's been a lot of physical violence, like people attack each other at protests about. Between, for example, who spoke, their Hong Kong protests and Chinese like CP nationalists. But. This is something different, very weird, very embedded in the Taiwanese context and I don't think we fully understand. What's going on here? The other thing, again, is like this guy he like, he lived in type one, like he was speaking Taiwanese. Like when when he was actually, like going into this church to infiltrate before he shot everyone. So like, he this isn't like this, this this isn't. And I think people are reporting it like this because they don't know what's going on. But like this this isn't a case of like a guy who is from mainland China who like decided that he hated Taiwanese people like this. He he was there. He like, he speaks, he speaks, he speaks Taiwanese. He like. Understands the Taiwanese political situation very in depth, which presumably is why he targeted this specific church. But. Other than that, it's it's the motives are still kind of murky and this is the other problem with it, which is that like the sheriff's. Like, there's no way that the sheriffs have any idea what they're looking at. Like they apparently reading as personal notes, and it's like, I don't trust their analysis of it. Good Lord, no. Yeah, like these. If you weren't here, we would have to find someone else who understands that conflict in order to talk about it. I don't feel comfortable, like, trying to figure out our analyze that guy's notes. I sure as **** don't trust some ******* sheriff's deputy to do it. Like, yeah, this stuff is like, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. And I think that that's. I don't know. We'll say like this I think was like the worst possible scenario for what what that shooting is about because. This is a kind of, this is a kind of violence that. Was really intense. Like right after World War Two and sort of like. And, you know, there's been periods where, like, yeah, I mean, people have been like, people have gotten killed here, but it hasn't. Been that violent in a long time? And I don't know, I'm hoping this is just one guy who had a particular grievance who I don't know, like. Was was pushed by sort of external factors, but if this is a sign of. Like if if this is a sign of sort of anti Taiwanese like national. Well OK so there's one other thing that that we need to talk about because. That's unclear because there's two kinds of potential like right wing Chinese nationalism at play here, and it's unclear which ones happening because there are, there are people who are right wing Chinese nationalists who are like pro, CCP, right. But there's also a kind of like a kind of like. It it it shifted, but there's also like a like a A KMG nationalist based right wing Chinese nationalism, which favors sort of like reunification with China, but is is not the same thing. As as the sort of mainland nationalism and has its own particular like very local political grudges like with with the GDP and with the sort of like. Progressive E. Movements in Taiwan and. I don't know. Anything beyond that is kind of like trying to figure out which one it is. Like, we just don't know. Unless the police, unless the police actually decide to like, show us this guy's notes or like give us recordings of what he's been saying, we're not going to know. And maybe, maybe by the time this is out, like, there will be more stuff, but right now it's. Very muddled, very bad, the fact that this guy also, I think, was an American citizen. But was born in China. Has gotten every like, even. Even the Chinese media outlets are saying extremely weird stuff because they're confused by it. So. It is a. It is a muddled is a muddled mess. I mean, and everything about this last weekend's been muddled. There's been so many different mass shootings this weekend. There's been people being paranoid about copycat mass shootings. And know of yesterday there was reporting that a gunman entered a church in Buffalo. That was not actually true. It's someone, someone in the church yelled like there's a gunman or or something or like. We're like, get the gun down or something, and it costs people to create this, this kind of rumor, but that there wasn't actually someone with a gun. It was, it was this someone was like reacting to the sermon that was that, that was being had. But yeah, everyone's been super paranoid about every stuff and all this kind of stuff as, as they should be. So sorting through. Sorting through all this stuff is very complicated and not a great time because it's not. It's not fun and we shouldn't have to do it, but. It sucks. I do you think it's also worth noting that the police did not stop. I know. Specifically they did not stop the one in the church. The the the past or passed out. A pastor hit the hit him with a buck with his hair. Yeah. Hit him with their steel chair. Yeah. And then they hog tied him with an extension cord. And then the police came, which is so dope. I'm sorry they were ever in that position. They should never have to be in that position. But it turns out more and more people are having to do stuff themselves because it's not also the first time that a mass shooter has been stopped by someone hitting them with a chair. If I'm not mistaken, that's how the Gifford shooter was stopped. Eventually, or part of how he was stopped as somebody ******* decked him with a chair. It's yeah, it's currently works. Yeah, it's really useful to have something beyond just your limbs. Yeah, if someone is trying to shoot you with a gun, ideally you get away. But if you can't get away, trying to hit them in the face with something heavy is certainly a choice that has saved a number of people's lives. God, what what did absolutely *** **** country. It's not a great time. And when I you know, I I noted earlier anyone trying to sell you like simple solutions and I mentioned gun control on that. Which is not to say that like the outrageously easy how how ridiculously easy it is to get any kind of gun in this country. Obviously that's a factor in these shootings. My, my hesitance to take gun control, as if you'll forgive the term magic bullet to fix any of this is #1. The sheer number of guns that are already propagated #2 the fact that a lot of gun control measures boil down to making it harder for poor people to get guns. And neither of these shootings seem to have been poor people shooting up folks. And just also the fact that while some states are capable of passing additional gun control #1, New York's basically done everything it's constitutional to do RE restricting gun ownership and federally, Biden and their Dems can't protect. Roe V Wade, they're sure as **** not going to pass any federal and the specifically what these people want as well. Like they're specifically doing this to get this stuff started so that it increases political tensions. Whether or not to agree with my fundamental claim, you don't have to you can believe that if gun control were to be passed it could be the solution, but it's not gonna be. And so like as as regards those of us trying to survive, we have to look in other directions because you're not going to get an assault weapons ban. It's just not happening. Yeah, I mean I the one good, I I don't, I don't say good thing. But it has been nice to see people slowly dropping the whole, like, Lone wolf terminology. That is a positive development because these are not fun. Sort of a very it's part of an intentional effort to cause these things to happen. This part the the groups may be decentralized, but they are not loves by any structure. They are, but they are. Yeah, they are decentralized and acephalous, but they are deeply, deeply sophisticated and connected. Just not in a way you can drone strike easily. Well, yeah, and and I think I I would have some target suggestions, Garrison. Anyway, get a knife back, do stop the blue knife back, do stop the bleed. And don't don't feed into their propaganda in the way that they feed into their propaganda. Organize with folks in your neighborhood. This sucks. Yay. OK well kids, adults, boys and girls and individuals of non binary or other gender identities. Cats who happen to be listening in. Airwolf, the helicopter. If you're listening in, everybody. Every sentient creature listening. You know, I do believe that things can get better. So part of that is. Not letting the the crimes that these the things that these people do like part of the purpose of an attack like this is to make people feel hopeless and overwhelmed. It's to black pill you, you know, to to to utilize some of their terminology. So the way to fight against it is among other things, if you're talking about immediate things you can do go out and do something nice to help people. And you know, I would say like. This is sort of like 1 brief last note. Like, yeah, like in Taiwan they overthrew their tater ship and oh hey, it turns out people stop getting assassinated by the KMT in American soil. So you know, over overthrow your governments and you 2 can make peace with your enemies. Yeah. Overthrow your government. Overthrow another government. You know, it's all good. It's all good, baby. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter. Bonus code champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. 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That's me comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Tura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tiktok. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Hello everyone. Welcome to it could happen here. The podcast about things falling apart and sometimes have become put them back together. Today it's me, Garrison, Chris, our producer. Sophie and Andrew joins us once again. I love that guy. Oh, me too. Me too. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Andrew. Talking about whatever he feels like talking about, OK? Today's episode, I am happy to announce that I finally. Finally finished, don't have everything. By congratulating David Wenker. It took it took a while. You know, there were some points in time. Some weeks I just went by where I didn't even, like, make a dent. You know, life got in the way and stuff, but I finally, finally finished it and now I get to talk about it and say, you know, with some authority that I've read don't have everything, you know. Yeah, it's a very dense book, but it was 100% worth it. I mean, there are some critiques that I've been taking into by some authors in the field, and so I highly recommend people look for critiques as well. Not just, you know, taking it on consumer wholesale, but. In addition to those critiques, like, armed with those critiques such as people like what is politics on YouTube? And also a couple of academic writers as well, I think you could get a lot out of the book, and I certainly have. Yeah, this is, this is a this is a very good book and I'm excited to talk about it because I read it like. Oh, it was a while ago now. Like it's like 5 months ago or something. Oh wow. Even talk about it. I've been like, waiting for the chance. I've, I've been, I've been, I've been picking up bits and pieces of it, but unfortunately my book list to get through is way too long at the moment, so I've not been able to actually dive fully into the text itself. But it is definitely on my list after I get through my 20 other books I need to read for my job. