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It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Trujillo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Alright, hello, this is it could happen here boy. Yeah, we've kind Robert into being here for Civil War Week, no less. We're also joined by special guest Margaret Killjoy. And Sophie and Guy, who are less special now we're whole week. We're we're here to start a civil war, right? That's what I've read on Reddit. Yes, start a civil war, Sophie. We cleared that. We we cleared that with corporate right. Yeah. I I can either confirm nor deny officially backing the start of a of a civil war. Yeah we're on essentially a corporate said you know the go go go ahead close on media, start a civil war start a civil war. Do we? And criminally liable for all violence that occurs. That's the iHeartRadio guarantee. Yeah, we've been listed the people on this call who are Margaret Killjoy, Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, James Stout and myself, Sophie. They are also all civil and criminally liable. But do we get to collectivize a huge, maybe like 70% or so of all the industry? Yeah, obviously. I mean, some of us do. OK, OK, what? It's like any civil war, you're going to find out who later? OK, we're going to find out who today. Robert, this is my index guide into how to beat a coup, start a civil war and win the first part of it. Oh, good. Well, that's the only part of it you really need to win. Yeah, it is. You don't want to get too bogged down in the latest stuff because it's just depressing. So we just want to focus on how to win the first 48 hours and sort of from there, you can taper off a week, take the weekend off. Yeah, break off, chill out. Yeah, fine. Just go down as a hero and let everyone else sort everything else out. Afterwards, I think that's probably the best option that's gonna learn about a guy who dies within 24 hours of a war, starting as a hero and gets a gun named after him, which is all we can really want for ourselves. That does sound like the dream. Yeah, that's that's that's the way Robert Evans needs to go. Not suggesting that anytime soon, of course. Yeah, and I'm so imagine. Would it be the Robert or would it be the death of Robert? Yeah, definitely Robert. Just give him a good old bobbin. Named after my next name, my nickname, the Jesus Christ of Podcasting, right, Sophie? 100% no. Yeah, no, Sophie says yes. If there's not already a gun named after Jesus, I will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not a kind of company you want to we've we've really gotten off. And I I think, in all fairness, it's not my fault. It's nothing. It's Garrison's fault. Yeah, that's who I was going to blame. I think we've all agreed on that. What are we talking about, James? Talking about the Spanish Civil War today will be be desecrating the name of Jesus Christ a little bit later as well, so we sort of. Disaggregating the name of Jesus Christ, I'd gathered, yeah, we'll we'll do. That's just some more for you today. I'll send you some pictures afterwards. That you you, you will enjoy. All right. So we're talking about the Spanish Civil War. We're not talking about all of it because that's a lot and because I think it's important when we talk about Spanish Civil war to talk about like. The moments when revolutionary things happened because they are as important as the moments when terrible things happened and the moments when the people in arms defeated the coup because that's both instructive and inspiring and interesting. Wait, I have a question. Yeah. What's the Spanish Civil war? That's a great question and one I've failed to address thus far. It is a war that happened in Spain. It wasn't very civil, so only two out of 3. Remarkably uncivil. Actually, so we're looking at 1936 today. We're looking at July 19th and 20th, 1936, right. But you can see it as like the precursor to the Second World War. You have people who are fascist or fascist adjacent. You have people who are explicitly anti fascist and they are killing each other from 1936 to 1939. And the anti fascists win, right? Not entirely, no, unfortunately. Yeah, they have some wins along the way, you know. OK yeah, there's some moments. The friends that you meet along the way, yeah. What is civil war if not the friends that you make along the way? Don't answer that at home because it's sad. But yeah, these these are some friendly types. These are some good times. These are the first 48 hours of the Spanish Civil War. We're going to start with an anecdote about the Popular Olympics, which you probably have never heard of unless you're me, because it's a it's a thing that I've written about **** turn, but not many folks have read about. It's the anti fertile Olympics is the best way to understand the popular Olympics. It was a gathering held in 1936 in Barcelona in opposition to the Berlin Olympics. So the Olympics are given to. Feima Germany in 1931, right. They're not given to Nazi Germany, but when did Germany? Yeah it's it's the vimar. Germany is the pre Nazi. It's before Hitler takes power. Yeah, when they were actually pretty cool in in some ways pretty pretty progressive for the time period, right. And in lots of ways it's the woke Germans. Yes, it is the woke Germans. It's it's like if AOC was running 1930s Germany, that's what you get. I bet they had a whole institute that trans people. Got to hang out at and learn about themselves. I've heard that. Yet what happened to the institute? I can't remember. The Nazis came and killed the first woman to medically transition in the Western Hemisphere and burned all of the books and then stole the records that the people had been keeping about all the gay people and then rounded up all the gay people and murdered them in camps. That's that's what happened. Well, it's disappointing. Will never happen again anyway. Ohh, we've learned our lesson. Yeah, that's absolutely no echoes of that in current political discourse. Do. That's fine. Hey, let's learn how to kill fascists and let's talk about that. Yeah. ******* OK, so we're talking about politics. The anti for Olympics, the Olympics. That happen because the Nazis are **** and you shouldn't play games with **** people to include the Olympics, even if you're very much want to win a medal. Take note, athletes. I think sports and dictatorships and so a lot of people, about 20,000 people, instead decide to go to Barcelona, where they're going to host this alternative games and the subtext of the Popular Olympics. It's not just that, like hit shouldn't have the Olympics, it's that gasp shouldn't exist. And the anti fascism is strong and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting a war in killing the fascist, right that that's sport. George Orwell called Sport War without the shooting, right? This is a war. With the shooting. It's a good quote. George Orwell pops up a few times in this one. It's not always right about everything, but he was right about that. We popped up at the wrong time. It's never mind. I'm just trying to make a George Orwell get shot in the throat. Now I just feel bad about it because. At least that's the least. I mean, before podcasting, the throat was the best place to get shot as a writer. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't go well for him in the end. It sort of did end his life prematurely, I guess. But he got some bangers out in in in terms of books first. Yeah, it can't fault him. All right, so we're talking about Paralympics, talking about the night before the Popular Olympics. You're going to learn why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics. So guess keep listening. OK. 86 years ago in Barcelona, Paul Kassav, the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had already practiced the hymn of the Popular Olympics was a song Co written by a Catalan composer and an exiled Jewish one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they move to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. You might know it as you go to joy. Casals recounted what happened next in his memoirs. I just called the chorus onstage to sing the chorale. When a man rushed into the hall, he handed me an envelope, saying breathlessly. This is from Minister Gassol. An uprising is expected in the city at any moment. I read Caesar's message. It said our rehearsal should be discontinued immediately or the musicians should go straight home, and that the concert scheduled for the following day had been cancelled. The messenger told me that since the message was written, an insurrection had started in Madrid and Fascist troops were now marching on Barcelona. I read the message aloud to the orchestra and to the chorus, and then I said, dear friends, I do not know when we shall meet again. As a farewell to one another, shall we play the finale. And they shouted yes, let us finish it. Then the orchestra played and the chorus sang as never before. I could not see the notes because of my tears. So that's how Paul Casale starts the Civil War. They finished that content in 2016. Incidentally, they came back to the same place and, well, and yeah, it was very the same people. So no, well, OK, the same institutions, right? These are called or fails like I guess popular choruses, popular kind of city orchestra kind of thing. So they finished it in the same place. Because in the intervening 8080 years there was a little issue with the Franco dictatorship, which there still is in Spain incidentally. But yeah, Barcelona is very much reclaimed its memory as an anti fascist city following the dictatorship. I could really, I I could really see myself in those musicians, you know, like. It just feels like a very possible thing, unfortunately, to just be like, OK, what, we're going to do this thing and then. Well, I guess. I don't know. Should we finish? Like, yeah, **** it. **** yeah, right. Like, at some point, maybe not. Like, like, all of us were doing something else when we learned that a bunch of Chuds had stormed Congress, right? And that the the yak hat man was inside the Senate chamber. Like, like I like it and some of us can. I was on a bike ride. I kept riding my bike like there's no there's not much I can do. Sometimes you have to take the moments of joy because there won't be much joy available for the next little while. So yeah, I think it's easy to see myself in a lot of this stuff. Uh, perhaps that's why I'm drawn to it. All right. The following morning, the city woke up before dawn to the sound of gunfire. To most of the Catalan working class, this wasn't a surprise. Secured began 2 days earlier in Morocco, and Word traveled quickly among the anarchists. By the time the men of the 4th Division under General Fernandez Burriel began their March to the Central Plaza de Catalunya. The people of the Popular Front were ready. The uprising had begun in Morocco in the 17th an all day tension of the building. Union Radio had called a general strike and despite the refusal of the Republican government to acknowledge how deep of trouble they are in their unions, are under no illusion as to the stakes. By understanding the 19th, Spain had gone through three prime ministers since breakfast. And Barcelona had defeated a coup. So what happens to the other prime ministers like? OK, you be Prime Minister and you're like, oh **** no, I don't want to be Prime Minister. Or are they getting like killed by the fascists or. No, no, Madrid is is very, what's not very safe. It's safe. They basically your first guy is like, I done ****** ** here. I should have seen this one coming, given that I was explicitly warned about it for weeks. It's like, peace. I'm out. Second guy pops in. He's like, don't worry, guys. We can fix this. Well, we need to do is call the call the generals. Talk it out. It's interesting. Fascists? Yeah. Give them just just, like reason with them. And it's interesting because what happens is in that conversation, it's the fascist general I think it's capable of. Yano, he calls. I can't go dead. Maybe. Maybe. Good. Anyway, sounds like you have your people and I have mine. And in that moment, what's happening is a fascist general who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician that he has an obligation to serve the people who elected him and and not just to make like, unilateral compromises with fascists. Right, so that the. Yeah, what a country. What a time. At that moment, that second Prime Minister is also doomed, right? So then we we move on to #3, and at that point we open up the armories to the working class, right. Which is what they should have done earlier. In in every city where the working class is armed, the coup is defeated. In every city where it's not armed, the coup succeeds, and that doesn't have any ramifications for today. So keep going. No, absolutely none. No. It's something that we can't learn from. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't try. That actually it's not direct parallel. There are some really interesting moments in in this particular arming of the working class. One that I had to come back to is that the. The the soldiers, right. It's obviously the the weapons are in the hands of the military. And obviously the military has just done a coup, but not all the military has just done a coup. So you have some generals or colonels who are in charge of barracks who or armories and they will be like, yeah, OK, I've got the order. That's what I'm going to do. I think this crew is kind of ******** like it hasn't succeeded yet. It might not succeed. Here are the rifles Union members, but in Madrid you have another Colonel who's a diehard COO, COO, guy. Big big coup person who is in control of the bolts of the rifles. So like the rifle doesn't work without the bolt, right? The bolt is a bit like. Plugs a hole and makes the bullet go bang. And I've explained that properly. Right, Robert, that's a that's a technical terminology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just the piece that makes the gun go bang. Yeah. So about critical to the functioning, the rifle held by another guy who turns out to be a fashion and so he doesn't issue them the bolts. So you have all these working class militiamen being like how rifle work with no bolt and just alike entering the streets anyway, right. Slapping on the bayonet. Now you have a Pike. We have other people who have never operated a rifle before. So, like, allegedly everyone's calling the Socialist Union headquarters in in Madrid being a do this, do that, and then I can't hear ****. There's just hundreds of people behind me trying to operate the bolt on a bolt action rifle, trying to learn how to do this. And like, they're taking their news print from their Union newspaper, right, and trying to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been in, like, deep storage. This is very evocative. Seem like you could smell it, you can hear it of these people being like, well, it never used these before. They've been a deep storage for a long time. They're covered in grease, but **** it, like it's now or never. Yeah, and it was right. So if we go back to what happened in Barcelona, they had radios in public places, right? Was very common. Whole books about how Nazis use radios, but it's common in the 30s parts of the city, the paving stone to barely been relayed from October 1934's fighting, but they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed, old rifles and pistols, and the bombs that the anarchists particularly loved were dragged out of the bottom of drawers. These people ******* love throwing bombs like the just the, the, the. Yeah. There's a, there's a lady later on in the war could Rosa Ladina mitera like Rosa the Dynamiter, who who just like becomes the legend, right, for just throwing dynamite fascist. She loses balls. Yeah. She like, there's so much awesome **** that happens that gets lost because, you know, ultimately, like, Hitler and and Mussolini win the Spanish Civil War basically, right? Yeah. So actually, that night before the before the troops marched on the city, the UGT, the socialist controlled the dock union, the dock Workers Union. And they're like, hey, hang on, I'm pretty sure there's a ship in the hub that has dynamite on it. Let's read it. So they raid the ship, OK, steal the dynamite and drive through the city, distributing it to union members who spend the entire night making bombs. I'm sure that that went badly for several of them, but yeah, it went baddies of fascist, too, but. Oh yeah, almost undoubtedly. And like, Robert and I have talked to some people in some other contexts who have made homemade bonds and don't smoke is what I will say. Do not smoke. If you're in the process of making bombs or explosives, whatever, that's the same. People say that you can't smoke while you're filling up your car. Yeah. Cowards. Yeah. Go down like a Chad. Yeah. And that is my message to you. The other thing they did was they put on like their mono, silica mono. It's like a like a onesie, right? Like an overall blue mono. It's kind of the militia uniform because they weren't an army. They were just working class people who worked at factories who were not taking any **** from the army that day. And they put on their little union hats, which you can see in all the photos. They look very cool, very quaint. So to understand why the conflict they fought that day began probably beyond the scope of this podcast, and to understand why it ended the way it did will infuriate just about everyone listening. Which is fine, but we don't have all day. OK. If you want to know more about some of the people involved, Margaret Killjoy's podcast and Hispanic Anarchist is a great place to start. What? Yep. Thought it was wonderful. And the. Check that out. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Great podcast. Really great. I love it. Wow. Sophie listened too. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, you should like and subscribe. Is that is that still the thing with the link? If you want to cool people who did cool stuff? Yeah, I think that sounds about right. Yeah, I've heard of that. Yeah, the host is brilliant. Yeah, she's amazing. I'm trying to make be clever, but instead I'm probably blushing. You deserve OK, yeah. If you want to read some books, I'm going to list some books at the end. Probably far too many because this is my **** but I think there's more books written about the Spanish Civil War than. Well, I guess war in general, but I think anarchists have written more about the Spanish Civil War than maybe undoubtedly anything else combined. Yeah, the the device we are speaking on is currently propped up on a large stack of them, actually. Yeah, most of my material possessions. Yeah, it's nice. It's the way your life should be, kids. I've written one, too, and it's heinously expensive, but, you know, I'm happy with it. If if you struggle to obtain it materially, please just shoot me a direct message. Unless you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement because you're a fascist or something, in which case please don't bother. OK. I don't know how you got this far. If you were a fascist, I guess. For now, though, let's get back, Sir. Yeah, yeah. I yeah, I probably have some. I know. **** ***. Nazis, I guess. I think. I think fewer people hate. Listen, I OK my theory. I know that we wanted to hear my theory about why podcasting we do. Because it's harder. People don't have the attention span to hate listen the same way that they can like hate skim or like hate read tweets and reply. And so I've made a lot of different media and a lot of different ways over the past couple of decades, and I get less hate mail about podcasts than most other forms. Yeah, so that's my theory, is that people podcast because no one wants to sit there and like, hey listen, I mean people like hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen to those like clip shows where they take the right wing person and you know, show them saying something that we all think is not an intelligent thing to say and then we laugh or whatever. But so anyway, if you're the person who has been put on this earth to hate, listen to it could happen here in order to. I don't know. Make fun of it to your audience. Thanks for the lessons, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, we're getting that, that sweet revenue, I know. Where does that revenue come from? It just appears. It's like a like lichen grows underside of a wet building. It doesn't come from ads. No, I don't think so. I don't think ads do organic grow a lot, a lot like like and they just start showing up and replicating. We really have no choice. But yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's a fact of nature. And if you are that person, I will say that my message is stop being a Nazi. That's that's me being polite. On the night of the 18th some assault guards members from elite paramilitary police force that was founded by and sometimes mostly loyal to the Republic, went against the other officers as sneaked rifles out to members of the CNT and Anarchist union. That's pretty, that's pretty based. It's the one day, as you will learn, this is a one day all cops took off from being ********. Some of them, it turns out, are capable of doing the right thing, or were in 1936, I should say. Yeah, if cops were handing out rifles to anarchists, the. That would be not a parallel that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Somewhat unique, right? It doesn't mean that these people had not spent the past decades killing each other. It does not mean that they would not return to doing so within less than a year. But just for a day, everything was hunky Dory. And left this Christmas. This pretty, yeah. This more or less is leftist Christmas, like, because there's even, like, there's gifts. They call them proletarian shopping trips, but what they do is, uh, requisition merchandise from stores and and distribute it to people who need it. Are you just, are you referring to armed robbery? Is that that's different thing? Armed robbery if somebody tries to fight back. Otherwise, yeah, happened to be shopping with a gun. That's it. And what if there is no law? Is it really a crime? I don't know. No, no one can say I will say that they only it seems like they only robbed the shopkeepers who were turds, people who, like lent a lot of money at a very high interest rate. Things like that in these predatory and shopping trips. I'm not being against what happened. I'm just, I'm, I'm stripping away some of the the nice cities. Yeah. Yeah. If people hadn't gathered they they weren't picking up what I was putting down. Yes, it is going into a shop with guns and taking things and giving them to people who need them. Whether or not that is bad, who can say? Robin Hood. Famous villain in history. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, bad, bad dude. Sheriff of Nottingham, on the other hand, would have been big into crypto, I'm sure. All around legend. O. When I said if there is no law, I wasn't really joking, like at this point, Luis Compant, who's the Catalan leader, he's a liberal leftist politician, and earlier that evening he refused to open the armories. He realizes that things are out of his control, and so he set off for a walk and he walks down the Rambler. Right. If you've been to Barcelona, it's this big Old Street now. It's full of the kind of restaurants that have photographs on their menus, so that German people. Can understand what they're going to eat. Just much of Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people who don't speak Catalan or Spanish, who go to Barcelona can eat very well there for lots of money. If you been on holiday, you probably been there. I did not eat very well in Barcelona, really. I had almost no money and was vegan, and my Spanish was abysmal and my cotton was nonexistent, so I mostly hung out and cooked pasta there. There are not a lot of cities I've been to where it's harder to eat vegan than Barcelona, that is. That is a challenge. Maybe Belgrade? Yeah, where? The net, where the national dish is 30 pounds of meat on a plate. Yeah. Sophia. No, Sophia. So I can't remember. I pronounced the name of the capital of Bulgaria. Also a hard place to eat vegan. That was hard for me. That does not surprise me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Surprise me. It's a big part of the the Catalan cuisine. You'll be like, Oh yeah, I'm having some lentils, and then they'll be like, psych, there's a pig in here. We put a whole ******* pig in this thing. We did reverse vegan. We made lentils out of pig. I just ate falafel everywhere I go and I just eat falafel. You can crush them. Falafel. And one of the Catalan national dishes is called Cappi Potter, which means head and foot because those are the ingredients. And it's it's a bit of a pig that no one else wanted. One of the American National dishes is also the head and feet of the face of a pig, but they call it a hot dog. At least the Catalan to honest about it. And that's true. But yeah, it's better now to eat vegan. I'm vegan and I was there in 2019. Have to move among the right circles. But yeah, on the Rambler, it would be hard. And so that night compounds is walking down the Rambler. He's got his hat across his face so no one could see him, and he's pulled up his collar, kind of like an old timey Private Eye. And up and down the Rambler, anarchists and socialists are stealing cars and welding armor plates to the front of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another time honored anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of War is the improvised technical. And So what they do here is Weld these steel plates. Right. And then they write the name of the union on top just so people can know who's killing them well, and so they could keep track of their stolen cars. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Like, yeah. Yeah, you don't want anyone stealing your stolen car. Yeah, yeah. There comes a point in the next couple of weeks where some of the more ideologically committed anarchists will stop or take down traffic signals because they feel they're an unwarranted restriction on individual liberty. There's Twitter discourse, yeah, yeah, get on that tank. Yes, time is a flat circle. Yeah, it's it's very funny. I'll bet they, I bet there were was a contingent of them that were taking down libraries, too, for gatekeeping knowledge. Libraries and cuffs. Libraries are big prisons. Book pigs. Yeah, they burned them just in the classic Gannicus fashion. Or we all know that libraries are better served under a free market system like that, one guy tweeted. Yes, Amazon should run the library and every book should cost you $10. Yep, that's that's the only way we can grow as a society. And if you don't like it, well, something to front your truck. Also, if you have an idea that's based on a book in Amazon owns the copyright, they now own the idea. That's the only thing that's fair. No thinking without proper copyright. Is it OK to use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owns words? No. Does that mean that we're going to be fighting the next one of these situations with? Instead of spray painting CNT, someone's going to come by and spray paint Amazon basics onto them with a third choice. I'm doing that tonight. I would be upper armouring my truck as soon as we're finished. Yeah, and spray painting Amazon basics and then just going to the beach after that. And actually what they sprayed painted on them. There was CNT, there was you GT, there was Phi. These are CNT Confederation Nationale de Trabajo, right? National Labor confederation. Is an anarcho syndicalist union Phi Federation. Anarchiste Beria is the Iberian Anarchist federation. They're a group within the CNT that is more committed to a hardline, illogical ideological anarchism. The UGT are Socialist union. You have other groups to the poem. It's probably the only other one you need to know. They are not Trotsky, it's Trotskyites. Anyone who tells you they are either doesn't know they're talking about. Or is consciously misleading you. And they were in open beef with Trotsky, right? Like there are, they are writing letters 2 Trotsky beefing about whether they should exist. Uh, which Trotsky is, is a no on that question. And so yeah, they're not Trotskyist, they just get called Trotskyist by Stalinists because everyone who they don't like is a Stalinist, right that they are. Anti Stalinist Marxists is what I would call them. Uh, what some folks do, though, is they paint UHP on top of their cars. You'll need us. Hermanos Pretorius, I think it stands for United Proletarian siblings, I guess. And that's important, right? Because these groups had been fighting among themselves and with each other for a very long time. And and and having like. Do what appeared today to be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things, but they were important. And, you know, this ideological commitment is what gets them through this period of time. But the UHP comes from a studious where anarchists and socialists had come together to fight against the state's right to fight as part of a minor strike. Miners particular love for dynamite, by the way, and that's how they sense, yeah, kings of the dynamite throw, that. That's how they dealt with the local Garrison. Really? And actually, the first use of a combat helicopter was against the Popular Front the UHP in Astorias, and that strike was eventually put down by one Francisco Franco, who will learn about later. Nice guy, no problems with him. That's a lie. Yeah, shocking, I know. Turns out to be a total turd of a human being. But he was a, wasn't he? Oh no, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wasn't he, like some sort of vaguely. Wasn't he like a right wing syndicalist for a while? Yeah, he had all kinds of, sort of. I don't think Franco had any convinced political views other than like that he wanted to be in charge. But yes, he was like a radical syndicalist. I said right wing syndicalist, but yeah, no, but so a number of officers. I didn't know if Franco was with them, but there, there were, like, I don't know, group called the Radical Party who were. OK, I see. I'm not sure if Frank was one, now that I think about it. Not to learn too much about the person of of Francisco Franco 'cause. He is a turd. Hmm. He he does pivot and he pivots when he's in power, right from like a sort of more totalitarian project to this national Catholic project to sort of, yeah, he's a problematic dude with yeah, with no clear ideology other than he should be in power. And he doesn't care who he has to roll over to get there. And. That's a common political ideology. It is, yeah. It pops up a lot on the right something. Something there with dudes on the right that maybe we should think about. This never happened again and are never in this country, of course. OK. Fortunately, they're saying it could never happen right where we are. Yeah. That's not in my backyard. That's the real name of the show, right? Yeah. America is different. I think is the subtitle. And. Yeah. OK, so sorry. No, no, no. I'm just sad that anyway. The people in Barcelona that day were even more numerous and diverse, and the already bustling city was used to. The 19th of July was slated to be the start of the largest anti fascist spectacle the world had ever seen. And that's a direct quote from a publicity article about the Popular Olympics, right? As I said, these games aim to show the strength of the Popular Front with a series of events. Some of those events are the ones you might expect, but some of these events were designed to reward nations with a healthy working class rather than nations with a few exceptional athletes. Right? So we look at the Olympics today. Having one or two exceptional athletes, especially in certain areas, can like vault you to the top of the metal table, right? Metal table, of course, invented by the Nazis to illustrate eugenics. Yeah, yeah. Before almost six, there was no Olympics table. Not in the formal way that we see it now. So much of the pageantry that we associate with the Olympic Games was invented by Karl Dean. The torch relay, the parade of flags in the opening ceremony. Like, yeah, the the Olympics are ******* Nuremberg. Like with the rainbow rings. It's wild how much of that **** is crib straight from Nazi pageantry. Cool. The book called the Nazi Games. Pretty good on that if you wanna read it. Lots of books about the 3036 Olympics. But yeah, I should just acknowledge that the the International Olympic Committee did fund a lot of my research. And for reasons that may be becoming clear have since ceased also. Clearly didn't think I was very good I guess. But anyway, institution that has some **** to deal with that it hasn't dealt with, I would say. And yeah, it was on its ******** heavily in 1936, right? So one of the things they did at the Popular Olympics was they had a 10 by 100 meter relay. And it's just like, I don't know if the Americans have school sports days. Yes, I try to fly. I don't remember anything about public school sporting events. OK. At the risk of sort of unveiling more trauma. What happened here? No, it's fine, OK. Happens here is that you line up right in groups of five and you just run back and forth passing a bat on to each other and much like school sports day, with the caveat being that the people in this event had to already be entered in other events at the games. So, like, you just get like weight lifters and there was a chess event at the games, right? So you get the chess athletes and they're just hauling *** as fast as their chess playing legs can carry them back and forth to prove the, like, superior health of their nation's working class. Let's chest leads, chests, fleets, chest leads. Chest leads. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I really saved that one. Yeah, you pulled it back. Yeah. I'm proud of you. Yeah, they didn't have any mathletes. Yeah, sadly, yeah, they did have people who built human castles. It's another event. And really. But wait, wait, wait. A castle made out of humans? Whoa, wait. You are not familiar with Castells the like the the Great cattle and tradition of building human towers? No, no. OK, like pivot. This is ****** now. One of my friends wrote her PhD on these. Who they **** about. Yeah, they just made-up just now. Listen, OK A you can write your history PhD about literally anything as long as no one else has written it before. That is the scene Quanah history PHD's. And I wrote my PhD about the anti for Olympics, right? I wrote my masters about Pretorian shopping trips. That's cool. Yeah, I thought so. At the time the yeah, so castells right you, you get your people at the bottom right and they sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist and then they they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware that I'm biting my shirt and this is mainly an audio medium, but they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right? Men and women, non binary people, I'm sure too. The former Big old circle and then the next layer, climb up them right and stand on top of them. Slightly fewer people and the people get smaller and they're layers have fewer people in them. Concentric circles, right as you get higher and higher, and then a small child wearing always a horse riding helmet, for reasons that are not entirely clear, ascends and this **** is high, like if you're standing on your balcony like you are eye to eye with this ******* toddler who climbs up the top, get to the top like arm in the air, and then climbs back down. And these groups and people do this and people do this all the time. Yeah, look, America's national sport is is this thing where like young, young men give each other brain damage. So I'm not anti this, I'm just. What I actually impressed by it, because we do the human pyramid thing, which is the same thing, only not nearly as impressive or interesting. No, I checked out customers. The cool thing about them is they exist within communities, right? These calls, these groups of castellers are groups of people who do this from a neighborhood, right? So that they'll all be from a certain town. Like the Tarragona group was the one near me and my friend's dissertation. Either reports her name. You can probably look it up. It was about like how this this practice has been integrated into incorporating migrants into Catalan. This right, like Catalan identity by being like, yeah, come and come and stand on us or be stood on by us and you 2 can be Catalan. Oh, that seems like that would. Yeah, that would bring a community closer together into a heap on the ground. Yeah, and it has all kinds of other uses, right? Cat stuck up a tree? Just call those guys wanna rob a house. Yeah. Famously, ladders are banned in Catalonia because they're cowards. Yeah, yeah, just yeah, all day. Castells. But yeah, this was part of the Popular Olympics, right? Human castles. So I'm glad we went there. For everyone who didn't know people Googling that, it's part of, like, the UN, like United Nations protected Human patrimony or something, like it's a. It's it's it's important. So do you ever just, like, make up stuff to tell Americans about and then and then we believe you because you have an accent? We have an accent, too, sure. But like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Luckily your accents are all neutral and vanilla. Yeah, exactly. The unmarked voice. Yeah, yeah. No, I did. I think I've told this story on the Internet before, but one time I was giving a talk about diabetes in the Bronx and just I asked if this kid wanted to ask these kids. They wanted to ask any questions, and young women itching to ask a question just goes. Do you guys really have pies with meat in them? Like as if she had been misled her whole life and it's able to confirm that for her. Savory pie is like, ****** me up. When I was in France, I was completely unprepared for the existence of these things. I volunteered to cook for a bunch of a bunch of activists who were busy having their meeting, and I was like, yeah, sure, I'll cook for you. And I figured I would just, like, show up and make pasta or burritos because I'm an American. And they gave me a luminous. And on. It was a tarte lagum and I was like, I know what those words mean. That means Pi vegetables, and that isn't that doesn't exist. I don't know what the **** you're talking about. This is not a very interesting story, and now everyone's heard it. But I I learned how to make a vegetable pie on no notice, because that was what the menu insisted upon. And yeah, I I feel for this person in the Bronx who wasn't convinced that you were telling the truth about meat pies. Yeah, if they're listening. I was a promise. Look it up. Now they've got Google. Yeah. The lesson we've learned there is don't cook for French people. So at the games, one of the cool things is that nations competed instead of states, right? We can ******* go off on the difference between nations and states. State is the entity that has political control and exercise of monopoly on legitimate violence in the geographic area, a nation is an imagined community that exists across space and time. That's the shortest. I'm going to do that, and I'm not going to say anything about what's a country between those. A country is essentially, it's a geographical area that is state controls. OK, cool, but sometimes it's mapped onto nation as well, right? Like Catalonia being a good example. But for most of the time people use it synonymously with state. So countries aren't competing, nations are right. The exiled Jews of Europe are competing, right? Because if you're Jewish and it's 1936, you don't want to ******* get like marching there with the German flag, I would imagine. Doesn't feel good, yeah. Negative vibes. So they don't do that. There they are. The exodus, right? And the anti fascists who are exiled from Germany and Italy. They also come in with their own different flags, right? Initially there was some rumblings about the N double ACP sort of competing. But in the end the United States team which is made-up of trade unionists had black and white folks on it and the organizers were actually so invested in like the I guess including a pressed black people from the United States within the remit of people who sort of anti fascism wanted to advocate for that. They threw this whole Olympics together in like 3 or four months. It was shoestring budget. It's funded by the French government, the Spanish Government, the Catalan Government, individual donors and some trade unions from Norway. And they took their very sparse money. And we're like, we will pay your way if you, if you're black people from America want to come over here because we understand it's **** over there. And if you want to come and play with us and that's fine. Which is a cool, like, **** you to the fact that because the whole Olympics is a **** you to to Nazi Germany. Right. And so it's cool that it also was like and **** you to racism in the United States also. Like, I like that. Yeah. And like, it's also worth noting, actually, look, while we're saying **** you to the Nazis and that. Like the people at the Popular Olympics, like ran faster, jumped higher, worse, stronger at like the Olympics are extremely gate kept by class. Uh, we'd see the we see that kind of crumbling like with your with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that, right. But at this point there was still work as sports and bourgeois sports, bourgeois sport. 20 Olympics, right? Like the Olympics still had an amateurism rule if you got paid for exercise and you couldn't go. So yeah, which meant that like working class people, right? Like, if you don't get paid time off and don't get ******* paid time off, it's 1936. Then they can't go and compete, right? Like, if even if you work full time and I say, hey, Margaret, I'll pay for a couple of weeks, you know, make sure I take care of your rent so you can go and do the Olympics. Nope. If you run a benefit race after the Olympics, they will take your medal away. Holy **** there's Tom Longboat, who they did that to. They do that a whole lot to people who aren't white. Shockingly. So yeah, uh, Olympics. Not great, actually. Maybe we'll do a whole left and we'll have the Olympics do some bad ****. Yeah, these people come from America, right? On the team, it's Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley goes on to be kind of a legendary boxer, right? He's biracial man from Pennsylvania. And Doc Tucker, she's a black woman. She ran her union in the Bronx and she ran the 100 meters as well. Yeah, ******* plan that one out. Yeah. I love a good written into the script, like planned out. It's good. Don't we sound sarcastic? But I actually mean it. Really? Honestly, you can appreciate the joy that I'm feeling right now. Yeah, so that games brings 20,000 anti fascists to Barcelona, right? And some of them are watching, some of them are competing, some of them are staying in hotels. They hotel Olympic is where most of them stay, but they ran out of space, so about two weeks before the game. Went around random houses and were like, hey, can you have someone to stay? So lots of the athletes are just like crashing with people. And it's kind of cool. If you go to the archive in Barcelona, you can see the little forms where they go up to a house and be like, OK, this person has two beds and they can take care of breakfast and that's two athletes who can stay here. Went door to door. Yeah. It's heartbreaking seeing that **** and then knowing what happened. And I was thinking it was like a better way to Oh yeah, like, that's what Airbnb should be, you know? Yes, yeah. Anarchist Airbnb. Yeah, if we compare this to the Berlin Olympic Village where the Condor Legion stayed before they headed off to bomb people in Spain. We will see that one side is better than the other side. And yeah, so these people are staying all across Barcelona, right? They're trained in the stadium the day before. They're distributed all around the city. So on the morning of the 19th requetes, these are kind of ******** Catholic conservatives, and they report to the senatorial barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the Pedralbes barracks, officers get their troops up. I think it's at 4:00 in the morning. Serve them a ration of rum. For breakfast and tell them that there's been an anarchist uprising in the city that they have to put down. And so they send them my right. This is a lie. Yeah. The uprisings, in fact, what they are doing as they March into the city, it's telling that they lie because the troops are conscripts and are not really bought into their nationalist crusade at this point. And it's worth always remembering that, like working class people get trapped up in wars, often not by their own choosing. Well, so it's kind of like how they're like, you have to go out and fight Antifa. You have to go out and do a coup against the United States because otherwise. Antifa, who are all Stalinists, are going to turn the US into the USSR. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah. There. There's no parallel. No, that's that's not a parallel. Sorry. Oh, OK. No, it could never happen here. And that's that's our big message for today. So these guys, they start heading down, I've gnula diagonal right towards Plathe Catalunya at the heart of the city. The cavalry on a different St Carry, Tarragona, there were dragoons on a different St They leave a little later, because the Spanish army is something of a *********** and they all plan to join up. But they never did. Instead, all across the city, sirens sound the alarm. In factories and where these troops have been planning to meet up with one another, they met up with sniper fire and those homemade bombs we talked about? Yeah, yeah. This is where **** gets gets good. At the barricades, they met men and women armed with everything from modern machine pistols to blunderbusses and slingshots. Yeah, the blunderbusses are pretty cool. You can find some pictures. Many troops were forced back into their barracks. Some made it as far as the telephone exchange and the hotels Ritz and Cologne in the middle of the city. What the troops? Who are incredibly poorly trained conscripts with little or no combat experience and even less willingness to fight. Ran into was the most unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's nationalists had governed the autonomous region since the declaration of the Republic in 1931. They formed a broad leftist alliance called the Escala Republicana de Catalonia. That means Catalan Republican left. I just call them the ERC to avoid the that's a bit of an alphabet soup, but I'll try and explain where I need to. So before the Popular Front existed, they're kind of a proto Popular Front. They combined liberal and leftist parties who share agreement on autonomous and progressive Catalonia, and they tend to be either aligned with or to the left of the government in Madrid, most often to the left of Umm, they don't. Have the support of the anarchists right, that's important. Louise Compans, who's the the leader, right the the Catalan leader of the Generalitat at that point, has been a lawyer for the anarchist before, so he may have more personal support than the party as a whole has among the anarchists. For decades, right, the police in Barcelona have acted on behalf of capital, against Labour. They do violence for the people who own stuff against people who make stuff. And even under Republic, this has continued, right. They called it the Republic of order. And but, Margaret, I think you covered the, like the pistol right there, the years of the pistol in the 1920s. Yeah, yeah, but it was. Yeah. They like shooting the anarchists in order to. Yeah, bring about order. They and they, it wasn't like a legal thing. They weren't like, oh, it's our legal strategy. It was just a like, we're in charge. So we will assassinate the anarchists. And then the other thing that, like, I feel like is like we're thinking about because if someone's hearing you might be like, well, why does the government care if the anarchists are on their side? And it's to my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, the anarchists are like a huge chunk of the working class of Barcelona at this point. So it's like they actually do care because it's a huge. Huge swaths of people. The anarchists by the end of the night will own the city right and and they have always been the majority of the Catalan working class. In this. They they control the way elections go, right when the anarchists abstain, then the right wins when the anarchists. They don't say don't vote like they they don't like. They're not like, yeah, go vote, they're like, they don't. Maybe consider not abstaining. Then the Popular Front wins, right? Yeah, it's very funny how they how they use words, but yeah, the the anarchists are the working class for most of the most of the industries. Most of the unions are anarcho syndicalist, right. So you don't have to support the anarchists, you don't support the working class. Yeah, in the 20s, the cops killed the anarchists. Yankees called the cops, right? This is how we get the famous affinity groups, right? Los Solidarios, Los quotes, deli dial and nosotros being some famous ones, right? And we'll talk about them a little bit in the next episode, how that works and what they mean. So. In 1971 there was declaration of Republic was a massive boost for the anarchists and more people joined anarchist unions. They felt safer doing so primordially Vera, the previous dictator had been very harsh on anarchists. They actually briefly in the out your budget secured like libertarian socialist and they took over some towns. And like they they seized weapons from the cops and abolished currency for a week. And it would just like, yeah, it's on it, it's anarchism. And so for five days for goals belong to the people of the goals. And this is before this we're talking about before the the coup and all of that. Yeah, this is in 1932, the public begins in 1931. So there's a number of these early on in the Republic when the state is less violently postured towards anarchism. The anarchist really ******* send it. You see it in Casas Viejas, you see in figurals. So yeah, they more people join because they feel safe for joining and that leads to more. Open conflict with the sort of civil order, I guess. But with the threat of fascism looming, the CNT establishes defense committees and these become like a quick reaction force for the city, right? So by the time the troops leave their barracks, activists within the CNT were ready for them. Barcelona's rival, the densely populated district, just off the more tourist friendly Rambler, have become known as A Bari Chinese. And that means Chinatown. Not because Chinese people are people of any age and extraction live there. That's because they watched gangster movies about Chicago's Chinatown and they were like, Oh yeah, we're we can go that hard, OK, just they just called it that. Chris Elam has great book on the construction of Chinatown. Now people have been shooting each other in those streets for decades, right? But. But once everyone in their role was pointing their guns out, every balcony in the rival becomes a sniper's nest and. By the time the sun came up, it was an impenetrable fortress of the working class, and and at this time, the state would find itself begging the anarchists for support and not the other way around. And I think that's maybe where we'll end it today, so that people can be sort of teetering on the edge of their seats to know what happens next. Thank you very much for joining me, Margaret. Would you like to plug anything? Do you have any plegables? Uh, well, I have a book that's available for pre-order. It's called we won't be here tomorrow and if you like. A trans woman who robs guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover? Or you like the. The dead in Valhalla coming back and joining in an American Civil War to fight against Nazis. Then you might like this book. Actually, I think I read that story on this podcast. This the the Viking one. You ******* ruined the next episode because that's what happened as well. I know, I know. Well, actually there's a different story that I didn't write, I think. Oh no, there's one about velociraptors in the Spanish Civil War. That OK. That anyway, that's completely unrelated. OK, so that is where you I'm the book is currently available for pre-order, and if you get it from AK Press or a couple other different independent bookstores, then it comes with a free art print that comes from the book. And so if you like that, you could consider getting it or ask your library to get it and you can follow me on the Internet at magpie, Killjoy on Twitter, and Margaret Killjoy on Instagram. That's my plugable podcast. I have a podcast I do. I actually have two podcasts. I have a podcast called Live like the World is Dying which is an individual and community preparedness podcast and I also have a podcast on this very network. I do, yeah. You all haven't noticed it yet. I've just been kind of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about history, but in a fun way about stuff that cool. Yeah. Excited to do it right now. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. 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. 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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 My Cultura 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, 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. Ah, welcome back to it could happen here. This is Part 2 of Jane happen here, the podcast that *****. All right, that's my job done today. OK, Part 2 of James translations. Robert. The Spanish Civil War and the the Antifa Olympics. That's right. Yep. Civil War Week closing out with this one. Why does the Olympics? Why did the Antifa Olympics hate freedom, though, is my question. The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of the balls. Yeah, they they're taking your children and busloads of black clad athletes are showing up in your cities to play sports. This does make me think back briefly to win a couple of different anti fascist groups in Seattle and Portland played soccer and it became a whole thing because yeah, there. I used to play anarchist soccer in New York City. Yeah and uh, that got that got cancelled hard. Well, it's important that it got cancelled hard. It also because it was in New York City. There was a bunch of like semi famous actors who would come and play anarchist soccer but then couldn't be a like visually associated. So like people would all mask up in solidarity, whatever camera people would come by because like some famous actor was playing anarchist soccer in the park. That's very funny. Yeah, that's outstanding. With that needed, yeah. These anarchists of course, were just busy doing the traditional versus thing of starting forest fires in Oregon before ohk. OK, before the civil war. So anyway, picking up from the last episode, where are we left our heroes? Yeah, we're talking about the heroes, right? So with the military marching towards the city and every balcony in the working class rival quickly becoming a snipers nest, every rifle was needed at the barricades with Spanish and Catalan tops took an unprecedented break from being ********. And instead. Different elements of the Mossos de Squadra, Quadria Seville and the elite paramilitary assault guards grabbed their handy carbines rifles with names like Tiger and Destroyer and took yeah, none of them are called Robert, sadly and took to the barricades in defense. Missed opportunity, right? This is why the Spanish lost. Get me my Robert. I can see it now. I'll. I'm prepared to help you with the advertising it. No, just just going to bomb them right up. That's why they called them bobbies. Yeah, famously. I think we need to make. I think it needs to be some sort of like 9 barreled electronic volley gun. I wanna. Yeah, somebody could take out two something that could take out at least two Japanese prime ministers at once. You only need 2 barrels for one Prime Minister. So you could get up to four. Yeah, yeah, shoot through space and time. Alright, so they go back and get Junichiro Koizumi, finally bring him to justice. With a 9 barrel pipe gun. OK, so these people, so the cops and the anarchists are fighting alongside each other, is that what you're telling? Correct? Yep. The anarchists are pulling up paving stones, building barricades which they had learnt in previous conflict with the state could stop light artillery and they are welcoming the cops. It's worth pointing out that the heroes today are not cops, and the heroes of day are very rarely cops. Instead, it's the ordinary people of Catalonia, right? Everyone from liberals to left libertarians runs to the barricades. But. The anarchist affinity groups, the Anarchist defense committees, are the mortar that holds together the resistance, right? They're experienced, they have plans, they provide impetus and inspiration to the working class, they are ready when they're liberal. Government is not. And they had a pretty good handle on fighting in the streets of Barcelona too. This is their home turf, right? And incidentally, we see this **** a lot like people who are good at fighting the cops become integral, and fighting the state. Happened in the Maidan, happened in Tahrir Square, both with. Like ultras, right? Liquor football fans or people who go to football games would also like fighting cops. So, like, it's not unprecedented that the folks who are good at fighting the cops become integral at fighting the state. When state turns bad, turns bad. In many cases they also have more experience when inflating their weapons than the poorly trained conscripts, because it would be pretty hard to have less. There's a little bit of a debate, a discussion about causality here. There's a coup fail where it does because the cops remain loyal. Or does the beachhead established by the working class allow the cops who were sympathetic but not convinced to safely remain loyal? Right? So across Spain it's like it's not quite the same as us to cut the cops are better. Trained and better armed than the military, but they often hung back until the working class had taken decisive action. Right? Where the winds blowing, yeah, exactly like they sometimes. Like occasionally they will do some sort of kingship, like in the one city they the couple of the assault guards are, they're officers side with a coup so they get shocked by their own men. Yes, he loves to see in other places they don't do nothing. In some places the soldiers come for them were like, **** it, it's on now, but in in other places they join with the working class as they do in Barcelona. The Civil Guard is older and the civil Guard tends to be more rural places where the coup tends to be more successful and civil guard tends to be less loyal to the Republic. The civil guided Barcelona waits until noon at the coup is really defeated by noon. By noon the soldiers are holed up in a food buildings and it's very clear that they haven't won. And that they come in on horseback, clip clopping down the street, doing the race fist salute, like just milking it to announce their sort of loyalty to Republic. They did have better guns and better marksmen, so they were helpful in sorting their buildings. That came next. All right. All right, everyone, we're here. We saved the day. Yeah, here we come. Thin blue line. So what happens all across Barcelona is that the tremendously poorly organized army meet well organized, well entrenched resistance, and they're killed, are turned back. And so I want to give one example of this from Avenida Karia. It's related by Beaver in his book. Now, what they've done in the carrier was taken out huge roles of news print, like the stuff that you put in newspaper on and rolled them into the streets to make a barricade. Right? And so the degree to which people were like ready in like amusing ways is is a great part of this. You know, that was what they had available to them. Seemed to be stopping bullets. So lots of layers is the way to stop bullets. So it is, yeah, lots of layers of new Sprint. Armor is a thing. Different places. So yes, it was. Yeah, yeah. And it certainly seemed to work here. And they had a big old guns like Spanish mouses, so the fighting stops for a second, and a small group of workers and an assault guard close the distance between themselves and 275 millimeter field guns, but holding their rifles above their heads. They signaled they wanted to talk and not to fight. It's a few minutes to give a passionate speech informing the soldiers they've been lied to, that the anarchists were not in revolt, that they were in fact part of a coup. And they should not fire on their pretorian brothers. It's not exactly clear what they said, but whatever they said, it worked, and very slowly. The seed of class consciousness was planted and it bloomed in about the time it takes to turn a 75 millimeter gun 180 degrees, load it, and fire it at your offices. Which, again, it's just so good like that that these powerful anecdotes of like, someone just being like, huh? Yeah. Now that you phrase it like that, we're on the same team. Let me turn this artillery gunner around. Yeah. I also just love to think of the guy who's just been like previously, like, for God and country. Gets vaporized by a 75 millimeter gun, yeah. It's truly magnificent stuff. So the popular Olympians are still in town right? That they turned up to show off as anti fascist but they didn't really expect to be showing off their antifascist bonafide as quite like this, but lots of them were winning participants. The Americans were down by the boqueria market. You've probably been there. You've been to Barcelona. He probably bought an edible arrangement, sort of tourists like to do and and they watch the streets around them turn into Battlegrounds. You can see the bullet holes in the hotel where they stayed and some of the cafes around there and but. Some of these bullet holes, it should be mentioned from a sadder and altogether different battle a year later. And that this day they popped out of their hotel rooms, take a look at what was going on, got shot at, and then went back inside and then popped out of different balconies. But they had this type of popping out of different balconies, like, I don't understand what the **** is going on in their heads, where, like, people keep shooting at us. Let's continue to try different balconies. I could see doing that. Just being so curious. Right. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They said. And they've all made friends with Spanish people, right. They were just, they were not the athletes of today, that they were out late drinking every night. And they were really bummed very quickly, very upset. They we need to get stuck in, like, you know, we're young, healthy people. And their Diaries, they also write about seeing the Spanish women at the barricades and just being like, oh, **** yes, this is outstanding. Yeah. And yeah, they're just like. Because they're very committed, right? Like these these anti fascists are very committed to, to gender equality like they really are. And it's it's demonstrable in all the communications about a popular Olympics when they send stuff to unions and unions. Like here's a team, it's 10 dudes are like, well that's ******* disappointing. Like where are the women? What are we doing here? Hey, how are we making the world better with just a bunch of dudes exercising together like so that it really is, I think a very genuine commitment for them. And yeah, they're just so pumped so when the fighting. Both these guys come running out, and they saw those cavalry horses, right? The cavalry horses that they'd expected to parade down the Rambler in the victorious coup had now been stacked on top of each other as barricades. And so the horses, yes, they they used the horses as cover. You can find pictures of this mainly. Yeah. OK. Yeah. It kind of supplies the horses didn't want to be fascist. Yeah. But I think you can take some solace in knowing that the people who are writing them also got killed. Yeah. Well, you say the horses didn't want to be fascist. This is at the intersection of **** you enjoy, Robert. Actually, yeah, yeah. ******** on horses and hating fascists, yeah, which are the same. No, but see, horses would be very good at shooting on fascists from a great height. Yeah. Yeah, I know RIP horses did nothing wrong. Paul went out for the horses. Charlie Burley runs down into the street, right? He's pretty accustomed to fighting. He's a boxer. He is a mixed race kid who grew up in Pittsburgh. He's refused to go to the 1936 Olympics because he doesn't want any of Hitler's ********. And he doesn't speak Spanish, so all he'd need, all he knows how to do, is pick up a crowbar, start levering up paving stones and helping to build a barricade. And so that's what he does. Universal language. Yeah. Breaking ****. And and so he just gets stuck in a number of them do right these barricades they built, like I said, they were so strong that they would stop light artillery. Across the city whipped, and snaps of bullets cracked. Across the wide boulevards, they cut through the regimented grid of the exemplar. Snipers were stationed in the Bell towers of churches. They picked off the newly formed people's militias. They dashed between the barricades, carrying ammunition and food. French athlete. Right wing. Right wing snipers. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So that you will definitely read that they were priests, but they're not. I don't think just, you know, you're going to put a sniper. You want to put someone up there who knows how to use a rifle. But yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So they probably weren't pretty. Doesn't mean the police were not betting them should we were at some points. But yeah, This is why the churches get burned. Yeah. It's one of the reasons a group of German exiles suspected their companies, diplomat might be. Involved. So they raided their homes and found massive stashes of weapons. Which is great. The the Republic had very liberal asylum policies, so you have a ton of German, Italian, anti fascists already in town and elsewhere. People found each other in the streets, were joined up with pre-existing affinity groups to form Centuria. Centurio is a Latin word for units of 100 soldiers. They're broadly based on language and they're named after some famous leftists like Tom Mann, Karl Marx or Ernst Salomon right there, founder of. Antifa with a capital A. Later these would become the nucleus of the International Brigades, but the International Brigades were the army of the Comintern and the Santoria weren't. They didn't have the basically like under Soviet control. Yes, that's right, the Soviet controlled Communist international. So they were doctrinally Stalinist, more or less right. And certainly like, you can read a **** behind about the International brigades going from a broad Popular Front leftist alliance to. A straight up Stalinist and what that does to their their desire to fight and their ability to fight. And I would suggest that it's not great, but story as old as time. Yes, it is, yeah, yeah, draw your own conclusion. Cecil Elba is very good on that if you want to read his book. So these Centralia don't have officers and they certainly don't have commissars, right? And off they roll to fight the Nazis by 11:00 AM. General Goddard has landed from Majorca. He. Was hoping to command the city which he the nationalists thought the Barcelona would be the easiest city for them, right? They thought it was a soft target and they were wrong. I don't know. Again. Uh, yeah, not smart. Uh. It was only through the intervention of Caridad Mercader, her son incidentally killed Trotsky, that his life was spared. He, holed up in the headquarters. Headquarters, was overrun. They wanted to execute immediately. She intervened, she says. No, you know, we got to, we got to do this pretense of justice, so we put him on the prison ship Uruguay, and then he's killed a little later after a court martial. He's executed a few weeks later in the month week Castle that day. In the month week Castle. The troops had shot their officers the ends, and the NCO's had loaded a raid on the Armory where they began distributing guns to anarchists again. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to see it. The cabler, left, and the Catholic Church had some historical disagreements. Right at the church, had a long history of violence towards the left, and the left had an equally long history of violence towards the church. The church had been part of brutal oppression of the working class right victimization of of people, especially of working class women, and as troops withdrew from the city in July 1936, anarchists began to take revenge against the churches. Non sculptures were disinterred. Priests accused of collaboration were executed. By the afternoon the sky began to fill with smoke. Churches burned all over the city. Sometimes they have these things called checkers, which were like revolutionary tribunals where they put the priests or the churches themselves. Later, outside Madrid, there's a famous photo of them, like executing a giant statue of Jesus Christ after putting it on trial. That's what's in the future for Robert Evans, who's that is. That is a pretty funny bit. Yeah, it's good. There's a firing squad and everything. It's like a pretty good dedication to the bet you got. Whether or not you agree with it, you have to respect it. Yeah, they yeah, I it's a good T-shirt. Maybe we could, you know, return to merch and have that that image. But yeah, some Catholics rebuilt it daily. It's it's no longer riddled with bullet holes in its face. Well, it's time to well, yeah. You know what that means. Yes, it's time to kill God. Storm Haven, Yep, and redistribute all the stuff. Harps for everyone? Yeah people will robes. Actually this became a bit of an issue because people would be like, lol look at me, I'm wearing a robe, I pretend to be a priest and then other people will be like **** you priest and shoot them. Yeah, don't do that, actually. Robes for everyone. Bad idea. In at a time of anticlerical violence, what you can do is drink all the communion wine, which is what they did. It's all the blood of Christ is what they drink. Yes, yes. I'm sorry. Actually, I guess it only becomes that in the stomach. Yeah. No, I'm a bad Catholic. I don't remember any of this. Or it's just wine until they until they do the thing. Yeah. OK. And say the words, and then there's something special happens. That's that's that's the. The Eucharist. O as the pre blood. Yeah, it's his pre blood. It's just sweet wine. Hmm. By the 20th of July. The military was all but done for inner city, right? But they some of them had retreated back to their barracks immediately. They came out promptly got shot at by a **** ton of people and went Nope and and Paul the 180 returned to the barracks. So smarter than the tourists at the hotel, yes, although I don't know about that because these guys end up dying there and the tourists do not their side one. But yes, yeah, yeah, true. So I I would be lying if I said the tourists do not because one of those tourists does. A guy called Albert al Checkin. They called him chick. He was a coach of the team, Community College professor actually, and. He leaves, goes back to America and just can't deal with, like, missing. It's not so much that the guilt of not being there. It's. And I think some of us maybe can relate to this in a way, right? Like the missing of being there too. Yeah, the phone like that. Yeah. And how special it feels. Roberts off. Robert can can relate to this, right? Like sometimes it's some time you feel the most alive is when you're trying not to be dead. But also, like, this was a ******* awesome time, right? Like the cops have joined the working class. The churches are on fire, the bosses are running for the hills, and the army has just had its *** handed to it by like a bunch of men and women in blue overalls. Like I can imagine it felt pretty cool. And so he goes home and then he decides to come back. He comes back with his wife. His wife runs the 1st Art Therapy Program for children traumatized by conflict. Yeah, the the the pictures are UCSD used to go sit with them all the time. Just kind of. I don't feels like a special place, like a nice connection. That's the kind of stuff that gets like left out of history too much, too right, as these contributions like and these like developments that come from political radicals that are like not just the the, the gun, the Robert, you know, or the, you know, seizing of workplaces, but the. Developing of art therapy for people dealing with traumatic event that rules. Yeah, absolutely right. Like, these people made homemade bombs, but they also, like, made it easier for kids to process their trauma. Like that's what anarchism is, folks. But yeah, Jenny Burman. They hyphenated their last names, Berman shaking. So, yeah. Advanced, yeah. Highly progressive, 1930s. Yeah. His wife Jenny was definitely the radical. And she she sort of brought him on and and he was like, yeah, ******* you got it. So, yeah, he goes back. You can see the pictures at UCSD. They're online, too, but Al dies in in the sort of chaotic retreat to the International Brigades. No one knows where, right? I'm trying to write a book about him. Have some of his Diaries. Just an inspirational guy in a lot of ways. Very nice guy. He's also like, he sort of draws a lot of disdain from the other passengers on the boat when they're crossing the first time because the passengers keep getting mad that the black folks and white folks are eating at the same table at dinner from the Popular Olympics team. And he's just like super mad at this and like, why would you be that way? So just keeps like getting. And he is a wrestler, right? Like he's a collegiate wrestler who went to Olympic. Just keeps getting in people's faces about it, I guess. Which, like, yeah, is I guess being an ally or something, but just the war. Yes, Jenny Berman is in. There's a film called The Good Fight, OK, which is about the American volunteers. And you can see her talking about him. Cool. And yeah, I think it's it's obviously pretty difficult experience for her talking about him. But, and I'm sure the whole thing is pretty rough given, you know, the things that happen afterwards. But yeah, again, a wonderful person. She's passed away now. But yeah, actually it's the interview. It's the full interview with her that I'm waiting for so I can write about him. Yes, she does look up the good fight. It's a good film. So on the 20th of July the anarchists are assembling outside these barracks, right? They had to support the police, but I didn't want it anymore, and so they assembled their own troops instead, right? Garcia, Olivier, Abadi, Santillan, Ascaso and Durruti on some Chad ****. And they do what the anarchist did at this time, which is they lead a frontal charge on the barracks, where there are still machine guns. And so they are brave, but perhaps not tactically astute. I've I've read about this, where basically one of the problems that people had like strategically about the anarchists is that the anarchists in Spain were so fervent in their beliefs that they basically were like, Hooray, soon I will be a murderer and like all charged at machine guns and like. Weren't always the most strategic is that map to your understanding or. Yeah. In the early days of the Civil War there like because they have been raised for decades of propaganda of the deed, right. And like propaganda of the deed is saying like, you know like you can die as a hero and become an example to the working class and you will elevate the cause. It's as close to martyrdom as you can get in in an atheist political belief, I think. And yeah, so they would just. Like, like, like Escasa, right? Ascaso is a famous anarchist leader. Ascaso is a guy who dies at, like, literally leading the charge frontally on a machine gun at this time at this barracks, right? He dies in less than 24 hours after the war started, and he's a member of this nosotros group, with the routine and others, and garthee Oliver, and he's the one who gives his name to the pistol, right? So in Tabasa, the CMT, the, the Anarchy in some way morally compromised. So I guess in that sense he goes on to kill a lot of fascists. But yeah, they they they don't want the help of the police, they don't want the tactical advice. Durruti actually later is very good at this. He has regular army officers embedded with his column and he listens to them and that allows him to be more successful than the other anarchists. OK, but yeah, he the battle cries adelante hombres, del Senate, Senate, which is like, you know, forward men of the CNT. They had women too, but I guess it's not what they were going for. And they took the barracks along with 30,000 rifles. Well, pretty much all of those would be in the hands of working people within a couple of days. Wow, yeah, that's a vast like, this is a decent slice of the Republic's weapons right until they get resupplied later. And interestingly, the Soviet Union and Mexico supply them, but the the Republican government in Madrid doesn't want people supplying the anarchists, so only CZ one was. Or the Czech gun company are willing to illicitly violate 2 different arms embargoes to supply the anarchists later in the war. Yeah, based. You see, yeah, maybe we can have them be the advert for this episode. Finally, a Kate a a solid case for the hammer fired ARM in in in modern days, we have to honor the legacy of CZ. Yeah, again, the only the only morally correct firearm to buy life wouldn't have done that. *************. Nope, no, yeah, don't see any Glocks in anarchist hands. Yeah, buy 32 ACP because it also killed Hitler. It's the most anti fascist. Yeah, you can. You could. Hitler killed Hitler. But, you know, we don't have to go there. They really got fascist. Critical support to Adolf Hitler. Or you could say, yeah, well you know who else tried to kill Hitler. Hitler. He did once before, in 1923, after the failed Munich putsch. But his friend Putsy Honch, Stangel's wife, who he had a crush on him from killing himself, which was which was a mistake. Yeah. Yeah, she let the team down. So see, that's where C came in. Giving him an efficient way to kill himself with no wives around. Did have a wife around, didn't he? See? Oh well, thank you, Sissy. Hitler's dead. And with that, let's go back to Spain. Catalonia, I guess. And so the French Popular Olympics team left that day. They sang the international Isle. From the deck of their boat, they pulled out the port. A few days later, on the Rambler parade was organized. The various nations of the Popular Olympics marked down the street, led inexplicably by some bagpipers who had arrived with the British team. Hell yeah, that's another international bagpipe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, why? Why not? I I love that. Like, yeah, some anti fascist bagpipers had been recruited by this point and they all sang the international on their own languages. Did the the race for salute that would become the. Popular French salute. And they heard a speech, and in the speech they were told you've come for the games, but you've remained for the greater front in battling in triumph. Now your task is clear. You'll go back to your countries and spread the word, then use what you have seen in Spain. So some of them went back and some of them stayed. All in all, about 200 of them actually stayed to fight or came back to fight. And some of the names are Bill Scott. He was an Irishman who came for the games. He he went back and forth between Spain and Ireland. A bunch wrote in some, wrote some letters to newspapers to encourage other people to join. His big slogan was a victory for fascism in Spain is a victory for fascism in Ireland. The that's the same slogan that the other side used too, right? Yes, but the the Irish volunteers who fought for the fascists were ******* exceptionally useless. Yeah, yeah, and may have excelled more than I responded to support for the anti fascists are killing fascists. Which I guess critical support to them. He fights in the Battle of Madrid Bill Scott when he gets shot in the neck or well style. So they go, Robert, maybe they really were sticking their necks out and you got auto Bosch. Otto Bosch was a lover of novelist and poet Muriel Rukeyser uh. He was a cabinet maker, sprinter and literal and actual card carrying Antifa member and now he was a soldier. He also died. The sad part about this part of the war is everyone dies pretty quickly afterwards. Yeah. And yeah, it's really sad. These people are, you know, as good as people come, and they all end up dead. But let's not talk about that. I want to focus on the victorious part. OK, so that evening, right? Durutti, Garcia, Oliver and a bad essention go and meet with compounds. Ascaso is dead, right? Because he was on his heroics. They're still in their monos, they're still covered in blood, and they're still carrying their weapons. With ******* away, one should meet with a politician. O he gives him this little speech, and I, like some people, say this is apocryphal. I really give a ****. I think it's nice. I'm going to read it. It's not very long. And firstly I must say that the CNT and the Phi have never been treated as a true importance. Merited. You have always been harshly persecuted and I, with much regret, was forced by political necessity to oppose you, even though I was once with you. Today you as a masters of the city and of Catalonia, because you alone have conquered the fascist military, and I hope that you will not forget that you did not like the help of the loyal members of my party. But you have won, and all this in your power. If you do not need me as President of Catalonia, tell me now and I'll become just another soldier in the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand, you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige could be of use. Then you could depend on me and my loyalty as a man who is convinced that a whole past of shame is dead. Oh, that's nice. That's intense. That's cool. I mean, yeah, interesting, you know? Right. It's fascinating. I think it's the clearest we get to a person at time, being like in the last 24 hours I have gone from president to a guy who has to ask the anarchist for a rifle so I can fight. And and, like, it's a, you know, people get on their zelensky stuff, but this is kind of different, I guess, you know, like it's good to find someone who cares about a cause more than power. Yeah, as a rule, if it's your job to be in charge of people, I'm probably not a fan of that job existing. But if when it comes down to it, you you you throw down rather than hide in a bunker or flee the country to live in exile and I don't know whatever friendly country, then that's better than the alternative. I'd agree and I think, yeah, yeah. Being more attached to this and to your self preservation or your power I think is admirable. For example, if Joe Biden had burned down the Third Precinct himself, I think a lot of people would feel more positively towards him. He did though. Probably you didn't. We're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast, guys. All right, you're right. This is. This is. Yeah, yet again, wraps until the midterms. We're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast, guys. All right, you're right. This is. This is. Yeah. Apps until the midterms really start to heat up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's an enterprise video of Joe Biden with a fire bomb. I was told that he had a A can of axe body spray and a lighter. Hmm, yeah, that's how he normally rolls when he's in block. And all right, sorry that image is like so cursed that I'm like Joe Biden and block doing the smile like he's in the Camaro but just holding the axe body spray in the cigarette lighter. But everyone can figure out it's him because it keeps touching people and everyone is keeping. Yeah, he's he's sniffing everybody's hair asking if he can smell the inside of their balaclavas. Uncle Joe's a hero. True anti fascist. Yeah. Are you are you going dark Brandon on us? Oh God. Are we gonna have to explain what dark bread it is on the pot eventually? I don't think we need to. I don't think that's ever going to be relevant. I think we'll just say let's go, bro. Look it up, kids. Just type dark Brandon into your Twitter search box, see what happens, and educate yourselves. I'm gonna do this right now, but please get. Yeah, please do, because I don't have a ******* clue. No, I have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, I know on the Internet enough and I don't think I'll ever want to be. So things go differently across the country, right? The Navy and waiting to hear Margaret squeal or scream or cry. I I just don't understand, OK? I think it's that he's a vampire. Yes, go ******* go ahead. Tell us about dark Brandon. I don't know. It's just weird. It's Gary. I don't want to know. Yeah, you don't need to know. It's fine. It's it's it's a good time. It's it's it's a good time on the Internet. That's all in the dark. Brandon is all right. The Navy doesn't fall for the coup, right? And this leads to this spectacular exchange between the crew of himachali metal they James the first battleship right and the Ministry of Marine crew to Ministry of Marine. We have encountered serious resistance from the commands and officers on board crew to Ministry of Marine. We have subdued them by force. Urgently request instructions as to bodies. Ministry to Marine to crew. Lower the bodies overboard with respectable solemnity. What is your present position? So what they've done there is the officers have declared for the crew for the coup, and the minute these sailors on board the ship have killed them and thrown them over the edge, right subdued by force. What do we do with the bodies, the people we have subdued? Amazing radio message. Yeah. Like, like the officers turned out to be chuds. And then, like, brief pause. What do you want us to do with their bodies? Is, again, king ****. So it's a few days before the battle lines really get drawn as to who is where, who's on what side of the Spanish Civil War. It's a few days before it becomes clear that this is a civil war, because without boats there rebels seem to be in trouble. But the fascists came to their aid with planes to airlift the troops from Africa. The Republic had more troops and more access to supplies and they looked like they were going to win a war of attrition. That doesn't work out because France, the UK and the United States abandoned Spain and the fascists do not abandon Franca. They don't really want to finish there. I want to backtrack and think about how many times in the past or the present. The working class of a city is spontaneously organized to prevent an army from entering their city. And especially in the age of the tank and the bomber, I can't really think of any. And and if you guys can. But I couldn't come up with one. I got nothing. Yeah. Anyone? I mean, other than Kiev? Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Some of it was at least spontaneous, but yeah. Yeah. It wasn't against their own army. Like they had an army. That is. Yeah. I mean, you could. There are pieces of that. And it was, it was not as organized or clearly successful in, you know, the Holy Week uprisings and the Watts riots and stuff. Yeah, yeah. True. Yeah. Pieces of it. Yeah. I mean, even like in Minneapolis, right. Like pieces of anatomy where the state didn't exist for a while. But. Uh, this this revelation is somewhat unique, at least in that, right? And what happens afterwards and what happened? In the Civil War isn't what I wanna end on. You can see this kind of. Idea in Ken Loach's film Land and Freedom that that this was a romantic failure and I don't think that's true. I think that the the only way for the civil war to succeed with doing what it did, for the Republic to succeed was doing what it did well and what it did well with. Harnessing the enthusiasm and passion of the working class people to build a better world for themselves when it became not worth fighting and dying for something then. The war was already lost for a lot of people trying to mass behind a conventional war effort doesn't make sense when your enemy has every advantage in a conventional war effort. But I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on the last week of July 1936 when the cities in the hands of the people, when there are no cops and no bosses, but people go back to work as collectives. When there's no money, but people distribute food to people who need it. All across Spain, and not just at the barrel of a gun, people collectivised. The Collectivizing Castille and they socialized industry in Valencia, and it's a remarkable moment in human history. And it doesn't last more than a year. But I think it shows us that this this other future was possible, right the the path we took from 1936 to the present day was not the best one. But I like to think that just for a just for a little while, we could have done better. And I think that's where I wanna end, really is thinking about how we could do better. And. If people want to read books, if this has already been a long episode, I will say Helen Graham's very short introduction is very good, and Anthony Beevor's new book is good and you can get an audio book. Julianne Casanova. It's one of my favorite writers in Spanish and some of his stuff is translated into English. Uh, Augustine Diamond's book, ready for the revolution on the affinity group to the CNT and Chris Elam stuff on Barcelona is excellent if you're in Barcelona. Nick Lloyd's. Walking tours are excellent and but yeah, there's hope. That's enough there. You can watch Ken Loach's film you can watch, I think it's called parallel mothers. That's on Netflix. A couple of good films. Yeah. Thank you so much Margaret, again for joining me to and hear me drone on about the Spanish Civil War for an hour and I'm into it. I didn't know. I I've only been learning the the details more recently. You know I've always just heard about it in in broad strokes and the like. You know, a lot of people like talking about what it means, right? But talking about what it means is cool. But the stuff that's like, really interesting to me is the stuff that actually, like, makes it matter is the. The person who shows up and you know develops ways to deal with trauma by art therapy and the people who bravely. Steel dynamite. And become named named Rosa the Dynamiter. What was what was her name? Yeah, Rosa ladina. Mitera. Yeah. Yeah. She loses her hand. Yeah. It's better than Rosie the Riveter, I mean. No offense to rose the Riveter, but rose of the dynamiter is. Is is is doing well. Dynamiter go after all of the libraries, keeping the books imprisoned. Free knowledge. Shopkeepers of thought. I really like variants. Take him to get cancelled. But I like libraries and librarians. You you all aren't ready for this discourse, Margaret. But you're live. Live, Margaret. Killjoy. Take. Basically a problematic. That's how we know you're a CIA asset. Because of your pro library style. Yeah, exactly. Classic. Yeah. Capitalist infrastructure. What? Where did the CIA train all those people to overthrow governments? The School of the Americas? What does every school have? Library. See, I think is the problem, because that's the School of America is there's two things wrong with School of America. That school and America. Most of the problem is the school part. I think the real problem with school of the Americas that had school in the name and we can't have that, that is, that's an oppressive, hierarchical system of learning. Unbelievable. If Amerigo Vespucci never came here, maybe things would be different. Maybe even better. Wow, anti Italian slander. I'm here for it. Well, let's all end on that note. **** Italy, yeah, and **** traffic lights. But do you have anything to plug? I do. People can get my they can preorder my book. That is all about why traffic lights are bad. It's called we won't be here tomorrow, and it's written from the point of view of a traffic light that no one knows it's about to be abolished. It's out from AK Press. Who uses the red and Black Flag as the logo? And much like the anarchist and the Spanish Civil War, who developed the red and Black Flag, which is to reference the of course the negation of the red, because the red in the traffic light is what stops you. And so the black is the negation of the red in this, in this case. Yeah. And yeah, that's what happens when you disconnect a traffic light from power. It goes black. Yeah. No, it's disconnecting **** Rob. But people are shooting the traffic light. And you know what? You know what? OK, press. Do you know? Do you know what a press sells? Books, books and books. Where where do books get kept? Yeah, that's right. That's right, Guantanamo. It's all everyone is in on it. OK, well, if you don't want to be part of the evil world, you can do what is clearly good, which is listen to podcasts and create parasocial relationships. Yes, the unproblematic medium of podcasting. And if you want to create a parasocial relationship with me, you can listen to my podcasts, one of which is called live, like the world is dying. It's an individual and community preparedness podcast, and the other one is called Cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about people. To defend libraries from people like you. And and anti learning nihilist radicals. Yeah, anti library action. That's right. That's right. That's what the Ala is, isn't it? That's. That's that. That is why fly the black and Gray. I'm just making fun of people that never mind. Alright, alright. Thank you for joining us. Did once make me at an arco goth flag that was black and then black lace. That's great. So. Thanks for having me. I would. I would fly that. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for listening, James. Where can people find you online? I'm all over the Internet. You can just put in my name at James Stout on Twitter. And sometimes I write things, I will talk about them there. Great. Well, you can find me at I right. OK you can follow the show on right at Big Calzone media and happen here pod and send any complaints to at sorry no send. No send any complaints to add. I write OK OK. Yeah, it's OK. I don't read responses. Bye bye bye bye. 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. 