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. At least we got to read books for a living or something adjacent to that. Umm. And I mean. It is a difficult book, I would say, to like discuss in its entirety, and I didn't. I don't intend to. Not to read any parade or anything, Chris, but I don't intend to talk about the entire book, you know, because that's like several 100 pages. Yeah, you know, and each chapter covers like so, so much. But I actually wanted to talk about. Chapter 4 in particular, where the authors explore. The concept and the origins in a sense of cultures in one particular segment. I mean, there are a lot of mysteries of the. Upper Paleolithic, that's we don't know, right? I mean, that's why the mysteries. You know, we've come to learn, you know through the course of the book that you know, this assumption that everything was just these small tight knit bands and that was just the entirety of the human social arrangement until the states, you know. At least it's new to the layman to realize that this is not necessarily the case. You know that there is a lot more. Political. Structural, you know, diversity. In that time. We don't know at that point in time, you know, what language is. People were speaking, you know, of course, linguists have been able to like, reconstruct, like, Proto languages and stuff. And I mean, I'm just a hobby linquist just like I'm a hobby everything else. But I think it's been really cool to see how thing was just able to do that. Like, can we just take a second to realize that, like linguists able to take scraps of existing languages? I just kind of piece them together to get a sense of, like, how they're related, like. How do you do that? But there's a lot we don't know, right? We don't know about their language and about their myths. You know, their conceptions of the soul. What their favorite foods were, I mean, you know, they ate, but we don't know what like Joe Skeleton thought about his breakfast that morning. But what we do know is that, you know, from the Swiss Alps to Outer Mongolia in the upper pillar, lithic people were using a lot of the same tools. Playing a lot of similar musical instruments, carving similar rather interesting female figurines, wearing similar ornaments and conducting similar funeral rights. And there's also reason to believe that. People actually travelled a lot more than we would expect them to do. And Chokshi traveled longer distances than we would expect for that time period. I mean we don't have they didn't have rather you know like cars or. Or Chariots or trains or planes or anything like that. So to think that's. These long distance journeys were occurring, you know, places like Australia or in like North America. It's just really interesting to think about. Yeah, I was wondering if you talk about one of the things I thought was really interesting about. This is. The way that they talk about culture areas where you have these, like, yeah, you have these like very large. I mean like almost like like half continent sized areas where people are speaking similar languages, like the same language and you have these like. You have like these clean structures that are. Like, you know, you, you you you can go from, like go from like Missouri. And you can end up in like Mississippi and you'll be in a place where they still have like, you know, the the sort of like 4 basic, like Clan lodges are still the same and you'll meet people who are like right from your clan. And he has this really interesting line about how like. Sort of, kind of intuitively like the world's gotten like. The world, like even when there was like people spread over geographic distance, like the world sort of got larger. As technology progresses and not sort of like smaller in the way that people sort of. Think about it because. Like in, I don't know. Instead of there being these sort of like mega like culture areas, you can go from one place to another and you'll be people who speak the same language and you could sort of slot into the like systems that are there. You suddenly have this like incredible diversity of stuff. Right, right. So I mean. Specific to like North America, you know where you had all these different clan structures. We usually tend to think of, you know, these groups as and you know, especially like your immediate relations with people that you know. It's like close skin, family, that kind of thing. Umm. But there's actually. At least in some studies of hunter gatherers, there's some suggestion that. Their composition can be quite cosmopolitan, so you know you have these these groups and biological relations might only make up a small percentage of like total membership. They actually drawing from a wide pool of individuals of a larger stretch of area. I know not all of them even speak necessarily the same first language. This is YouTuber indigenous YouTuber named Twin Rabbit and he had this excellent, excellent video. I need to rewatch it on planes sign language, which is this method of communication that indigenous Americans. Used. Across you know, the planes to conduct trade and diplomacy and discussions, even if they didn't share the same language. In Aboriginal Australia, people were able to travel halfway across the continent, moving across people who spoke entirely different languages and still find, you know, camps that had people of, you know, their same totemic moiety. You know, and those people would be treated like their brothers and sisters, you know, so like. No occupancy, but you know, they had this, this, you know, cross Continental. Bond of like hospitality. From the grid leaks, you know, to Louisiana bayous, you could find settlements of people speaking entirely, entirely separate languages unrelated to their own. And yet still you will find, you know, bear clans or elk clans or Beaver clans that were obliged to host and feed them. You know. And we could only really guess as to like what kind of systems were like and how those systems might have worked 40,000 years ago, you know in the upper. Ethic but. What we do see with the, you know, similarities and material uniformities and stuff of these different tools and musical instruments and stuff, suggests that there might be a bit of a similar system in place at that time. Roughly around like 12,000 BC we start seeing like new pottery, you know, getting dropped. We starting to see the outlines of more specific cultures in specific areas. New stone grinding tools, new ways of preparing and eating wild greens and roots and other vegetables, different ways of chopping, slicing, creates and grind and silk and training, boiling and store and smoking and preserving meats, plant foods and fish as soon we start to see something that. Them really brings people together and that is cuisine and cuisine, you know, being. The birth of cuisine being the birth of like. Really more specific cultures, you know, the kinds of soups and porridges and stews and broths and. Basically what they were talking about was the way the people who like wake up and eat fish stews every morning tend to, you know. Develop a different sense of themselves in relation to their world compared to people who might wake up in the morning and eat some porridge with like berries and wild woods. You know, and then from there they start to develop different tastes and including, you know, in. In dancing and drugs and hair styles, I remember Lisa on the book. Umm. The David's point out that. Some indigenous Native American groups will actually. Known for specific hairstyles, and I kind of knew that based on the fact that, you know, we tend to associate Mohawks with people, you know, Mohawk yesterday, Mohawk people. But I didn't realize that, you know, other. Groups also have their own kind of like culturally specific hairstyles, right? And there's also like courtship rituals and forms of kinship and styles of rhetoric and. So of course you still have these large cultural areas in the Mesolithic, larger than some niche and states. But. He signed to see a bit more specificity and a bit more. Diversity in in short term spans of area. If we look at now, for example, where you know, we have in the Amazon all these different languages and cultures that quakes just merely kilometres from each other. I think the overall trend. Of human cultures, you know, over. The past 10s of thousands of years has been. The opposite of marginalization, and it makes me think a bit about the whole concept of the nation state and how it tries to like, bring people together to just like 1 narrow conception of what it means to be, you know, XYZ. And. How? Humanity naturally seems to like resist that, and nationally seems to like split all from that. Like, even when you have situations with the force will spread of English in, you know, the Caribbean colonies, you still see like a diversity springing up with a bunch of different unique creoles and dialects making the language something different. You know what if not for the enforcement of? Language certification through the you know school system. I think we would actually see an even more rapid explosion of. You know. Linguistic diversity developing. Alter these crueles and dialects. You know, like a couple of centuries from now, you know, Patwa and Trinidadian Creole and British English. Maybe entirely incompatible, even in Britain itself. You know, you might have a case where London English and, I don't know, Sussex English or whatever, started to sound like entirely different. I'm already have that with accents, but. Just to see how you know, even in short spaces of time, as short as a century or two, because for example, Trinidad. Was not always an English speaking colony. We actually spoke French cruel for most of our history and only in the 19th century did we have that period of Anglicization where English was, you know, brought in. And to see that in that short space of time and that handful of centuries that you know should not already has its own unique English based Creole. You know, it's just fascinating to see. There's something really interesting to me about the way this process plays out, because it's it's. It's almost like. OK, so you have this sort of like. Like you have this. In the Mesolithic? All the period names are blinking out of my head, but like 40. Yeah. So like you have this. Where you have kind of like you, you have a lot of cultural standardization like spread across a long period like a bunch of places. And it's used sort of as a visual aid thing. It allows people to travel because you can go to a place and know that like. There will be people who are like you there and they will take care of you. And it's interesting to me, it's like, OK, so this breaks apart as sort of like these, these new cultures, like as people develop local cultures around like food and around just like. Graber has this thing that he loves talking about. These were talking about for ages called Genesis, which is like you have two people. It was like, I think, I think his visual examples, like people who are arguing with each other and they like, disagree minorly over like one thing. And then by the end of the argument, like they're they've they've taken, like, completely mutually opposed identities to each other based on like, an incredibly minor disagreement. And you get this, yeah. You get like, you get cultures to sort of like define themselves against each other. And like, they have things that they like and things they don't like. And it's interesting to me that that you see. You see the state trying to sort of like. Reimpose the kind of like. Like 40,000 year old cultural homogeny on all of these places that are, like, incredibly not homogeneous, but they're doing it for like, the opposite reason. They're doing it because they need sanitization in order to sort of, like, make their make their bureaucratic, like, systems work better and make their sort of like, yeah, seeing, like a stage kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And also like, like, I mean this was a huge thing. Everyone in, like, the early the late 90s and early 2000s thought that, like, the scent of capitalism on the around the globe was going to make make everything exactly the same. There's only be one culture. And that, like. Kind of really didn't happen. But there was this real sort of. I don't know, like there is this real sort of fear that that. It wasn't just gonna be the nation spreading like homogenization, but like capitalism was going to sort of like spread homogenization. And I guess I guess the thing that they wound up doing instead was like figuring out that you could just sell everyone into their individual cultural niche, which. To some extent, yeah. Because like we see a McDonald's in the US and the McDonald's in Bangladesh and the McDonald's in Japan and they sell all the same McDonald's stuff, but they've also like sort of specified to the, you know, specific country. Yeah, we have the worst version. the US is the worst version of it by the the the. Like, Taiwan has one that has, like, they have like rice, sticky rice patties. It's. It's so much better than. Yeah, I mean I will say though, if I did end up traveling to Taiwan, I. McDonald's is probably the last place I would want to go. Yeah, we we wanted meeting there at we were we had to catch a plane. So we wound up getting like Taiwanese, Taiwanese McDonald's, McDonald's Airport free because we had like 5 minutes. It was a, you know they say what airplane food. But yeah, that's exactly as well to get into actually the whole idea of cultural differentiation, you know, and there's this tendency that humans have to subdivide and to distinguish themselves from their neighbors. And I mean, it's natural to assume that, you know, this differentiation comes from like differences and like language. You know with, you know, language splitting off over the centuries and people are associating with the native language and ethnicity. But. That really tell the full story, you know, like for example in Northern California in the early 20th century. The ethnolinguistic map had really a jumbo of languages that drew from entirely different language families. You know it's different from one another as like Arabic and Tamil and Portuguese. And yet these groups still shared, you know, broad similarities. You know how they went about gathering and processing food? You know their most important religious rituals, how they organize their political life. And they also managed to keep themselves distinct. You know, you had the rock and the Hooper and the Karok and so forth. And I mean, to some extent, these identities did map once linguistic differences, but their neighbors? Who spoke different languages. Still had more in common with them than people who came from their same language family in another part of North America. Of course, you know, European colonization had like severe impact on like how Native Americans were distributed. But we still tend to see this trend of how like these modern nation states they went around at the time to, you know, or the population since these neat ethnolinguistic groups, you know, this idea that the world should be divided into these like homogeneous units with their own history and. Ever has a claim to like a certain territory and all that it's been, it's really a concept that is born into this mythology of the nation state. And, you know, of course we had to be really careful before we project those kind of uniformities back in time. Yeah. It's it's definitely really like 200 years old. Like it's pretty young. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But there are some concerns, you know, with the concept of culture areas because that whole notion of culture areas. Team out of North American museums who wanted to arrange their stolen artifacts. To illustrate their theories of the different stages of human adaptation, you know, like Columbus, lower Savagery and upper savagery and lower, lower barbarism and so on. And so they did it too and whether they were organised these artifacts based on like. Language family or regional clusters? Or some sort of like traced history of of of regional, of ancient migrations. Right. Eventually they realized that you know this, we have organized into regional clusters seem to work best with the art and technology of different Eastern Woodlands. Tribes had some very similar things in common compared to like trying to group people based on like say the Athabascan language or all the people who relied on fishing or all people culture to me is. Umm. And they were able to find similar patterns in the Neolithic villages. Of Central Europe, you know, finding these regional clusters of domestic life and art and ritual. And so, like this whole cultural area concept is kind of a way of pushing back against this. We have, you know, talking about human history that like ranked populations into higher or lower anything, you know this, this idea of of claiming that, you know people were. Of a sudden superior genetic stock and vicious advanced level of technological evolution. And so rather this there's been there was a shift in anthropological focus. So look at the diffusion of more cultural treats like ceramics and sweat lodges and, you know, the treatment of young men or certain sports. I said they wanted to try to understand how. These different tribes of Sudan region came to share this mesh of culture traits. So one of the people who were thinking on this, you know, whole culture treats cluster idea. This guy named Boss, right? And he wanted to figure out why it is that, like, geography seemed to define the circulation of ideas, you know, with like mountains and deserts forming these natural barriers and how basically the diffusion within those regions was basically. Historical accident. A liberal hypothesizing that. There was some sort of like. We need to eventually develop a kind of a natural science. Developing whole and even predicting the ebb and flow of styles, habits and social forms. And eventually Master Mouse pulls up, you know, and he's basically taught. He basically, like, write a bunch of essays on nationalism and civilization. And he says, basically this whole idea of cultural diffusion is nonsense. Because it's based on a false assumption, and the false assumption is that. The movement of people, technologies, ideas is some sort of rarity, something unusual. Instead, Mouse argues that like people in past times traveled even more than people do today. And it's just that. When you see people interact with people of other cultures and they see their cultural traits. They reflect on that and. Find a way to. Believe that their own cultures, right? So like people who are traveling back then obviously all of them, you know, were aware of basketry, you know? Or or or feather weeks or whatever the case may be that other people will use in a couple of miles away. Seemed to be said for like. Didn't drum rhythms or. Sitting, you know, games. Or like for example, he spent some time focusing on the distribution of. The ball games around the Pacific Ocean, around the Pacific Rim. From Japan to New Zealand to California. And. What he realized is that. Whether people pick up certain ideas, sitting traits from other cultures comes down to. How they want to be defined against their neighbours, against their closest neighbours. The question becomes less about. Why sleeping culture treats spread? But why other culture trees didn't? Because if you were aware of all the things that your neighbors and stuff for doing all these foreign customs and arts and technologies. I mean we know that the Silk Road, for example, when we talk about the Silk Road. You know, we had a silk route going from China all the way into Europe and all across the Silk route all across Central Asia and West Asia. And Despite that constant, you know, sharing of ideas, not every idea that you know came from China or came from puja or, I don't know, puja was around during the Silk Road. But you know what I'm saying? Like, not every idea that was along the Silk Road everyone necessarily picked up on, even if it was a technology that might have benefited them. Because cultures are effectively structures of refusal. So for example. There's this guy on YouTube religion for breakfast, he did a video recently on. The pork taboo in certain cultures and certain religions, right? And one of the things he pointed out was that the. Taboo tends to be strengthened in times of, like repression. So for example or in times of. Cultural. Definition. So, for example, he's pointing out that in the period of Roman conquest. The Jewish people were more. Inclined to define themselves, as you know, against the consumption of pork compared to the Romans. You know, for example, the Chinese or the people who use chopsticks, you know, they don't use knives and forks, or you're the type of people who use spoons and so on, you know? It could just be say it said that. You know, it's like