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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 could happen. Here is the podcast that this is where we talk about things that are happening here generally, things falling apart sometimes things getting put back together. Today we have a story that I wasn't sure if we were ever going to cover. In brief, we're going to be talking about a a group called Black Hammer, that is. On its surface, uh a leftist, anticolonial political organization and in reality is more or less a cult. The reason we're talking about them is that someone is now dead connected with them. The story is interesting and messy, and says a lot about the way social media works today and the way that. The United States is essentially like 40 different cults in a trench coat. Umm, so, uh, today I'm here with James Stout and we are talking with journalist WF Thomas Thomas. What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? How are you doing today? Today is the day. This story is. Stuff is still coming out. About an hour ago, charges were finally posted. For the cult leader. But that's further along, yeah, the story. If you hear chirping in the background, those are four live chickens. So my apologies, a little babies. I just got rabbits that I I have now living in my my chicken. Facility and they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having. Little animals around. Alright, so who are black hammer? And how did how did they get to the present position? So I think we should probably start with like I don't know 2019 right is kind of when these these folks sort of start to come on the the scene. Yeah. You know, you could take this story back a lot further. OK, two. Let's do that. Umm. So. Sometime in the late 80s. Augustus remains. Junior is born. This is the person or commonly known as. Ghazi carzo. They use they them pronouns who. Would go on to be the leader of this group. Cozzo grew up in Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. And in the early 20, tens had kind of a lifestyle Blogger YouTube thing going on. Was a self professed Cosmo's biggest fan and generally seemed like they were trying to get famous. Yeah, like influencer style famous, right. This was not at all political at this. Yeah. Point, yeah. And that's going to be kind of the red thread through this story is. Cozzo. I'm gonna refer to them as cozzo. That's this remains junior wanting to be famous is kind of. Unfortunately, the main thing that drives. Most of what has happened. At some point, you know, in the mid twenty 10s, carzo took this turn and started making more incendiary videos. I don't have them directly in front of me, so I don't want to misquote them. But kind of like going out, pushing this concept like white people are evil. I'm going for this very specific type of leftism, and Ghazi Kazo gets taken, taken under the wing of, and I'm going to mispronounce this name. Omally Yasha tella. And this is a person who is leading a group in St. Petersburg, FL called the African People's Socialist Party. And African people Socialist Party was part of this larger thing called the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. This. I don't know if they're still around, but. You know, their their ideology was third world communism, African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is. Let's talk a little bit about the word Uhuru, because that's something if you if you've ever been in and around proud boys. First off, I'm, I'm sorry it's not a fun experience generally, but they they like to shout Uhuru, and I understand that that's kind of related one way or the other the other to this. Yeah, so. I don't have a directly in front of me who means. But you know, the reason probably say that is because of Ghazi cazzo. Yeah, there are times, several times when Kodzo spoke made appearances with Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys. And cozzo. Generally became and still is treated as a low cow. Kind of this target. For derision. To poke out to see what is this person doing? Which is still happening right now, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, you know, cozzo. Really through the ranks of this group. And then eventually found out that this is basically a cult the. African People, Socialist Party. Had a specific focus on. Membership from colonized people, people of color. But it turns out this was being steered entirely by a group of white people. So it's out of the ashes of this experience, this abusive experience. This coli group Cozzo, along with some other people, leave this group and they go on to form black Hammer in February of 2019, which they really was the Black Hammer organization. And there's some really good write ups, especially red voice double. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely recommend that. And there are. I think you broke out. Per second, so the title of that article is the Devil wears a dashiki. It's like 6-7 parts, but it it's really good. Comprehensive, yeah, and that gets into a lot of what I get a lot of this information from. And there were additionally. What would happen if some of these people who founded this group, Black Hammer organization, who are also parts of the African Peoples Socialist Party? Would disavow Ghazi cards that would disavow black hammer and. Have kind of their own statement about here's what happened you know, in which they say, hey, we never recovered from this experience in this traumatic group, in this cult like group and instead went on to found this new one and we're very. You know, it was kind of failed from the start to become this. Other cult like group. So just to clarify on the huru thing that it comes from the African People Socialist Party, right? And then he's they have taken it and run with it in the black hammer organization. So the African People's Socialist Party was part of this umbrella group called the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. And this group is still around. If you look at like the Channel Five with Andrew Callahan has a video where they go to this March for reparations and that group is the Yahoo Solidarity movement. Got it. OK, if you're familiar with that. Yeah. Yeah. So we get this organization founded and kind of from what my perusal of because I've also you can go to their website, blackhammer has like a new site. They are kind of building them, huh? Oh yeah, yeah, they're, they're kind of have they for now, yeah. They they kind of build themselves as like an anti colonial organization that is specifically like like one of the things they do is they have like a a white people's auxiliary that like is for the purpose of people paying reparations. They have. You know, they carried out a couple of actual direct actions during 2020 including like handing out masks. And whatnot. But for the most part, they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to themselves and thus donations via social media *******. Yeah. And yeah, that that's that's. I think if you've, if you've personally interacted with blackhammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've seen someone on the Internet talking about how Anne Frank is a Karen or something like that. Let's get into it. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned, you know, in these. Comments from. The people who found the organization left the organization. These were these are still true believers who believe in this cause of decolonization, of African internationalism, and who do want to build a better world and do good things. You know, in talking with people who survived the call, it sounds like cozzo probably never was a true believer, but there were true believers around Kazo who believed in this cause. And because of that, we're able. To be abused, to be profoundly abused by Cozzo and the people. Working directly under kazoo at Causos behest, so. April 30th, 2020 in a tweet I believe cozzo calls and Frank a Becky follows up by how she's a Karen. Which? One is a ridiculous statement. Two is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that. You know, back at this time there was acceptance of the Black Hammer organization in leftist circles in that kind of. Online communist community. And there were people who came out kind of like, Oh no, let's hear what they're saying about this, you know, talking about how. Victims, you know the term. Genocide was invented to describe the Holocaust, but that term wasn't used to describe slavery, that kind of thing. Which, to be clear, is not the conversation that KAZA was trying to have. That was not. And that is a worthwhile conversation to have as like, why? You know, like, why is that not? Why is the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number of African people not seen as an act of genocide? Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not at all intersect with. Anne Frank or how we think about the Holocaust? Yeah, and because we are living in hell. Yeah, this fake, you know, kind of propped up. Not a real discussion. It's meant to just **** people off. He's back again. Oh good. What a great time. Yeah, based on documents that have come out that are purported to be from internal blackhammer documents. This is part of their operation storm of white tears. Which was seemingly this and again. Don't know for sure if these documents are from them, but these documents that are purported to be from blackhammer lay out this strategy to cause division to kind of. Bring other groups down to elevate black hammers own status by putting themselves as the center of attention in all of this that is happening in this online. Fiasco, because, again, the ideology is not the point. The attention is the point, the control. Is the point. Along this way there's there's, you know, there are a lot of allegations out there. There are, you know, for example, allegations. That false, false allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left the group, people who spoke out. Against the group that they were recruiting people on Tinder. Yeah, so. Along the way, some more chapters form. There's one, believe near Aurora, Co, or at least in Colorado. There's a New York City one, and kind of the group continues to rise as. Almost, you know. You know your typical revolutionary communist cell that we have. Quite a few of in the United States going on right now, yeah. They structure. They purport to structure themselves around the tenants of democratic centralism. As some of these other groups do. Which? To dumb things down a lot and there's probably going to be left is screaming at me right now. Was this idea from Lenin? Where? A group takes a vote and then if that vote passes, they all agree to go along with that platform with usually about 50% so that there's not kind of the splitting off of faction. So it can lead to this very centralized and hierarchical control structure. That's certainly what happened in Black Hammer. There are other. Democratic socialist groups have been in the news lately who use a similar strategy. Umm. But you know what this meant? Is it allowed? God called it allowed kodzo to. Run this group with an iron fist. You know, on paper. There were there was a group of people leading the group. Someone else was in control of the money, but. In fact, it was kudzu controlling all of this. They also had, you know, shared living spaces where members of different chapters of Blackhammer lived hammer houses. And that's always going to end well, yeah, don't. Generally, it's a good rule not to go live with the revolutionary cell you just joined. Yeah, if if you are joining a political party and they want everyone to live in the same space that is controlled by that political organization, you may in fact be joining a cult. And you know there's, there continues to be kind of. Trying to get more attention. At one point you know Cozzo starts beef with the local anti fascist crew in Colorado. You know, another thing to mention about this group is it's a lot of queer people in the group. You know, gauzy identifies as nonbinary. There are, you know, several, many members who love people of the same sex. And you know, one of the things that happens as Ghazi is beefing with the local anti fascist crew is something that people are probably thinking of when they hear the name. Gazi Cozzo is this bizarre video of kazoo running around in Joker. Wake up. Jeez. Talking about white anarchists and anti fascists, which the background is actually even more ****** ** than you would think having just heard that as outlined red voice goes into this. Specifically there were. Members of the group who were, you know, practitioners of Yoruba. In African religion and one of them was a trained I don't know the correct term so I'm just going to say practitioner of this religion had gone through an education process and that that took some time. And this video of Ghazi running around in Joker makeup was ghazi's idea to channel the D issue. And my apologies on mispronounced now, which is a Yoruba deity. You know, before this happened apparently Ghazi. I brought this up to the person and the person said that is extremely disrespectful of my religion. Don't do that. And. Ghazi did it anyway. Umm, and this is, you know, another one of the things where this gets sent around all the time, as you know, treating black hammer as a lolcow. But you know, even as this was going on, there was this abuse that was going on as well. And people being preyed upon. By this group. In 2020, Black Hammer announces that they are planning to build Hammer City. Which is supposed to be this? Utopian settlement in the Rockies. Umm. You look like you have something you want to say. Well, I mean, look it it we there, it's a perfectly normal dream to wanna build a utopian settlement in the Rockies. There's some downsides to that. One of them is that the Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number of people to live. And it This is why repeatedly, I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements out in that part of the world, and they don't tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns. But it's it's it's always interesting. Folks try when folks want to do a commune type situation and then they immediately go for a place like that because like the mountains is the hardest place to do it. If you want to have a self-sufficient commune like ******* Kansas, you know Arkansas like somewhere where the soil is good for growing stuff and you can get like a flat track tract of land that can grow food as opposed to high Alpine elevations where very little is gone anyway, whatever. This is compound talk. So yeah. There's there's if there's one thing you take away from this episode, don't build your compound in the Rockies. Don't build a compound in the Rockies. Look. OK. That's all. That's all I got. That's the message this podcast. Unless you're the tenacious Unicorn, right? In which case, go right ahead. They're thriving well, but yeah, and then you got to think, you know what they're doing, which is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like, growing crops, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I don't actually see any advanced. I was just looking at their at the Hammer City website. They just talk. They just say sustainable farming. I can't see advanced plans for. Perhaps there weren't any. They did raise $112,000 so far. Yeah, according to their website. They raised $112,000 so far, yes. OK. Yeah. Educate us more on this project. Yeah. Real interested to know how much money they actually raised. Maybe it was that much. The point is we don't really know because there's no. There was no kind of open record keeping within this group and it was called so it was in control of the money so the the group found. Land to buy, and they actually began the process of a land deal. In early May 2021, they and and this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado Sun article about. The whole hammer city thing that I also recommend if someone wants to read more in depth about this. So as the land deal was in the process of going through, a portion of the group moved out there, so about two dozen people this was. This wasn't, you know. It was remote, but it wasn't. On top of a mountain, this was in a subdivision that had parcels for sale. Which leads to some problems this this is a subdivision with the homeowners association and strict limits on land use as well. So they didn't have water rights for one thing. Yeah, exactly, they didn't have water rights to land. Which I have not started a compound, but I imagine water rights is something you want to have figured out. If you if you just want to live on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want to grow crops, then yeah, having the ability to irrigate said crops is kind of important. Yeah, so another thing at this time. Is. Blackhammer tends to be a pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out to this land, they were camping out, they're basically squatting on the land that they did not own and brought their, you know, armed security along with them. And we're also like blocking Rd access for residents of the subdivision. So they they had neighbors, you know, and. At one point this leads to an altercation with the neighbor. With three armed black Hammer members and a neighbor driving his car, who? You know, according to this Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and there's a standoff. This could have been one of those things that went really bad, it went. About as good as you can hope a situation like that can go where? Nobody got killed, but while this was happening to the member of Black Hammer who was responsible for the land deal. Forgot to sign or didn't sign the paperwork on time and after information comes out about the standoff. The land deal completely falls through. There is no hammer to safety that is going to be built. Umm. And Cozzi was maintaining, and black hammer as a whole is maintaining a super active social media presence at this time as well. So you know. One of the other things that gets brought out is like this video of them talking about, oh, we built. This bridge on our land, which is kind of a bunch of two by fours across a ditch, yeah. I've are they planning to buy it in in the in as like an organization or as kids are planning to buy it themselves as an individual? Do we know they this is actually something I did some research on. They did this fun thing. They created a front Group A front organization to buy the land, which they called Hammerstone Industries Incorporated. Yeah, stealthy. One of the Member, one of the prominent members was responsible for that. So the power of Google? Yeah. I also found their Bitcoin wallet while we were talking, and it just never had any donations. It remains empty. Oh my God. Yeah, that one hasn't gone well. Uh, so after this? Land deal falls through. Hammer City is not being built. A lot of people get really ******* ******. They also it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign on their way out of the subdivision. So on on the 17th of May, 2021 is when the group leaves Hammer City. To go back to what Robert mentioned earlier. The group took a very, I'll say, interesting approach when COVID-19 started, which is the belief that COVID-19 is real, that people should wear masks and be protected. But that they should not take the vaccine and that Fauci was a liar. Which comes out a bit later. So, so they were doing, for example, there's a, there's a news article and with a video of them doing, you know, mutual aid, distribution of masks and food in Colorado. So lots of people are really ******* ****** when Hammer City falls through. There's also been. You know these? Allegations that have been coming up again and again, and at this point several chapters break apart from Black Hammer, break away from kodzo and kind of go off and do their own thing. Then. Cozzo is left with this core group of members, kind of true believers, and says, **** it, we're moving to Atlanta. So the group does a marathon drive from Colorado to the southern suburbs of Atlanta, and outside of Atlanta is where causes it grew up on the east side, on the northeast. And they they keep going. They rent a house where everyone lives together, another one of their hammer houses. I believe at this time there is another active chapter that is still connected with cozzo in the Carolinas. As well. But. You know this is a when prophecy fails moment for cozzo and the people that are left behind are these true believers. And cause it doesn't take this well, doesn't take the failure of this deal well, becomes even more paranoid than they already were, more controlling and more abusive than they already were. So there's the red boy skates into some of the. Really wild allegations that come out at this time. Allegedly Cozzo has members signed over control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint. Has people reveal personal information at gunpoint? Again, these are allegations. I'm not saying gods are did this. That we get some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people to sit and listen to kodzo kind of preach having people constantly working, not getting enough to eat. Having, you know love bombing where? Got where? Kodzo makes, you know, deep eye contact with the person talks about how important they are, how much they love them, and the consumption of psychedelics as well. Cool. That's good. Great. Yeah, yeah, you love to hear that. Yeah, just a bunch of heavily armed. People being cops for each other and drugging each other in support of a. I don't know, charismatic seems like a weird word for Gaza, but they must be right. Like, clearly it works on some people. Yeah, I think they I think they are charismatic, right. Like, I think it's necessarily they have to be good to be charismatic. But no, think of a tragic these followers, some people seem to be responding to their, I don't know the way they present themselves. It's so. I guess that's always the way with Colts, right? That like to the outside the cult leader is always an obvious cult leader, but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable to and and for some people that's well and also ISIS, I think a lot of it is they have like presented themselves differently in different periods. And I'm, I think from what I've been reading it sounds like a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of most deeply wrapped up in it have been with it for a while. So they've kind of followed along with Ghazi as they've, you know. Yeah and this is a group. The hill preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people, preyed upon unhoused people, preyed upon people of color who are at the intersections. You know, of oppression in our society. And this group. Like most cults, it offered them A cause, a purpose, something to fight for, something to do, friends, a roof over their head, even you know. Umm. Yep. Which is a huge part of it, right? Because if you if this if this place is not just your social circle, but also your safety net. And like how you keep a roof over your head and how you stay fed and you don't have close ties to family. Or maybe your family aren't people that you can trust. Like, I mean, again, it's not a different story than you get in a bunch of other cults, but like, this is. Yeah, it's it's it's a very frightening situation for those people to wind up in. And of course one of the things that is unfortunate is that so much of the stuff that the black Hammer organization said and did is so absurd that, like, it leads to this kind of mockery of anybody who gets wrapped up in it and the people who are very much victims of it, which I think is also one of the things that makes it harder to leave, right, is that siege mentality and outside, that's where the term cognitive dissonance comes from, specifically people. Right. You know, when, when things don't go according to plan, stick with this group and, you know, have already given away so much of their time, so much of their life, so many of their connections. That they