aesthetics. Like styles of art or music or servants. Of course those things were different. But even like technologies that have like an adaptive or utilitarian benefits might still be, might still be refused by people who might even benefit from them. Like for example, the Athabascans in Alaska refused to use Inuit kayaks, despite the fact that they are a lot better suited for the environment and their own boots, and the Inuit, for example, don't use Athabascan snowshoes. Umm. And he's in the time that Marshall Moss is writing. And then of course this is a self-conscious process. You know, this is a process where to beat and discussion of all these different customs would have been occurring. You know for example in the Chinese courts when different foreign styles and customs would, you know, come into the lands, there will be debates and arguments put forward by you know, the Kings and the advisors and their vassals, you know, discussing. You know whether they would ride the horses or Dr Chariots or. Adopt like the Manchu dress codes and and and customs. And so societies, Mao said, live by borrowing from each other, but they define themselves by the refusal of borrowing than by its acceptance. The question of how culture areas form and how cultures split off is. Definitely a political one. The decision to. Adopt a certain form of agriculture or to cultivate a certain crop. Most musically or to adopt. A certain style of dress. It's not just like a matter of like mere utility of man or caloric advantage or. Material efficiency. Or it's also a reflection on a questioning of the values. That that group of people. Holes or purport to hold who they consider themselves to be. I like to think about the development of cultures. You know, I like to think about how. Our ancestors or distant ancestors even considered themselves, you know, it's easy to just fall into this trap because it's a very common cultural troupe that you know. Once you go before the invention of writing or whatever, all of our ancestors are just like booga booga Keith men kind of thing, but to think of them as self-conscious and. Politically. Umm. Conscious, politically considerate. Thoughtful. Actors. Not, you know, static or passive props. Umm. It's just, I think it's, it's, I think it's just very cool. I think it's very cool and I think we should keep. You know these developments. These this recognition in mind, as we, you know, in the modern time, look to try to transform the cultures that we live under and to try to develop. New values new values of like anti authoritarianism and anti capitalism and of you know a greater priority on. Mutual aid and on. Egalitarian social relations. Yeah, I think there's a lot of very interesting political consequences of of thinking about this because, like. I think there's sort of like 2 tendencies that that. We sort of get stuck in. When we think about like, our social structures, which is there's, there's there's one, which is the sort of like, I guess it's called a capitalist realism, which is the assumption that like nothing else could possibly like, this is the only system that works. Nothing else can possibly exist. And that's unproductive. And, you know, you go back and you look at like any other culture or society and it's like, well, no, like there's there's like an unbelievable, like nearly infinite number of ways you can organize your society. But then I think the second one is that like. Yeah, if if you look at this sort of cultural. Diffusion and cultural refusal. Stuff you you you see a lot of examples of people doing stuff that like. Under sort of like. Classical economic or like sociological laws, they shouldn't be doing right. Like, there's no reason why you shouldn't use a more efficient canoe if you're in a place at the part of the world that's like extremely hard to survive in, right? And and I think that there's this tendency to sort of like. Reduce culture and reduce just all of the ways that our social and political systems function to these sort of like, oh, that the product of these, like, abstract historical forces and like, ah, it's all, like, it's all determined by technology and like how you farm and stuff. It's just not true. Yeah, I mean, not to say that material conditions on, you know, very important in understanding, you know, how these cultures develop. And that's one part of that. Everything that I found was a bit lacking. I think that not all the time those thoughts were clearly connected. Ohh I'd say. But I do think people put too much stock in solely material and materialist explanations, and that kind of ends up precluding or leaving out the more messy human round of explanation. I think part of why this happens is that, like, it's much, if you assume everyone is like behaving according to historical forces or like the thing they're trying to do is like maximize, they're trying to like, maximize their utility. They're trying to, like, maximize the amount of calories they have it. That's a very easy thing to like. You like think about numerically, right? Like. It's a very easy thing to refuse the numbers. It's extremely difficult to refuse the numbers like. To like reduce to numbers a society that is like, I'm going to, I'm going to intentionally make my life harder for myself because this is the way we do things, and we've decided we don't want to do things like other people. We've decided that we have some kind of political value that we have that makes it such that we're going to, like, induce difficulty into our lives and like that. I don't know, like that, that kind of stuff. The the. The the fact that culture is not just a sort of like superstructure that gets that's like a product of like some kind of economic base like that. That is very important and something that. Gets ignored or downplayed constantly that I think. I don't yeah. And like, I think like, yeah, I think, I think you can argue that on everything like maybe goes too far in the other direction. But I'm, I'm sort of OK with that just because we've been so far on the side of like. Everything is historical forces for so long that you need something to remind people that like societies make conscious political choices. And not only have they made conscious political choices for like 10s of thousands of years, I, like we also can make conscious political choices. That are not just sort of like peer reflections of like. However, many tons of iron have been extracted and like what percentage of like? Workers are currently working in hospitals versus like making cookies or something. Right. Thank you for that OO analysis Chris. Really I agree. That's a joke like 12 people will get. I I love you if you, if you understand that joke. Also, I'm sorry. Yes, you could wrap it up, Carson. All of this has been very fascinating. What what I've learned the most is that I need to. Finish reading all my books so that I can read the dawn of everything I know I I like. I like. Got it from my dad for Christmas because because I I knew that it would be at least I think I did. My memory could be I could actually be wrong. I could have only intended to get my dad for Christmas and then forgotten to actually get it. But I've been reading it to. I've been meaning to both buy it for myself and get it for other people because I've heard a lot of interesting things about the book. O it is definitely on my list. It's been a pleasure listening to y'all discuss it. Andrew, where can if people want to check out more of your your work, where could where could they go about that right Sue? You can still find me on Twitter at under score C Andrew when I'm not hiding and you could also find me on YouTube. Aneurysmyoutube.com/aneurysm where I post videos about. Also stuff. Random stuff. You know that I'm thinking about. Politics, history, all that jazz. A few days ago, as of time of recording, Andrew put out a a wonderful video on a solarpunk stuff. I've no idea when this episode will air so this it's probably been like a month or two or something, but definitely check out the Andrews M Channel. It's one of my favorite spots to. Watch something. When I feel like I can't put any words on the page, I, I go watch your things because it's very helpful. Thank you. Yeah. So that does it for us. Today. You can find us at Twitter and on Twitter and Instagram at happened Nearpod Colson Media. You can find me posting about hyper objects and liminal spaces at hungry Bow tie. And I heard that you have a Twitter, Chris. Yeah, it's at itma Chr 3. You can find me. Mostly complaining about other people who are doing communism wrong. I guess that's most of what I post about. Love that for you. You two will be able to differentiate between the 16 differently. There's 16 there used to be. Long ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, and made a decision. And that was that. I was going to sacrifice my brain to understand the different kinds of Maoism. And if you two want to understand why it still exists, and all 20,000 varieties of them, yeah, go there. If you don't want to do that, do not. You'll be happier. Well, what a ringing endorsement. Goodbye, everyone. Go. I don't know. Should we, should we plug plug the other shows that? Yeah, I guess everyone's tuned out at this point. I hope they've all stopped at the podcast player. So I think, I think this will be free. Yes, go outside and be free. There you can you can edit that into something that is more concise. Sorry Daniel, I don't care. 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The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. It's, well, it. It is the podcast. It could happen here, but for once it is not about the world falling apart. It is entirely about putting it back together again and and joining me to talk about. Putting it back together again is a zero of the other people who are normally on the podcast but. I'm joined by Shannon and John Heronemus, who are part of the team of organizers working on the dual power gathering. Shannon, John, welcome. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Hey, so I guess the first part of the dual power gathering is dual power. And I think we should walk through what actually that is and what our sort of visions for it look like because I mean, I know we've talked about this on the show before, but that was a very, very long time ago, but which I mean like. Probably only like 7 months, but you know, feel feels like ancient history. So. Yeah, I guess do you two want to talk about what dual power is and how? How to do? Yeah, sure. I'm going to stop trying to think about what happened seven months ago, and I can't. I'm trying to. OK. You said that I was like, oh, wow. OK, no, never mind. So dual power, John, how about I go ahead and share with our audience, well, what is sort of the poetic language that we have up on the website from the the organizers? And then we can kind of like break it down and talk about it. That works for me, all right, so the website Texas such dual power is a way to imagine the moment just before our movements converge, as the possible becomes the actual when the seeds of social transformation we have sown for generations bloom when the old world begins to wither and new worlds can be born is a way of thinking about how we got to that moment and beyond it. Dual power is the project of building self determination, mutual aid, solidarity and direct democracy. In our communities, by creating spaces that empower us all and from which new emancipatory institutions can emerge. It's a pretty yeah. So what does that mean? So what does that mean? First off I want to say like give a shout out to I a lot of people have been working on. This vision of what dual power is for years and years now, and that includes a lot of groups that we are either in conversation with or have been taking inspiration from. One of the biggest and I think most developed groups that's doing that work is cooperation. Jackson Jackson Jackson, Ms. And I I think the goal is I people went out. Oftentimes when people like hear dual power, if they don't have any other context for it, but they are maybe from the left. They've heard about this moment in the Russian Revolution when there were these two competing. Like, you know, bases of power and like Russian society while they're undergoing this, like revolutionary change. And Lenin wrote a like a pamphlet about it, calling it the dual power and looked at it as like a thing that needed to be like overcome by, you know, workers in Russia to like establish a workers state, which it kind of outlined in a book called state and revolution. And but when we look at what they were describing, we kind of look at this as a thing that emerges in any time when there is a social revolution kind of unfolding in a society where you have various classes who are like changing, like social relations. So workers presents different groups of people who like have like a class. They have come together around a class interest and overthrowing their oppression. And as they they have to go through stages of. Building their collective power, their collective identity, their and their kind of like overall strategic movement in a particular direction. And they create this tension between the existing state order and a newly emerging, like, like Social revolution that's like overthrown, challenging and overthrowing that, like power. So. That being said. We want to ground that. We want to ground that a little bit in a like less historicized context or whatever. We could say maybe that's the work that we're doing to build up the institutions and relational structures that we need to care for ourselves and each other as we move through sort of like different states of like institutional organization in the society, right? So when we're thinking about how do we meet our basic needs together? In ways that are not dependent on the oppressive institutions that we're trying to overthrow, we're talking about dual power. It's like anytime working class folks, and I'd say like in a broad definition communities, people who aren't necessarily working but like depend on like taking care of each other or who do the work of reproducing every, you know society basically builds their own independent power, like to chat, like to be able to fight back and to challenge the, you know, the status quo. So like there's a lot of things they're kind of percolating that we've. Been like that have been happening in North America. That's takes inspiration from areas of the global S. But also our own homegrown like traditions. So that could mean anything from like your local mutual aid network to your local tenant union to like a rank and file union of like Amazon workers or teachers or care workers. You know whose existence puts them in conflict with the state capital. And like patriarchy, settler colonial relations, you know, like indigenous water protectors, folks who are building up places where. The more developed it becomes, the more. It kind of builds its own momentum and you have spaces that are like. Autonomous fully like autonomous regions from like state power and to begin to like pick apart at capital and like reconfigure our like relations of like how we make things and do things and take care of each other and like fundamental ways. We have lots of beautiful examples of this from the like organizing history not even that long ago and people would be familiar with some of the Black Panther programs or some of the programs that were integrated. Into the farm workers movement and some of the programs that were put together by the anarcho feminists who were trying to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through things like mutual aid, healthcare and and things like that. So we'll see. There's like a lot of really beautiful examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements, and we're all really excited about what's going on now, and we want to see that just to. Sort of come together and flourish. I think it's important to think about dual power or something that's like, I don't know, like, I, I think there's a lot of people who look at it as sort of like dual power is planting a garden. It's like, I mean sort of, yes. But like there's, you know, there's there's there's sort of two components of it, right. There's, there's this sort of, there's a defensive component in an offensive component there. There's a component that's about taking care of each other and there is a component that is attack, right. There's, there's there's a component that is the people who are preventing us from taking care of each other need to be stopped from doing that. And so yeah, I think I I think it's important to yeah. Think about different kinds of. Like? Different kinds of institutions that you would not normally think of as doing the same thing, as being part of the same struggle. And yeah, I guess that brings us to what you two and a lot of other people have been working on for. God, it's just been this is been in the works for a long time. Yeah, which, which which is the, which is the, the, the. Dual power gathering and. Yeah. I guess you were talking about what, what that is because. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple of years dreaming about being together. And so I think this is kind of the fruit of that dream, right? Coming up at the end of July, we're inviting everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip. And during that time and we're hoping to see a collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can bring to it, which we know far exceeds the. Sort of even the scope and vision of the organizing body. So we're like really trying to just create a space for people to come together who are interested in these ideas, who have various levels of experience working with it. That will be valuable to everybody, from people who are brand new to this stuff and just want to learn more about it, to people who have been doing it for years, for decades even. And yeah, that's sort of sort of the the underlying. The ambition of it is to get people together in space. So, you know, a lot of us have been to these kinds of events before and felt like the most important thing that we got out of that was the relationships that we were able to build and the people that we were able to meet that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues with and that we could find inspiration in in those dialogues and in those connections that would for new projects that, you know, we don't yet know are even possible. And so this is kind of at least. For me, like, that's the really important and exciting force of the of the the plan. Yeah, I think that. Like their the. Some of the things about this I think are really. Like, it's been like really a collaborative effort to come up with this thing. Like we had the discussions about this is the thing that need that we thought needed to happen. Because at the end of, like by the end of the middle of 2021, we were like, look, clearly we've all been through so many different experiences over the last ten, 1520 years. At this point, some of us are getting to be elders and we and we need to. Like? It feels like it's now as an excellent AA, really great time to have like a actual conversation about where we, where we're, where we are, where we're coming from and where we're going and how do we translate these experiences into. Like networks of like, trusting relationships and sharing, a sharing of all this knowledge is like we need to debrief like the like the past five years, I think in particular have been like, it's like crammed. It feels like, you know the whole saying like some some years nothing happens and some you know, and some months, decades happen, paraphrasing or whatever. And it's like so much stuff has come, we've all gone through so many things and come to. Like and we're seeing people who didn't have like maybe a a stance on various political things or are like seeing their communities torn apart by like the the real lived experience of like climate change and wants to and need to do something about it. That sort of thing. Like bringing in people who have lots of experience with people who have maybe are just now figuring things out and really kind of like musing and taking this as a an opportunity to maybe. To generate new knowledge so that we're going to be like kind of like clarifying what we've gone through and where we're heading and. Get people like in the same space who like might as a like I do a lot of union ****. So I'm always thinking about how do I get. Like rank and file union radicals in the same space as like a like a neighborhood abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community Land Trust. And getting all these like different groups because together and then like thinking about how they overlap and support and build off of each other because we I think the operating theory of many of people who are involved in this is that. Every context is different where we're organizing, but many. There are many kind of principles that can kind of translate across contexts, but. The context will shape very like like the, I was just talking with one of the organizers who's like 20 minutes away over in Northwest Indiana and you're like in Gary and you know those areas and their context for building something like a an ecosystem, dual power organizations is going to be very different from my context where I'm like down the street from this big global center of capital that's like University of Chicago. And like, and it's doing all in my neighborhoods being gentrified by $2 billion corporations and I've got a big nurse union, whereas they're in the middle of like a neighborhood community that's being actively divested and destroyed. Like just like eating away at by like because capital just pulling out and has been doing that for basically as long as you've all been on this earth. At the same time y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere complications and. Climate change implications. And so, yeah, we're thinking about the ways in which, like, the kinds of affiliations that make sense for us to be successful in our projects are like. You know, look, they're not just, they're not just local, they're not just national, they're not just continental. There's like a lot of different things that are going on there. And that the only way for us to really like sort out who we need to be in coalition with on any particular issue is to know everybody and to try to understand better their, their specific contacts and their specific experiences. And I think there's like. You know, I think you know to to John's point about you know how much has changed in the last you know handful of years or whatever. I think one thing that we've all come away from it's the pace of change is pretty humbling. You know I think we definitely all we got we got, we took it a bit of the of humility around around that. What is it that we actually need to do? We are definitely not prepared for it, you know and it doesn't matter how many decades we've been doing this organizing work, we just are not ready. Uh, for how quickly things are changing right now, and the only way for us to get ready is to make sure that we shore up and strengthen the networks of people that we can rely on to produce kind of. Positive interdependence as we move forward with the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah, I mean, and then part of this is also like thinking about, because the way this is structured, this isn't just like. A series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers have curated like you're going to listen to you know so and so who's like you know a prominent tenant organizer or so. And so is like a prominent like like in like climate change direct action work like the goal is, is that we like specifically chose a format and like officially it's called like like unconference, but the way I think of it is it's like which which comes out of tech. Which I find kind of irritating, but that doesn't. But the the core of the idea of The thing is, is that we are coming into this space and generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who we designate as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that people who don't have a lot of experience and a lot of like skills aren't going to be there. It just means that we're going to be. Because one of my things is popular education, coming from the tradition of like, Paulo Freire and like everybody. Learning together is like, it's like taking those principles and kind of like doing them in parallel in various circles. Where there will be a circle here of like cooperative or organizers or people who want to get cops off the ground will be a circle here. People doing Land Trust work, they'll be a circle here of like unionists. There'll be a circle here of people doing like abolition work and or intra air people who are interested in all those things are getting those sorts of things off the ground. And as they work through like a like they present, tell stories, share ideas, do debriefs on like the various things that we've all been going through over, you know, whatever, how far back our timeline is, depending on how far which elders decide to attend. But then taking that knowledge with our facilitators and then being like, you know what? I think that these two conversations are happening kind of like in parallel would be better if they were merged together. And beginning to kind of like build that sort of like. And so the idea isn't to necessarily come away with like a pre like we're not setting up like a like a predetermined set of conclusions for people we believe. And based off of we've been having monthly community calls for people who are going to be attending all the different groups of folks who will be coming to this is going to be I think like the depth of experience is going to be really phenomenal and people coming from. You definitely have people confirmed who are coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks with experience the indigenous communities and in Mexico. We maybe haven't where I. Fairly confident we're going to have people who are like just come from areas like northern Syria and Iraq and taking all these different ideas and experiences and then generating next, like coming to new conclusions, maybe unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite that we weren't anticipating, but coming. Right. Like, this is a kind of a intended to be a prefigurative space for engaging with things where we don't know what the right answer is. And I think we all need to really sit with the fact that we do not have, like, a clear right solution to the problems that we're facing right now. Like, I've been kind of pulling on the slogan a little. It's like, no gods, no masters, no right answers, you know, just like, get used to it. We need to be more creative and we need to be more open to experimentation and you know, there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff that's going to be coming at us fast and you know this is a we, we, we hope this can be a space where we can kind of take some time to slowly get square with what it is. We're going to have to be thinking about even if we don't know what to do exactly yet so. I had a I had a really good experience where I was listening to like one of the. Like a person who came out of act up giving a talk in my in my neighborhood and she was saying, because we had had questions, is this going to be about a lot of theory? Are we going to be talking about a lot of abstract stuff? And this organizer was like, you know, act up had no theory, right? They did. They took action, and the theory followed afterwards. And so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming to this with like, the right answers already figured out is just. Not like something that I think it's going to be super generative discussion. The idea of coming up with like coming up with orientations and thinking about like where we are heading kind of in a general sense and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is I think a big key, a key aspect of what we're trying to do when we come to come together. Yeah, which is not to say that there won't be theory because that's not up to us. That's up to y'all. So, you know, I probably, you know, like I what I'm really interested in is having conversations about the community, mental healthcare, you know, and like for me, the theory is less interesting than, you know, like talking about what we actually need in the spaces that we work in. But that's, you know, that's where I'm coming from. And everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective, too. So I'm really excited to see what people bring to that space and what we can get out of it. By just thinking that. We all are contributing something constructive to that conversation. And then also there's going to be a lot of discussion about, like, literal, practical skills, like, here's how you like, here's how you this is always been the perennial thing. This is how you pick a lock. This is how you this is how you organize calms at like at like a like on a picket line. This is how you pull together. A demand letter for like a list for like tenants like you know, these are the sorts of things that like we're going to be talking, we're going to be doing concrete skills shares, plus these discussions about our experiences and sharing our stories and you know, hopefully we're going to come away from this. A big goal of it is to come up with. A lot of like different like. Just like content, we're going to be recording videos and like audio and like also, and then transcribing things and writing things up. But we're hoping that once we're done, we're gonna have a big report that we can share out with people who can't attend. Privacy concerns obviously considered. So yeah, for sure. Yeah, there this is. Consent is a big is a big thing with us as organizers. That should help. So yeah, you would think. But you know, not everyone is as down as you would imagine. OK. So basically, we're building a perfect little utopia for like 4 days and you all come out because we're going to fix the revolution. So kidding, obviously. On a more concrete level, like what? What does like a day here look like? Like, what are, what are, what are, what are, what are we doing? Oh, that's fun. That's a fun question, if I may, John. Yeah, yeah, go for it. What we're thinking right now basically is that a day it looks like we get up in the morning, we drink coffee, we have breakfast and we have a little assembly check in to see how things are going if we need to make any major adjustments. And we put up a sort of schedule for the afternoons events that was. Populated from the conversation that was happening in the evening, the night before and anything that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that happened between yesterday and this morning, then we're going to roll off into basically what would be some of the. Kind of like things we already know for sure that we wanted to see happening that we could get on a on a sort of schedule ahead of time. So some of these skill shares that were planned that would require kind of like pre planning or maybe some discussions that people reached out ahead of time that they definitely wanted to have. So that stuff would be happening earlier in the day that you know we're talking about having sort of just like sandwich bars and you know make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There should be a lot of different things happening in different geographical locations. On the site, so you kind of get get a choice of where you want to go. It's not like there's one big event, but we're going to try to group things that are sort of thematically similar in so that they're nearby each other in case you want to go around and see what the different kind of stuff is going to be. And then in the afternoon it's going to be like, I mean, OK, of course, this is like how we're intending right now. The afternoon would be the. Discussions and skill shares and events and circles and spaces that were generated out of the conversations that have been happening in space. So that people came and thought, you know, we had this conversation yesterday that really inspired me, let's talk about this and I'm going to make space for that. So we're going to