just roll with it. Yeah, and then there's a I'm just thinking back to a story I wrote years ago where I was fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert on these small cults and and they had actually been a survivor of a like, I think it was a Trotskyist cult. So they were very familiar and they'd like this group exhibits all those patterns, right? Like the charismatic leader that you mentioned, the use of their own language, the control of their relationships and their contacts. Inside and outside the group, yeah. And then they mirror this, like very positive. It's like it's just look at their aesthetics after you mentioned it. They're definitely sort of a seeking to mirror that like Black Panther Party aesthetic, right, which is obviously something that has, for good reasons, very positive associations for a lot of people. So I can see they've constructed this very appealing package. But yeah, and now there's a body. Right now a person has died. Possession. So, yeah, let's talk about this. So in Atlanta is where things get really wacky. Yeah, basically, as is often the case with Atlanta, as is often the case with this. Beautiful, beautiful city owned by Coca-Cola and Home Depot with with, I have to admit it as a Texan, the best barbecue in the South. That's true. Excellent Ethiopian food as well. I was there this weekend. Yeah, yeah. ******* amazing. ******* amazing. Ethiopian. Ethiopian food. Yeah, the refugee population. That's besides the point. So, you know, cards that was found themselves in the city. Without a ton of money and so needs to get more attention, needs to appeal to more people. So this is when kazo. Announces that black hammer is forming a coalition with the Proud Boys, which is one of those things that comes out in really sensationalized headlines but doesn't actually happen. What happens is cause a goes on a podcast. With Gavin McInnes and they talk about we have so much in common. And there's, you know, a little toast evidence of actual organizing or work together between the two groups. But with this group like this? No. Especially because Gavin doesn't. Gavin organizing anymore on paper and on vocal project anymore. Yeah, what was the podcast they went on? Set of interest. Daniel, cut that and add in the entire audio from B movie condensed into a two second blast like we talked about. You know, the group gets more attention to that. They start talking about how great Trump is, how much they love Trump, how fauci is evil. Because, again, ideology is not the point. The attention is. And this is how you continue to get attention by acting ridiculous, by asking Trump voters to donate money to you. At this time, they also begin an extremely aggressive fundraising campaign in the city of Atlanta. So. There's a park in downtown Atlanta called Woodruff Park that has a huge unhoused population because our city. Is bad at being a city and it is just bad but. Black hammer there. There are other groups, other leftist groups that do mutual aid that help people out in the park, Blackhammer says. We're going to do this too, you know, so they'll go there and have. These sessions where they're screaming into a megaphone. About. Whatever. And, you know, handing out clothes and some food to unhoused people and they also. Start setting their the members of their group. Pretty much every day of the week to go out into the city of Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets in their matching. Branded black hammer T-shirts and masks. A sight to see. And yeah, so they this is what they call their Robin Hood campaign. They specifically target college campuses, Georgia State University and Georgia Tech especially. With the idea that college kids have a lot of money to give away. Not a great idea. But they do this aggressive fundraising where they, you know, follow people. And if they don't take no for an answer, say, oh, you don't care about homeless people, you don't care about unhoused people, you know, you just have so much white privilege and really attacking people. Which is great. When you're coming home, you're riding your bike home and then you keep passing black hammers. Outside of, you know, on your commute home. Not fun, yeah. And and they peer, you know, on the Beltline, which is this. Kind of public green space and and shared walking space in Atlanta. They do this outside of concert venues. You know, I went to see the Dead Kennedys and as I was walking into the venue, a black hammer guy asked me for money. I have to explain to the guy in front of me handing them $5. This is an antisemitic call. You don't want to do that. And they they're also taking in unhoused people. You know, there's this video of of one of the lieutenants saying, you know, we want to get. You unhoused people to come fundraise for us, you know? If you can fundraise for us, you can keep half of it 5050 split and whoever fundraises the most in this week gets to come live with us at the hammer House. So it's pretty ****** ** you know, there's a case where a professor at Georgia State University. Because these people, the the black members out there every day, all day. This is what they do. This is their job. This is how the group makes money, you know? Calls them out and says, hey, stop asking for money here. I know you're a cult and a member follows the professor in films her, you know, specifically films her license plate and says we got you. For example, Members are arrested for having a megaphone and Woodruff Park and get some of their guns taken away with the rest because they're in the park with a bunch of guns. Just have guns out, yeah, yeah, it's Georgia, which sometimes is cool when the proud boys show up and. Anti fascists have guns, but it's not. Not great when black hammers doing that. Definitely tracking following people who criticize you and taking pictures of their license plate to try to dox them online is not at all cope behavior. That's yeah, they rock Scientology tax members. They leaked the addresses of the family of ex members and their Social Security numbers as well because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint. They seem to get very close to encouraging people to shoot cops in a couple of pieces on their website as well. They talk about killing white people a lot. Eventually in yeah, in 20 early 2022, they have this rally outside of the CNN Center in Solidarity with the January 6 political prisoners. Along the way, in 2022, Ghazi claims to find have found Jesus and. Black camera becomes. A religious group, you know the they they turn their mutual aid distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church, which of course is filmed in live streamed. They have several live streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are mandatory for members to attend. Umm. You know there there is corporal punishment going on within the group of people living at. The house. And and the people that they're picking up off the street? It's not just adults, it's kids as well. Casio claims to have the 16 year old that they have adopted. And you know, cause a post these videos of them giving the 16 year old guns and money and clothes to wear. The kid gets taken into state custody. Before. The current thing that we're talking about. And this is going to be important later on in the story. Yeah, so they they're also these. Stories from members who have escaped who have to do these elaborate escape attempts to get out they're not allowed to leave, who have to kind of run away in the middle of the night with none of their stuff through a thunderstorm to get out. So this is what we're dealing. Or if one, it's James here and I just wanted to correct a couple of things from the episode or add to them. One of them was the date of that shooting, be it murder or death by suicide. That was the 19th of July, not the 19th of February. And so it happened about a week ago at the time that you will hear this if you hear this on the day that we put out. Secondly, I also just wanted to give some context to the word Uhuru. It's Swahili word means freedom or independence and it was used as part of a a backronym which is when when a group has a name and then they create an acronym that fits to that name. And the word Ahuru was part of a backing for a group called the Mao Mao a revolutionary anti colonial group who existed in Kenya. And the word Uhuru was used to decent amount in anticolonial struggles. In Kenya and in the backronym, the backronym is muzungu ayende Ulaya muafakat party ahuru. Let the foreigner go home. Africa should be independent, will be independent. I suppose, and I just wanted to give that context and obviously it's been appropriated now by the proud boys, but. That is part of the etymology of the word. And then we get to what happened on February 19th, 2022. Umm. You know, this is an ongoing story, so the facts of what we know might be changing. But. Early in the morning, someone calls 911 and talks about being held hostage by an organization by group. They don't give the address, but the police are. The authorities are able to track the number to this House in Fayetteville. Suburb South of Atlanta. And show up and. They see someone is outside walking a dog who who runs away. That person gets arrested. That's a member of Blackhammer. They see someone kind of waving from the garage, seemingly in distress and. The police are able to get that person out. They asked that the rest of the people in the house come out as well. About 10 people come out and one person remains inside. Now by about 2:00 PM with the use of and. Explosives ordinance with the use of an AED, a bomb robot, the police enter. The building the SWAT team goes in and they find. One person died of a gunshot wound to the head. Which? We at this current time we don't know the full details on that might not ever. Hopefully something comes out Kodzo is being held, you know, the group is kind of like sitting around outside, not in handcuffs but. Being held by the group. And Kodzo does what Cozzo does and starts to live stream. So here's a clip from this 30 minute Live stream Facebook live that Kodzo does look there's a lot of girls. So. This is just going to build me up at the end of the day. So thank you for that. So if you think that. Now I am concerned. Anything like that you're out of your mind. At the end of the day, they're still breath in my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party. Our community is ****** with us and now all these news channels are going to want to interview us and we're going to get to communicate about all the great work that we are doing here. So. This is great at the end of the day. So my chickens coming home to roost is more. More media, more followers, more. You know, advancement of work. More movement, more greatness. And so be it, sweetheart. Things like this have announced arts. Movements are waiters before so. Not even overcome, this is a great moment. Right, this is a great moment. A moment where no, our voices will be amplified and our mission calls will be informed. Well, that's cool. I like that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of a human life. So I will say this is probably before. Depending on what happened in the case that one was dead, but the point is that. This is exactly what caused it. Why was this attention? Yeah, they seem pumped. They seem pumped and also, like, deranged. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that wasn't how I envisioned them speaking at all. It's it's sort of very, almost like calming and they seem very, very calm in their tone of voice. Yeah. I mean calm, but like, I don't know, I see an edge to him. But maybe that's just me reading. Yeah. So do we know more detail about, like, what happened with that person who died? So. I don't want to mention the name of the person this was. This is a minor too, right? This is so 18. The person who was killed who's dead now was not was not the 16 year old. The 16 year old was already in state custody 2 weeks ago. I believe this is an 8. According to the what the group has said and other survivors that I've spoken with, this is an 18 year old because the group took in off of the street. This is a kid, you know, who wanted to be a rapper, who had dreams. You know, according to black cameras own. Media they made this person the Minister of Defense. That's a good job for an 18 year old who's dead now because of this group. Potentially from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, which that is the case. Came about because of cause of putting. That 18 year old in this situation, yeah. So dirty S right? Watch broke the news. They have a really good thread that I also recommend about this happening. It seems like the local news. They started covering the story in the AM. When it was happening but. Didn't quite make the connection. There's there's one article that's out there from a local news site that just interviews Gazi Kazo, home owner of the house. No, no. Yeah. So that happens. One of the members of the group is immediately charged and booked. It's it's a really ****** ** situation, you know, there, yeah, there's like an unhoused individual who that who who other good activists were in touch with, who are at the house when this happened because this person had no other choice. But it was live outside or go with black Hammer who went through all of this happening and then. Was still on how it was still in house after all this happened. Kodzo was arrested and booked the charges. Didn't come out until about an hour before we started recording. The charges are. Two counts of participation in street gang activity, 2 counts of aggravated assault to accounts of kidnapping to accounts of false imprisonment to accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I'm going to talk about this one account of ******. Which in Georgia? The ****** law refers to. Nonconsensual oral or **** *** or oral and **** *** performed with the minor. Got you. So one way or the other, they are being accused of sexual assault. Yes. Yeah. The other person arrested was charged with. The same crimes, except not ******. Officer obstruction instead. Presumably because they fled. And that's where we're at. That's where we're at right now. Cool, well. That's rough. Yeah, it's it's a pretty bleak story. But I don't know at this point. We will probably be hearing more as this case blows up, and there's always the chance that you know the right's going to wind up adopting it to try to. You know, make it into a, a left wing, bad kind of deal. So one already have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we'll see what kind of legs it gets. But it's important to understand both what's happening here because a person is dead and a lot of people have been hurt. And also kind of broadly, the trends that are at play here, the way like cult dynamics can intersect with radical politics, I think is important for people to be aware of because this kind of thing isn't going to get less common as **** continues to unravel and. If there's some takeaways. If someone can leave this with. You know. A few points that the people who. We're in this group where they are victims in this situation. They were preyed upon by this abusive person because they were in a vulnerable state. Anyone this could happen to anyone who follows on hard times? Who? Has about enough day and then someone comes in and offers them this that. They say yes. You know the the other thing. Is to know about groups. That are out there. Before you get involved, do your research. Listen to. Voices that might be critical of the group and know what you're getting yourself into. There. Are other? Essentially, leftist groups out there who, while not as abusive as black hammer, have cases of abuse coming out of them that gets covered up. Yeah, it might be good for us just to just to suggest that if folks you know find themselves in a difficult situation or someone they know is in is in one of these situations like maybe we can link to some resources in the notes or something. Yeah, problem is there aren't go ahead of time. Yeah, there's not. There's not a whole lot of good resources recommended to me that I've been trying to find. It's probably Stephen Hassan's book which. I saw an is also. He's an expert in the field, but he's also the guy who talked about how ****** hypno mind control **** was. Yeah, he's got. He's problematic. Yeah. Look, I mean, part of the reason that this is such a problem is that there's very little in terms of good resources or good writing. One of the things that is like there's good writing, analyzing cults, very little of it will give you much that's useful in terms of how to get people out of cults for a couple of reasons, including the fact that, as we talked about earlier, what makes people vulnerable? People aren't vulnerable to Colts broadly, usually. I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like, as a general rule, people who get trapped in a cult get trapped in a specific cult. Because it is something that they are specifically vulnerable to, and so if you don't like it, it's more or less a matter of like if you want to get someone out of a cult. Are you close with that person? Like, are they someone that you know? Are they someone that you have a deep relationship with? Because if so, like that relationship and the care that you have for them is primarily the thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out. Which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet, but like. There's no reliable way to get people out of cults. Yep, I'm a I do. I do 12 step recovery stuff for different reasons. But the closest analogy that I can think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drugs and alcohol in your life. You can't force anyone to stop. You can't make anyone leave. When people talk about cult deprogramming, what that entails kidnapping someone and then putting them through more abuse so there isn't a magic bullet. Yeah, a lot of extremely problematic **** gets offered to people who understandably are concerned for their friends or family members and just want to help. The best time to get someone out of a cult is before they join, you know? Yeah, is to raise awareness about abuse in communities and share that information and take these things seriously. I truly believe so much of how this was able to happen is because people were just laughing at them. And didn't take it seriously that this could get someone killed. That this was ruining lives. That's still happening. People are treating this as a joke. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things if you're like, I don't know a parent or or somebody who otherwise works with their interfaces with or is raising young people and you're trying to think about how you can make them less vulnerable to this. It is a mix of educating them about cults and not in a way that's like. Laughing or mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually discussing the very real reasons why people fall in for this stuff, because that's that's the important one of the most important things is the same as COVID. Really, one of the most important things for protecting yourself is not thinking that you're immune. Which is a natural thing. Most people who have fallen into cults earlier in their life when they heard about cults said, well, that's stupid as hell, I would never get trapped in something like that. And then they did. And that's a basically 100% of Coke membership, you know, because yeah, if there's, if I can recommend some resources for parents, of course. Shannon Foley Martinez, who is on Twitter is, you know, was involved in extreme right Skinhead stuff and left. It is committed her life to helping people leave, extremist movements, the same things. You know that. Are going to make someone easily preyed upon by a cult and by an extremist group. Those are the same things and Shannon has some good resources out there. She has a Patreon as well. The resources are available for free. Don't need to join on her Patreon. Awesome. Yeah, Shannon is awesome and other than that you know. Don't yeah. Try to avoid falling for a cult. Except for. You know this podcast? Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of your life. Have no friends other than us? Form parasocial relationships with us. Uh-huh. Well, we're the only we're the only people you can trust. I think that's clear. Yeah. Would you like to plug anything before we cut you off here, Thomas? Yeah, I'm at Twitter at W under score F under score Thomas. Don't be weird on Twitter. Have empathy for the people around you, and I'm also going to plug. Ash to unhoused people because they know what best can help them. Yeah, *******. Provide people with options for housing so that they're not. Yeah, like that. Having a cold be the best thing they can do. But. Yeah, on that happy note, thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. Check in on your friends. Abandoned people when they're in difficult times. Football is back and better. 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. 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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 could happen. It could happen here. That was my Robert Evans impression of Andrew. Thank you very much. Hopefully that wasn't an assault on you. Air drums, but here we are. Here we are. I am Andrew. And this is it. Could happen here. And this is the podcast where we talk about stuff that happened in places. And. I'll be assisting this episode. This is the aneurysm segment where I talk about whatever comes to mind. Crushed it. So I'd like to open up this episode with a question. Honestly. Genuinely. How are you all doing? Well, there's a lot of stuff going on right now. Umm, you know, not not the best time inside this country or really around the world. So yeah, not, I would say not ideal. Not ideal. Yeah, I'm everything bad is happening. And also being compounded that I have been, I have been once again awoken at a genuinely, egregiously early hour by someone pounding a hammer about 8 inches from my head, which is fun and good and cool. Sounds without context. Without context, that'll be a wild thing to say. I am giving no context about that. Yeah, this is literally true. So yeah, basically it's like that, but for everything, yeah. I respect that. Not ideal, it's the perfect explanation. Yeah, yeah, not ideal. Not ideal. Personally, I feel like I'm, you know, constant being pulled in a bunch of different directions and it's exhausting. And I mean. Let's say up front, I do have the privilege of having more control over my work day than a lot of other people do, and that's not something I take lightly. I'm very appreciative of that. Shout out to my Patreon supporters. But, you know, between all my online responsibilities and my offline responsibilities and obligations and demands of my time, it really is not easy. And that's not even getting into like the. Social and political state of the world right now. It's a quote. Jane Smith, you know, that's something I think we can all relate to on some level. Yeah. I mean, some weeks are much harder than others, but. The through line has been stress. And that is the subject of today's episode. That's so stressful that we're going to talk about stressful. Yeah, yeah, a discussion about stress. It really could happen here. Stress is not something new to me already to most people. Me personally, my personality is very much. Lending itself to that sort of outcome. Because I'm constantly like spinning a bunch of plates at the same time, and every time like I drop one or put one down, I pick up the next one and. I'm not very good at relaxing. Usually. Alright, I basically been going nonstop for a long, long time. And. I'm not alone because. 