have big map where you figure out where you want to go and you're going to be able to wander around and meet people. We're trying to incorporate a lot of events that make it easier to meet other people that you don't know yet, where there's going to be tables where you can do arts and crafts, there's going to be games. Space for whatever kind of games you want to play. There's going to be places for kids to hang out. There's going to be a quiet tent where you can take some contemplation time. You know, at some point we want to do it like a kind of grief circle for people to deal with what they've been kind of going through in the world. And, you know, some, you know, Utopia, envisioning arts, space, you know, these kinds of things like where, you know, somebody wants to teach someone else a dance. Like that's the kind of thing that we're really hoping can go on in the afternoon. That we would be feeding everybody dinner and we kind of had this idea we've been playing with that we would have two campfires after dinner and at one campfire we have kind of an open forum where anybody can talk for like ten, 1520 minutes, you know, whatever, however long people need who are there depending on how popular that is and just kind of air everything that's in their head. And we'll have a note taker so we can try to incorporate what comes out of those discussions into the next day's agenda. And so that's sort of like what we were. But we were envisioning and then for the other campfire, it's people who don't forget this. Yeah, the other people who are like done with talk. I need to just sit and stare at some flames for a little bit. I imagine I'll be going back and forth between the fires. So, you know, that's also an option. But the idea is to get kind of like somewhere between, I think, when we call you is like somewhere between a conference and a music festival. And I mean like there where you're able to sort of move around and you don't have to go and sit in one place and do like, OK, for this hour, this is where I, you know, it's it's it's meant to be a bit more informal. And we're hoping that that makes a lot more space for people to sort of explore and people to meet other people that they don't already know. Because I don't know if that, if that, if that sums up sort of like what I'm imagining that's like, you know, that's the spirit. So I think if that's the question like what is the day look like, well, hopefully it's gone. You know, that's kind of the main, the main thing we're thinking here is to make it. A sort of low stress and low stakes place that we can talk about some of the highest stress and highest stakes questions that we have to deal with so. Yeah. And like that being said, like because we're modeling it this way specifically based on people's experience with like the symbiosis federations founding conference, that sort of thing, where. There were a lot of stakes and people were trying to kind of like funnel different discussions through different ways. And this is not a necessarily critique of how that all went down. It's just like based on our our experience. In our experiences with those sorts of things, the goal is to. For this to be, if it's successful, the first of many of these sorts of things, many of these kinds of gatherings and discussions and to provide a model for how it could happen. But to keep we deliberately decided that this we're not going to make like a bit, we're not going to have a big points of unity debate and discussion and voting on assembly sort of thing. We will use assemblies for you know, certain things like setting up like our Community agreements and that sort of stuff and kind of like getting the days rolling and come out of getting the days closed. But the goal is like to not is to bring people into conversation who haven't, who maybe don't have the basis of trust for those bigger collective like discussions yet, but maybe they will later. But the the goal is for now as we're we're getting. We're building and expanding our networks. We're building, expanding our trust with different people and building, expanding our knowledge so that we can go out and do the kind of work that we think we need to do to, I don't know, survive this a species on this planet. So that's one of the reasons why if there are some people are like, oh, I don't know, it seems really kind of wishy washy. It's very, it's that was a very deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who had been to these sorts of things. And the goal is really to. To have a place where we can have discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested in it that we feel like if our concept of how to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution, that we somehow failed. So it's like, yeah. Because one of these things that you that you brought up there that's really important is like, not even just in these previous conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to have we seen this be a problem. But basically, at least I can speak for myself in a lot of organizing spaces that I've been in over the past, you know, like 15 years that I've been pretty active in, in the organizing universe. Umm. Basically that. One of the main problems that we have with this kind of like space of trust that we definitely know that we need to be able to work together moving forward, is that we don't really have shared language a lot of the time. And we think we do because we use the same words, but we often use them to mean different things or we often use different words to mean the same things as well. And then we come from kind of different organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that. Some are more are less. We should say that maybe that there there are different places where you show. Solidarity in a different way. You show good faith and you show that you're committed in a different way. What it means to be democratic in a space seems different depending on this, on the tradition that you that you maybe come from. So what we're really hoping to do is kind of make space to incorporate all of that. So we was joking. It was a camping trip where many camping trips fit. You know that like that there should be an opportunity for people to kind of like learn to talk past those, those barriers that we might have to to understanding each other. And like, that success would really look like people coming away, like believing in other people's commitment to get this done and with the kind of contacts that they need to support each other moving forward as things come up in different places, as opposed to just like, here's a solution, like, here's a blueprint for how to get this done. You know, that relationship that you have with a person who's had that experience in the past is going to be way more valuable than any document they give you based on their experience, because you're going to be able to say, well, ****. I wasn't expecting this to happen like what do we do and then you can talk through that with them and like that's really, I think that's really the foundation of our being able to share this knowledge with each other is that we have the opportunity to kind of engage in these ways that are. More focused on the kind of just. Sort of dynamism of the of the challenges that we're dealing with right now. So emergence is a big thing. Things are always kind of like, things are always going to be changing like we are. We need to be prepared to deal with a world that's going to be throwing challenges at us that like we haven't, like we haven't had solutions for it and like because we're going through this like really? Kind of like catastrophic, like moments of like. Climate change and, and I mean I don't know how else to say it, but like in A and so it's just like engendering the idea, the idea that we're constantly evaluating what's happening around us both like at our local level and across the regions and globally. And then taking new knowledge in and coming up with new solutions in a real like in like a truly experimental way, like thinking about things is like. Paraments and how we're going to like come up with new solutions to these problems because it's just. Like as we kept telling people because when we were out there. Trying to bring groups in everyone selling us our capacity, this sounds great. Our capacity is incredibly low and that is just been across the entire like spectrum of organizations and that includes huge big put together organizations like you know. Unions versus little mutual aid groups, everybody is dealing with this like. Feeling of exhaustion and like capacity. Our goal is to get people together so that they can build capacity through these discussions and be prepared for things because capacity is always going to be an issue and our goal is to get people to this point where because their their mindset is OK new challenge. Let's think about it critically and come up with solutions that fit this moment as opposed to keep trying to force things into preset like. Easy. I mean, I don't want to say easy, but like, I think that sometimes, like, everyone's trying to mine history for the like, the the one weird trick to solve all these problems. And I think that the one weird trick is that human beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like, our brain is like this thing for taking in information and generating new, new thought and action. And we need to embrace that. Because if we don't. We're going to be very successful, certainly in the. Yeah. And these times have been of just increasing uncertainty, that kind of humility and flexibility and like. Continued building of comfort with that uncertainty is going to be super essential to our being able to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to take action I think. So we're going to have to like. Continue to like to lean into that uncertainty and to sort of, I think, you know kind of historically the being comfortable with things changing and being comfortable with uncertainty is actually one of our great strengths, right, because we can actually start to get moving while everybody else is still going, what the hell you know? And so I think, you know that's going to definitely be something that's going to serve us. And yeah, anyway I have, I have one last. I question on an extremely practical level, which is like. What what is the like facility situation here? Like how, what, what are what are people sleeping in? So like in right now where we like, we have camp space reserved for 200 people. And so. We understand that camping is not always super accessible, but we are very fortunate that like the national Lakeshore. Specific accessible facilities for folks and we do have disabled like comrades coming to this event and we're working on making sure that. Those that