43% of adults suffer from chronic stress and 75 to 90% of doctors visits are stress related. And it's trash, you know, you feel within your skin and your muscle and your bones. I remember this one time when I was working at that same winery I was talking about in a recent episode I was in. And I was sharing my experience. I really felt like my blood was running into water. Like, I was barely eaten and I wasn't getting enough water. I wasn't being perfectly hydrated and was just going. We call that, we call that a reverse Jesus when you're, when you're. I mean, I think when Jesus was stabbed, he did like bleed water for some reason. Sure did. Yeah. Tree rings, you know, they tell a story and I think our body is tell the story as well. And for a lot of us that story is stress. By then, because of events or thoughts or circumstances that lead to frustration or anger, nervousness. Video mistress. What would you guys say is so when you're like mean stress triggers? I was going to say family. Most of it's probably work related based on the type of things I surround myself with for over 12 hours a day. Yeah, I think for me it's it's work and then it's a lot of just sort of like. Personal life stuff. I have to do stuff which is just like like, I'm trying to move right now and that's like incredibly stressful and. Yeah. And also medical stuff that's been a, that's been a for sure. Holy hell yeah. We are excited that Chris is finally moving out of the hammer factory into the into the into the electric drill factory. So the audio will still be a bit weird. I mean, look, if, if, if, if, if it's, if it's anything like college, it'll be 12 hours a day. If a guy with a jackhammer directly below my window, which you'll all get to hear it incredibly large amount of, it's going to be great. That's fantastic. I mean, I think that's a perfect encapsulation of exactly the topic we're talking about. It's like a jackhammer on your brain. Constantly. I mean, that's on the only form of stress. I mean, there's a stress that comes from like loss, stress that comes from like, social drift, stress that comes from like, this consumerist rat race. You know, mental illness, just general uncertainty and change and grief and guilt and trauma. You know the nine to five dictatorship that a lot of people are subject to. And, of course, climate change. Go to a climate change. I think. More and more people need to realize there was a stress. Is a symptom of like. Systemic violence. You know when we are dealing with these headaches and sleep problems and muscle pains and digestive problems and sex problems and blood pressure issues, and moodiness and restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all these other responses and consequences. It's just the outcome of daily systemic violence of the way that this system deprives us of. Support and care that how how it atomizes us, how it controls us and. Really squeezes us forward with. I mean, this is not to say that like. There's no stress outside of capitalism or that stress is a capitalist invention? Absolutely not. I mean, stress in small doses could be a good indicator in certain spiral situations that need to change the situation. Motivation to act, you know? But. And the capitalism is really pathological. And yet. You gotta keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending that everything is OK. I mean, we all know how deeply unhealthy this society is. How deeply unequal society is when people don't stress related illnesses. Many people don't like hypervigilance. Are we are constantly scanning this urban jungle. For threats. For of insecurity and and decimation of public life and of. Entire economies and sectors. And it's like we're held in captivity. I will say one thing, and that is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress, it will sue. Alleviates stress by producing an economy organized around the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices. Of the all these different devices that, you know people pick up. I mean, if you look at the roots of capitalism and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation economies and the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas. You know, growing like sugar and tobacco and. You know, producing all these spirits and. Chocolate and coffee. The thing that that that that brought helped bring capitalism to fruition and helped to fund industrial capitalism. Is the thing that people are using to self medicate in response to the effects of the now global capitalist dominance. And people love all of their chocolate and their coffee. Personally, I'm not a big fan of coffee. I think it's taste disgusting, but yeah, you know. Yeah, I tried it once and it was like. It tastes like the sensation of burning. You know, I just wasn't having it. I like the smell for some reason, like the smell of coffee beans, but the actual taste is like no. And surprisingly, I actually used to not like chocolate as a child. The only one I matured my taste buds that I actually came around it ironically. And of course you don't think of these things as you know. Faces or or medications, but they're like small pleasures that, you know, help us get through our day. Practically everybody is some of that live alcoholic these days. And of course there's social media, which is like. Algorithmically tailored and tuned to keep us on it, to keep us like it. Basically like like a puppet master controls the highs and lows of all emotions on a daily basis. It basically functions as an addictive drug. Just the drug is just is is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain, but it's manipulating your brain into causing that to happen. But it's it's a very similar addictive process that has like, you know a reward system. You know this. That's why, like around a decade ago, a lot of social media companies changed their loading style. To be like, you like, scroll it down and it flicks back up, which was specifically slot machine. It was specifically copying a slot machine because it is. It's it's like an addictive pattern that's ingrained into what we find pleasurable. So it's it's all like, none of this is this probably isn't new information to a lot of people, but like, it's all obviously very intentional to why it's designed to be extremely addictive. Yeah. And this is just like, this is just like what like most of gaming is now to where it's like, I mean, OK, like you're playing a video game, right? Yeah, but like yeah it now it now literally like the the the revenue model of the gaming industry is selling gambling to children, you know and that that is my one complaint about casinos is that 8 year olds couldn't spend thousands of dollars with their parents money on skins now, thanks. Thanks to the wonders of Gaming, 8 year olds too can basically just live in a casino in their own bedroom all the time. Modern society OK there there's there's there's conflicting accounts about this but there's there's a new like free to play Diablo Diablo game and well yes I heard about that the the the amount of money it would take to get like a Max level character in this game. I have seen OK I I I've I've the the latest calculation I've seen is saying it would take over $500,000. The the lowest range calculation of how much it would cost I've seen was about 50,000. It's probably at least $100,000. To literally get to guys level character in these games it is like like this is 500,000 problems exactly where why this problem is exactly why the only mobile games I play are Sudoku and Minesweeper. And even those have ads. Yeah. I did have a brief foray into among us, though, but. That that. Has has ended. And plus, this is also why I tend to, you know, seal the high seas, if you know what I'm saying. The funny thing is that we don't. Have to do this and I mean. It's kind of. Obvious it's kind of like. So free. I'm looking for you like. It doesn't need to be said, but it also kind of needs to be said. That we built. We built this society and. As people within it, we do have the power to change it. We don't have to work as much as we do. We don't have to, you know. Structure and attend school the way that we do. I mean, even under capitalism there there are people who are assigned to shift from that eight hour workday which we had to fight for. A lot of people died for until, you know, three to six hours a day, which. Or 4 hours per day. It depends. I think that so one experiment was like. Six O's, four days a week or something like that. But. Despite, you know, studies coming out and saying that humans growing these so productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted. It it doesn't matter, you know, despite the fact that you know, productivity decreases. It's not like productivity rises. If you won't always you will. It doesn't matter. I mean, I remember when I was working in an insurance company, I was a people pusher, just like scanned in documents and uploading documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading those documents and then every once in a while I got to print documents. Exciting. But I was dealing with like a backlog of. Documents and. I was typically able to get like a decent chunk of the work done. Within like the first two to three hours, I said. Like having it fully. Sorted. Scanned, uploaded. Completed, you know, but. Unfortunately. I had to be there for 8 hours. And so I had to drag out my knee. You know, typically by listening to like, the Communist manifesto and audiobook. Or conquest of bread and audio book. I had to find things to do is like make myself look busy. And like, divvy up my tasks and extend them and artificially stretch them out because instead of. Doing this BS job. Instead of not doing this BS job at all, or instead of doing this BS job based on tasks completed rather than time spent. Had to rely on the time spent and the contractual hours and of course the pay was terrible, but. I mean, that's expected at this point. But the whole point is really to like squeeze all our time, right energy. So that's. We're stressed out so that we don't have any leisure so that. You know, we look for convenience, and convenience is profitable. I mean, who really has the energy to fight for their rights when they don't even have the energy to cook a meal when they get home? You know, and. It wasn't always like this. The social bond was broken by capitalism. And replaced with the bond into money and until we like sever that bond. It's gonna change. So the question is, how can we address stress? Right on so capitalism has an answer. Challenge is like an actual, proper, real, systemic answer. I mean, personally, I deal with stress by just. Not thinking about it. Umm. But I mean, what do you guys do? Be really sad. I'm talking about like like mitigation strategies, you know, like. I don't know, like when it's nice out, like I go take walks. Walks in ice. Yeah, I have a I have a shark that I got from somewhere that's like, it's like the like the the squishy foam material. But it's a shark and it rules. Do you have an IKEA shark, Chris? No, no, no, no. It's one of these. It's like, it's like a stress ball, but people have shark. Just like, Oh yeah, that's very funny. No, I don't have a whatever the like, I don't know what the law. I don't know that I should. I don't know how to say it either. Invincible? I don't know. I I've been trying to get back into doing more parkour training when I'm stressed, but honestly, it's. A lot of the time I just do stuff that I know I'm capable of, which oftentimes is the same things that kind of caused me to get stressed in the 1st place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it, writing about like different, like philosophies around do merism and like because those are things I just, I my, my brain can just do with little effort. So it's almost, it's almost peaceful in a way, almost therapeutic. Yeah, it's it's it's. They are because in in some ways you would think that these things are what's causing me to have problems, but also in a lot of ways that kind of calms me down. Look at a whole bunch of this type of thing. Or to write about it, or to like, try to like, you know, just do like formatting inside like a Google doc about it. I don't know. It's like, it's like sorting out the stuff. It's almost like there's this idea. This is like. Thing called a knowling. It's when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done with like Lego a lot. If you dump a giant, like box of Lego police different pieces. If you're going to tell them you're going to take all the pieces that are like the same color or size and sort them into their little places, it's, it's, it's. So it's. I kind of do that, but with like ideas and like and like with writing projects, I dump out all the things I'm currently thinking about into like a spreadsheet or a Google doc and sort them into related topics. Like, OK, here's how this thing leads into this thing and I just, I it's like that kind of like organizational thing, right? So like like how organizing is kind of like a therapeutic thing. So it's like I can do that with. All of the random stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try to like, just sort it out. Even if it doesn't get turned into like a work project, it's still like, it's like an external way to sort out my thoughts. Right. Sophie. I have a dog. Very good dog. Of dog we listen to music, we go outside. We like to go to the park and listen to music outside. You know. That's the basic I work a lot, but work is also like, if I don't work, I'm more stressed if that's exactly, yeah, I definitely relate to. I relate to that, which is. Which makes me sound like a lap dog for capitalism. I know, right? Like it's not something I like proud of, but also like. You know, I'm lucky enough. I think that's indicative of the problem, right? Like, it's not that people don't necessarily like to work, don't necessarily like to label the issues like. Not having. Autonomy, yeah. You know, because I mean, if I used most of the things I do for work now are things that I've been doing for years unpaid because I was just interested in them. So, you know, if we're talking about theorizing about like a post work world, yeah, people are still going to do all kinds of ****. Obviously these questions around, you know, tasks which are non, like not the most fun to do as we've had discussions on like anti work stuff before, but for a lot of stuff everyone has little interest in, little skills that they find kind of slightly therapeutic. And also, like, you know, it's in terms of tasks that no one wants to do. Like, I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a few weeks ago because my landlord's not going to do that. So like, you know, people it wouldn't when when you have to do something, you kind of become capable of it. That's fair. I think one of the most popular response is like, the stress is capitalism imposes. Is like this concept of self-care. You know, this way of escaping from the grind of it all. And sure, dealing with you know. With issues by like getting to bed early and eating well, and physical exercise, which I've been doing a lot of lately, yeah, Andrew Rock and all that. But we'd have to change your little dragon to like into like the Chad version. Well, I actually did that recently. Ohh that's great. Yeah, it's lovely. You know this thing also things like like journaling and meditation and yoga and. All that jazz. I mean, I never really got into meditation because I I tried it a couple of times and. Every time I do, I kind of fall asleep. I definitely do some meditation stuff, but that's kind of slightly part of my like metaphysics interest. And I mean also mean like in terms of like self-care practices in that vein that can help you kind of relax. There's obviously stuff like, you know, mushrooms or MDMA, which if done and you know proper, you know, it's spaced out. Not, not doing them all the time, but doing them at certain intervals can definitely be be therapeutic in their own way. Audrey, Lord one of the foremost. Black feminist scholars of our time. One said, and I returned to the school to lot. Caring for myself is not an act of self indulgence. It is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. Self-care used to mean preserving yourself in a world, hostility, very identity, community, way of life. Event not weakening yourself technically. Crave, you know, practice and seeing new and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers. And then, you know, as white corporate feminism does, white corporate feminism appropriated it and turned it into a. Industry now worth a staggering $11 billion. Yeah, we now self gear when people think of self gates all about intelligent cosmetics and luxurious spotties and overpriced scandals and Quinn expensive holidays and subscriptions to social media apps that are about like and it's it's it's turned into this own like grifting industry, almost like the the the self-care industry that's like self-care influencers and self-care content creators and like, it's just. Like it just gets it gets the same icky derealization feeling that everything else under capitalism is slowly getting. Yeah, I mean they even have like their own self-care funds. Like if you notice a lot of self-care content has a very specific visual style. Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean, hashtag itself can Instagram just like a bottomless scroll of graphics and products and it just makes me feel kind of unsettled. It kind of has this, like, uncanny aspect to it. Yeah, because it's almost as if stuff kids and accessible to those was created to help the most. Yeah, I mean there is, there is that mean a fundamental part of the uncanny is that is that disconnect where the the gap between the phenomenon and The thing is really is really big and you can't really understand why it's uncanny. But if you think about it, it's because that gap between the thing we're supposed to be doing is so large. So yeah, this thing that's supposed to help all these people is now a white millennial. Like, like up, like middle, upper class, like aesthetic now. And that sucks. Clean. I mean, these days the people like it's mostly a sale for like, white collar workers. Whose jobs also sucked them of their time, energy and creativity. But the people who actually, you know, the blue collar workers, they often don't have the time or money to be able to invest in themselves. Not we. Self-care and workaholism and basically two sides of the same coin, right? It's preserve yourself so you can produce more. It's a solution to capitalism within capitalism. A solution doesn't actually alleviate the conditions and stress, but lines. Pockets and fuels the. Economic system that creates it's in the foods, please. I mean, if you sell in self-care, it helps that you've got a constant supply of customers living in perpetual anxiety unwellness. Rather than means of resistance to the system, it's been weaponized by the system. It's become this performative thing we put on this image of put togetherness. We carefully curate your feed on your Instagram stories and your highlights and it. Is an individualized solution to systemic issues is. It's like this. I'm telling you to calm down while I continue to denigrate and and exploit you. None of these things address stress systematically. I'm not seeing that it's necessarily bad to address stress individually because everybody has their own personal conditions. But. Without dealing with the broader material conditions, without addressing people's lack of free time, lack of access to social connection, lack of access to. Housing and healthy food and affordable medical care. You know it. It misses the point. And I haven't. I haven't read much. In the field of, I believe there are some artists who spent a lot of time writing and talking about it, but I haven't read much in the field of like. Psychotherapy and. That sort of thing. But it's. It's kind of a realization of me that therapy is basically focusing on fixing an individual Twitter just to a sick society, rather than healing the society itself, fixing the society itself. I mean so much about their therapies, about, you know, addressing things that are impairing your functionality to complete your work. Yeah, like, it's it's all the the base of mental healthiness is, is it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's when it becomes a problem and the only way to solve it is through it. Like, like what what deems a success is if you're able to complete your job at a high level of functioning again. So it's not actually about your mental state. It's about how much you can produce under the capitalist framework. Yeah. And I mean not to say that that medication doesn't have a tremendous benefits in people's lives and, you know, helping them get back on track and take control of the circumstances. But you know when you have a society that's has distress and misery and loneliness woven into it? It's it's cool. Trying to adjust people and adapt people to that is. Just responding to sickness is more sickness. And you know me, I like to. Try and keep things on the practical. Helpful, positive side. You know, it could happen here. Genuinely, with a smile and face. You know, like it could happen here. And so I just wanted to put forward some recommendations I guess. I mean, obviously we can't afford to wait until capitalism has been abolished to be happy. That's just ridiculous. I mean that's long term cure for a lot of the moralities and I just use people facing. But. In the meantime, unassigned the roots of our stress, and these systems could make the boost on political and drive us to act and connect with people who can support us. I think they didn't organize and species. They need special attention, but towards creating support groups that have allow for solidarity to be built. You know, allowing people to share their feelings and work through the challenges together. self-care kind of freedoms things in a way that makes it seem as though healing is done on an individual level when healing is communal. Like you don't have to go through all this alone. Healing is an act of communion and the world must be. Forced to change. To reflect that. Recognize that? We have each other and. Recognize that self-care and community care inextricably linked. And. Once those facts are the forefront. Once we put communal care at the forefront, outside of the clause of the market, accessible to all. Umm. I think we can find hope. You know it really. It can start with something as simple as just reaching out, you know? Having groceries or doing dishes or watching kids, all of the care work that is so up to the side when we think about organizing and what it means to organize. But by then you home on your neighborhood, or at work or at school. Because I I think in, especially in neighborhood settings. Developing that sense of neighborliness, considering help, even Seneca community garden, and being able to connect with nature again or at all for the first time, you can really help. Life hard and we don't have to make it harder for each other. So you could follow me on Twitter. Out on Discord saying true. On youtube.com/andrezza. Featuring our com slash, same true and. I have been your host of it could happen here. Peace. 