their particular needs don't keep them from participating fully in the event there's. The discussions and circles themselves will be at like shelter space a bit away from where the camping is happening. So we're organizing transport between those two. Split those spaces for people who. Cannot camp. We are working on organizing some hotel space for folks and then for people who can camp but don't have any equipment. Our goal is to we're going to basically acquire like enough camping equipment for a sizable chunk of folks to come and like literally today, walking through Walmart with my daughter, looking at their camp equipments and pricing out things like. Sleeping bags and can't like sleeping mattresses and some tents, that sort of thing. So if people have have stuff they want to donate to the cause too, like I think we should be able to take some of that in. I think we were just talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp gear repair zone. So if you have things that you find at the thrift store that like a tour intent or something like that will help you fix it, you know, we just want to make sure that everybody has these. Supplies as well, because they're they're broadly useful. I know I've used my camping gear in some. Politically motivated ways in the past. It's not bad for people to have it if you need it, just. Also, you know, the camping aspect of it is also. It's more of a feature than a bug. Like there's like a like sort of, so to speak. Like the pandemic is not over yet, as we're like seeing, right, in spite of everything that like the our ruling class is desperately trying to get us to agree to. And so having the accommodations outside and doing the doing the actual events like out out of doors where there's lots of ventilation. You think it's like? Right now, one of those events so that we're not going to get so that people aren't going to come away from this on getting sick, which is really important. From, I mean as a person who's. Recovering from COVID COVID rounds 2 and as a healthcare worker, that was one of our big concerns because we we when we started making these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to be happening in terms of the pandemic. And having it out of doors was just like a surefire way that we knew that we could. At the very least, we could minimize the chances that people would be getting sick from just showing up and being in that same space together. We're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with friends and comrades in little groups to self organize their camps as much as they would like to do that to sort of make plans together to limit the. You know the the need for for spaces. You know, we're sharing up tents and all this kind of stuff, which, to the extent that people are comfortable with that, that, you know people. If you need to get in touch with people from around you, if you don't know anybody, you can reach out to us. If we know anybody else who's looking for somebody to try to coordinate with, we'll definitely put you in touch. That's something we want to be able to do, is like offer some of these connective services to help people to link up with people who are coming from, from their areas or people who are interested in the same kinds of things. And so we're kind of thinking of ourselves in the organizing body as facilitators of those connections and trying to like imagine how what we do will make those connections most likely to to happen. So in terms of the of the facilities as well, I think we we talked about trying to get some camp stoves together for people who need to use sort of a kitchen space to try to limit the amount of things that people need to bring for that. But definitely feel free to bring bring your own stuff and and and set up whatever whatever you need and let us know if you need help. Possible. We'll do our best to accommodate that. And people are getting fed like, so we're planning on having meals arranged, and that'll be vegan and with the caveat that folks who want to have separate food can like. Do their own self organized like cooking with. That's other things they that they're really committed to. And we're playing and having like, all the necessities of like lots of water, making sure that, like, we've got first aid lined up, there's going to be St medics who are participating in the work of organizing all that harm reduction. And just generally like, like some of the other things that didn't really mention, it's like we know that we're bringing a bunch of people with a lot of big ideas and big personalities together. And that means we're probably gonna have to deal with some conflicts maybe, I don't know, so. Having conflicts, like people who are good at mediating conflict, we're going to have a a crew of people who do that they're working on, like Child Watch training, because this is going to be a part of the family, family space, making sure that we know how to take care of each other in case like shady people from outside try to do something like whatever. Like our goal is to just make sure that, like, this is as safe as it can be bringing people together. It's accessible as it can be understanding implementations of. There's going to be going to be outside, so there might be, you know. All the some of the fun of having like a collective group of people all outside together, which can be a lot of fun in my experience. Like I'm I'm waiting for karaoke and for. Like our open mic and people bringing out like instruments and like just having like, you know, weird people discussing like, you know, some. Soccer potentially being a thing, determining like placing bets on who's going to be more into soccer based on various ideological affinities. Past experience. And yeah, hit us up if you wanna play some music, if you've got an idea for something fun, that sounds cool to do. And just to come to circle back to this, I think, like with the point about conflict mediation, I just want to make that, like super clear. Just because we're not going to spend half a day trying to come up with community with the points of unity does not mean we don't have expectations about how you act in this space. So our plan is basically to say, like, don't be an *******. And then that means, you know, like in all the ways that we know that those things can happen and then if somebody accidentally is being an ******* or somebodies or accidentally being an ******* like that, those are things we can we can manage because we all know what it is that we're doing here. So it's definitely not a free, for all you know, it's a this is a space where the normal things we would expect in space are expected, you know? Explicitly. Yeah. Well. Man, I'm excited. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I'm looking forward to people I don't know. I I don't actually know how widespread bonfires are in the US, but we do a lot in the Midwest, and bonfires are a great time. I'm excited, people, to experience that. It's it's love it. Yeah, so I guess. Do you have anything closing that you want to say? And also where can people find this and attempt to go to it? Also, when is it happening? Because that's another important. It's going to be July 29th through 31st. And attendance is free, there's no, there's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're doing a fundraiser through open collective and we've been very generously given an offer of matching donations from one of the organizers who got like a got a little bit of a chunk of change to kind of contribute to that sort of thing. We're very excited about that. So if you go on to. You can follow us on Twitter and and I believe that's that's a dual power. UH-22. Let me double check. I think it's at dual power gathering is our Twitter and. The website isdualdualpower2022.org. So, Umm yeah. If you go on the website, you'll find the links to everything you need to know. You can get in touch with us. You can like you know, give us your your feedback. If you love it, if you hate it, if you you know, whatever. We're we're probably not going to change the whole thing right now, but show up and we can change it at the time, so. Alright. I'll also say we do have like organizing discord and people who are just like serious about like getting involved and want to have things like wants to come to this and with things that they have specific visions for, now is like absolutely time to get engaged with that because we're like we're working towards making getting people into the like who are the participants to really own the event itself. So that'll be like, that's something we have, I believe we're going to do. Two more community calls, one inch June and one July. Every one of those calls has been really amazing, lots of great people. And during those calls we're going to be doing some training on because you got to do some prep work. When you're doing this kind of like generative discussion, like popular education, like unconference style events, like coming to them with a little bit of an understanding of what that looks like is really key to being successful, so. We encourage people who want to come get signed up, and then we'll get into our mailing list. Our mailing list is where we disseminate like when those calls are happening, and you can also hop in our discord and as long as you're cool and agree, our Community agreements like bring you in and like get all sorts of **** together and we're very excited for people to. Coming in. There's still a fair number of slots open for the event itself. We're like almost happily full so. I mean, definitely we've been trying to think about this as an event that we would want to go to and we wanted to be an event that you want to come to also. So help us make it so. Yeah. And that that's. Yeah. This is really exciting. I'm gonna be going to it. Yeah. So. Yeah. Think, think. Thank you. Thank you both for for joining us for talking about this. And I'm excited too. I'm excited to see lots of people there. Hey, I mean, we've all been wanting to see each other for two 2 1/2 ******* years, right? So I miss seeing your face with dimension. I'm I'm sick of your flat face. For real, yeah. Thanks so much for having us on to talk about it and really looking forward to it. I mean we're getting closer and closer. It's just like it just gets more exciting and also a little nerve wracking, but thankfully a lot of people been stepping up in a very I I'm confident it's going to be really like. A really great thing, yeah, and we will we will have links to everything in in the show notes. Yeah, this has been it could happen here. You can find us in the usual places. Happened to your **** and stuff. Alright, goodbye. Have fun. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. 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