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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, it's it could happen here, a podcast about usually bad things happening, all the bad things that are happening everywhere, but occasionally about good things happening and people doing cool stuff to make a better world. And this lucky you, lucky all of us happens to be one of the latter kinds of episodes when we talk about good things happening with me in the studio, which is more than a femoral. Concept than a physical studio because there's a play going on is James Stout and Garrison Davis Co hosting the podcast Hello Fellas. Greetings. Hi Robert. Now, today the thing that we're talking about we we had about a week or so two weeks ago a representative, a couple of representatives from the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Dallas, TX come in and they had been providing armed security at a couple of different Dallas area protests against Christian nationalists. I do recommend checking out those episodes. This week we have one representative from that organization back on, and what we'll be talking about is there have been a series of attempted sweeps in Dallas at a homeless camp. And if you're not familiar with the concept, basically people who are experiencing homelessness set up encampments in order to live with some degree of comfort and have you know their stuff with them. These are generally in places like parks under overpasses, that kind of situation. And periodically the city will come through and sweep them. The city's language is always very much focused towards. We're trying to help them, you know, get into some sort of situation where they can find help. But what usually winds up happening is the city takes a bunch of people stuff and throws it in the trash, often before extreme weather events. It's a really gnarly thing to experience, and activists in a number of cities have experimented with different tactics to try and stop and delay sweeps and what we've had. Happening lately over the last week in Dallas is representatives of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club have been showing up armed alongside activists with say it with your chest, Dallas. And the kind of thing that's been spreading on Twitter is of course the fact that activists have shown up with guns to stop the sweeps and the Dallas police have not shown up to do the sweeps. The thing that often gets missed in this kind of Twitter level discourse, although is covered in a pretty good Dallas Morning News article on the subject, is that there have also been activists. As I said from the say it with your chest movement, who have been showing up to help people who to provide laundry service, transportation, food and water. And essentially what they've been doing is trying to help people get things together and organize to move to a new location in a manner that allows them to do so with like dignity and comfort and not get their stuff thrown out by the city or experienced violence from the police while it's happening. So that is the broad situation. I'm not going to say anymore myself, I want to introduce Danny. Say it with your chest, Dallas and bubble from the Elm Fork Jung Brown Gun Club. Thank you both for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having us. Was that a broadly accurate summary of events? Yeah, for the for the most part, the city has actually been sweeping several they're they're cracking down on houseless right now, very, very aggressive. And so it's not just that one camp that we were defending the other day, but the Monday before we were defending another camp. And I've never seen this many sweeps happen at one time, and I've been doing this for a little over two years now. I want to actually go a little bit into how your organization formed, but before that, do you have any kind of, can you pause it, why the city has suddenly ramped up sweeps so aggressively in Dallas? So. Normally I'm talking to the residents. I've never, I've never seen it happen like multiple times in a week. Usually they'll do one way a little bit, we'll hear a notice on the other one couple months later or something, but multiple in a week at different spots is definitely. Definitely new to us. As for why, the typical reasons are like, you know, the State Fair comes up in October, so they'll try to sweep them or they'll do it usually like a housing development and things like that where like the land is brought up or you know, something, but recently. The motivations have been a little bit more unclear with the aggression. It's kind of. The. The city in terms of how they execute sweeps. It used to be that code compliance could not touch people's belongings. Recently it has shifted to take everything, throw away everything. Umm. But yeah, we still don't know. While it's happening yet, it is certainly like part of a nationwide trend because we're having the same things happen in Portland increasingly. And obviously Portland and Dallas aren't the only cities where sweeps have been ramped up. And of course you also have, oh gosh, I I just ran across the article today that, like, there's discussion in certain cities about, like, yeah, somewhere in Florida about like putting houseless people in like essentially an island compound and whatnot. Like basically an in like a concentration camp, right. Yeah. That's been also mentioned by people affiliated with like the Portland City Council and the Mayor's office. And it's like they essentially getting a concentrated collection of homeless people and 1 closed off area and you're like, huh, I wonder, I wonder what they mean by that. Yeah, it's it's unsettling. So I'm I'm curious because obviously I think what y'all are doing in Dallas right now is extremely important and you've been having a lot of success so far. I wanted to talk a little bit about. How your organization? Because we we chatted with the John Brown Gun Club folks a couple of weeks ago about how they started organizing. How did say it with your chest? Get off the ground? Umm, so that was interesting. Say with your chest originally started along with a lot of orgs and mutually orphan Dallas after George Floyd was more murdered back in June of like 2020, we started. I was in Plano at the time, which is like a suburb where I grew up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't playing at the time and you know, I. Me and my friends were kind of like these suburban people can turn off their TV's and not really have to worry about the protest going on downtown and things like that. So we would protest on street Corners and just yell at, you know, why people in their Mercedes and, you know, make them uncomfortable on purpose. And then we started linking up with other mutual aid orgs in Dallas and, you know, was distributing food, trying to carry that stuff up north. And then then we well, I started going to Camp Rhonda. Which was like. Probably the. 1st and like. It was a very solid example of a self-sustaining, Houseless encampment where people were just allowed to be and left alone, were helping people, a lot of them in recovery and things like that, and everyone looked out for each other. It was a really great community for the that was such a RAD project. Not to derail it too much, but I want to tell you guys about Camp Ronda. Yeah, like politically organized on houses camp. The organizers, the outside organizers, were there every day, helping. The camp itself was organized amongst themselves. They had political theory meetings. They had community meetings to solve issues and resolve interpersonal problems. ******* rad. And it stayed together for nine months. Tested for a minute. I know it was a approximate. It was over 6 I believe but. Yeah, it lasted for. A while at one location and then it had to move and then the next location we end up moving all the people to. They stayed there first solid 10 months before. The city sold the land. In like some under the table deal, and showed up and swept everybody. It reminds me quite a bit of a place I I I worked at in Seattle for a while. A Nicholasville, which was a plot of land, a couple of acres large, where houseless people had set up, basically built like a tiny home village for themselves. They'd provided solar power, they had arranged their own like trash pickup. It was safe and very well organized and very comfortable, like an actual fairly high standard of living. Good level, like good, good wastewater treatment and all that kind of stuff which existed for a couple of years before the city came in and swept it and destroyed everybody's houses and and forced them, you know, into, again, kind of a series of camping situations. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, you get these, it's it's very frustrating because there's this understanding that like, well, we want them in and part of the understanding you get from a number of cities is like, well, we do want them in one place and we want them in something that's. More permanent than, you know, a bunch of tents. But if they set that up on their own and have autonomy and have the ability to like exist with any kind of personal freedom, then we don't want that and we will send armed men and to break it up. Yeah, like the city's like, Oh yeah, well, I don't. I genuinely do not think the city of Dallas wants to house people. Otherwise the office of Homeless Solutions simply would not exist and they wouldn't have a way to just. Have money sitting around and all those people would lose their jobs, you know, because it's not housing people, you know, people are like, how do you do that? It's not hard. It's not difficult. The city is spending, what, $2 billion on renovating the Convention Center that could house every house as person in Dallas for years, you know? But then we wouldn't be able to have all of the wonderful things. Someone who lived in Dallas 15 years I can remember. Then maybe even two times when I went to the Convention Center, what would we do? That's it. I think maybe one time, yeah, what's wrong with it? To where we have, like it's Dallas prioritizes developers over anything else, and that is more than apparent in how they treat the houseless population. They're definitely. Because that's like my my problem, right? OK. If the city, the city is going to do sweeps, that's something that I can't really necessarily stop them from doing on my own, but we can date and alleviate some of the effects of, you know. But when the is sweeping people in the heat like this, we're in the cold, elderly, disabled people, it's like. Y'all really are just telling them to die. And the least you could do, and I've emailed Marcy Jackson. Who's the? Community outreach chair for OHSU. And you know, she's been like. Well, they can go to the shelter. It's it's about it's within 3 miles and I'm like you, you're going to walk three. You're telling somebody who is older than the stable to walk 3 miles in 107 degree heat to get to a cooling station that is only open till like 5. Well, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the city. Just for a little bit of reference too, because like we have cooling stations and stuff up in Portland and you have similar problems. One thing that is a benefit to folks in a place like Oregon is that after 5-6 PM, when like this cooling stations start to cool down, it actually does cool down here. Like it gets cool at night, even when it's 100 outside. That doesn't happen in Dallas during this. Yeah, I've literally had it be triple digits at midnight in ******* Dallas, TX. Like that's the place it is. It doesn't cool down, no. So you're still it's still a threat to life and limb even when the sun's not beating down on you. Yeah, sometimes. Those cooling shelters I know, certainly, like here, we have a bunch of issues with shelters and cooling shelters and stuff like, you don't have privacy, you can't bring your pets. They want you to lock all your possessions up somewhere else. And there are like a number of other things that really limit people's ability to feel safe accessing. I don't know if it's the same there, but like, it's not like there's necessarily a place where someone would feel safe and they're not going there. I just want to make that clear. Pets are a big issue, and this is something that, again, when I was at Nicholasville, people would point out that, like, folks. Would accuse them of being like abusive because they had a cat or a dog, you know, that was living with them in the encampment and they'd be like, well, #1 like. It's OK for me to live this way, but it's not OK for like a cat or a dog to live this way. And also just like, do I not deserve companionship and love in my life? Like, this is what this animal is one of the is one of the things that helps keep me and I talked to a number of folks who got back into housing who were like, if we had not had our cat with us, like, I don't know that we would have made it because just having that animal with us, like, helped. Like it's it's for the same reason everybody has animals, right? Like every single house has person that has. A pet has a service animal has a that is a service animal is far as I'm concerned. Would you separate somebody who is disabled from their wheelchair or would you separate somebody from their like their service animal, their dog that they need, you know? And it's like when you're out there. I know that a lot of people have dogs for comfort, but also dogs are protection. They are security in such a dangerous environment. Where people are always, you know. Like it's just, it's just. It is unfathomable how much trauma goes into being houseless, especially in Dallas, in places like Dallas. So I'd like to ask you a little bit. So you have been, is this kind of the first collaboration this last week or so, let's say it with your chest has had with the the Elm fork John Brown Gun Club. Had you guys been working together prior to this? Yeah, yeah. Like we originally met members of UNFORKED when Camp Rhonda first started back in 2020. And we were collaborating on like getting people supplies, tents and things like that. I would run laundry with my org. And like. Yeah, we were. We just, you know, always collaborate to make sure, like, the people could get what they need if somebody had supplies, someone was able to show up and we couldn't, you know, just working together. Yeah. And I'm curious, could you kind of walk us through sort of how the, what you see is the benefit of having folks who are visibly armed for this kind of for for these kind of actions? Like how did how did #1 sweep defense tend to work before y'all were doing that and how has that altered kind of the way in which you're seeing? The this activism like take effect. Umm. As far as I know, people from members of Elm Fork has have always shown up with. Firearms in some capacity, whether it's concealed or open, but there was a noticeable difference with the open carry. I know that back in February when one of our other camps was getting swept and they showed up like afterwards, we had a meeting with the Director of Home Solutions, Christine Crossley. She sucks and. So she was like. People were like, we were hearing reports of people that were openly armed, and we want them. We really care about the safety of, like, the Unhoused residents out there. And I was like, they were more afraid of the cops than of the five people out here with rifles. And that's that's something it's like if you're going to show up with 12 dudes with guns. What's the problem with some of us showing up with like? A little something, just in case. You know, the state should not be the only one to have access to firearms. That is very dangerous. But also I don't mean that in a. To a kind of way, if that makes sense enough. Yeah, that does kind of bring up an interesting point, which is if you're showing as you're showing up kind of in this capacity with both activists to kind of help folks with their stuff with with laundry and other needs, but also people who are are carrying AR fifteens and wearing plate carriers. I imagine there's like a degree to which you are trying to give people a heads up before just so they don't be like, oh, suddenly there's folks with guns. What's going on, right. Can you kind of walk us through the community outreach, explaining? Sort of like how you how you actually go about letting people know what's going to be happening and stuff and and what the folks showing up or doing. Well. When it comes to sweeps, and normally I focus a lot on just making sure that people are OK and defending them. When I, I do not necessarily like ask for for to show up with guns. I'm just more like I assume if y'all are going to be there, there are going to be. You know and. Sometimes there is usually the residents are like the residents have some of the residents have firearms themselves, you know, so they're like well aware. There are some cases where, like, people will get a little bit anxious about it and, you know, we kind of have to be like. If you really don't want the guns here, then that's fine, we can move them. But in the past with this track record, like usually the city kind of backs off a little bit when they know that y'all are actually protected, you know, because. The city is the city is a bully. They really do like picking on people who the most vulnerable of us, you know? And so lately, the guns have been seeming to like. Have them back off a little bit. I know when they pulled up like 1 Elm Fork pulled up and hopped out the car with the rifles, all of the cops literally squatted up into like a little little, I don't know, pig circle and they started talking. And they were genuinely like, what do we do? Hold on. Yeah, and it's, I mean that's kind of the, that's kind of the story as we're coming into it right now, which is there were supposed to be a sweep, what is it, 5 days ago now, Friday? Yeah, almost a week and y'all have been showing up a couple of times in that period to help people get their get things together and whatnot and get get moved. Which is an important the the fact that you're helping them kind of move and and doing it more in kind of their own time frame as opposed to the city shows up and you've got to like grab what you can or lose. Everything is important because you're also you're not just showing up with activists with guns and saying like the the city, we're not going to let any, like no one's going to move and we're like we're we're drawing. Lying in the sand which is not would not be a particularly safe call, I wouldn't think. My my main priority out there because there's a lot of black and brown bodies out there and very comfortable people is making sure they are safe and. Even before this last one, like, a lot of us were concerned about the guns because, like, we didn't want things to escalate and we never know. With police, sometimes they get really excited when they're out, and then sometimes they back off. It's really a we really don't know. So we were also taking that into consideration and I was kind of like the unfortunately. Listen, there's a lot of black and brown people out here and we don't want to escalate anything and, you know, put people in danger. Umm. And it seems like this time, the city. Didn't really want to mess with that, so that's good, but. It's always important to keep that in mind anytime you have firearms, yes. Population and I'm, I'm curious bubble, can you talk a little bit about the how this kind of organizing is sort of different than the stuff you've been doing at at counter protesting events? Like what are kind of the different things that y'all are keeping in mind as you, as you make action plans for days like this compared to when you know you're showing up to at A at a protest to kind of counter groups of proud boys or whatever? Yeah, it's pretty different in that when we're doing security for marches or, you know, protecting pride events. It's not like a direct confrontation with the government. So it's it's a bit, it's a bit different, it's a little bit more high stakes when we do stop the sweep things you know we want to, we want to push back but at the same. You know not be the first to cross any lines. So it is, you know, it is, it is a more sensitive situation. I think it requires different kind of planning. And of course there's there's all these bystanders, there's all the residents there who were there to help that we don't want to endanger in any way like Danny was saying I actually had. What ended up being a pretty cool conversation with a resident afterward. But he was kind of an organizer in the camp and he was talking to me and he said, you know? I don't think we want the guns like we don't want any trouble, and I leaned over to him and I I whispered to him. Look, we're just here with guns to try to get the cops to back off. I think they're actually backing off now because we actually just heard the cops were gonna leave, I said. I think they're backing off. We're gone. Don't worry about it. And he said, wait, wait, you know, don't leave yet. Wait till they leave. And now that that's a, I am interested like as the. The actual folks showing up armed bubble, do you guys have kind of a like standard set of responses and stuff that you work through ahead of time to kind of explain things to people and make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of how they're doing it? Yeah, we have some of that worked out. That's an evolving thing where we're trying to standardize work long time with a core group of people that knows each other really well. So we have like seen each other at, you know, dozens of these things and we, we know how each other operates with some newer people coming in. You know, we are working now on kind of standardizing those responses and, you know, sharing our past experiences and our thinking and all that. Now question for for both Slash either of you, as you've gotten more into doing sweep defenses, what have been some of kind of the lessons learned, things that have been like, OK, we went into it thinking like this was a good idea and it turned out that like that doesn't work very well. So we've had to do this like just things that have kind of best practices that have kind of evolved over time doing this. Umm. Honestly, a lot of it. A lot when when tensions are really high like that. Because you want comes to sweeps like I'm the. One kind of like. Dealing with. A lot of, like, overseeing and stuff like that. And when tensions are really high like that, honestly the best thing is harm reduction. Harm reduction is at the pinnacle of it's at the core of like, whatever we do. And part of that is meeting people where they're at and making sure that we. Help the people. I show up, I I **** you not. One of the best things that we started doing is showing up a packs of Newports. On God, it makes it a lot. You know when you're going through trauma like that and someone hands you a cigarette? That's something that not only helps you kind of regulate yourself when you're experiencing this high stress situation where you're being evicted from your home and you're going to lose your stuff and you're afraid people are going to steal things. And it's a whole lot that helps bring people back. And it makes it a lot easier for us to work with people and still maintain the bonds that we've created and maintain the levels of trust that we have with the Community. Literally some simple things like handing out cigarettes during because that's a way that we're like, hey, we're here for you. We know what you need. Yeah, and we're not, we're also, we're not here to, like, judge what's best for you, you know, and do some, like, nanny state ****. Like, you need a cigarette right now, right? Like, it's stressful. Yeah, not really. Like, hell, I would need a cigarette too, you know, at that point. There was somebody who was like, you're asking people for Newport, you need to stop doing that. Like, that's really unhealthy. And I thought you were trying to say these people. And it's like, I'm not trying to say for starters. We're not Captain America. We're not no Avengers, OK? We are regular people fulfilling a responsibility, and that responsibility is to be there for our neighbors. That's how movements happen. That's how anything happens. And all of that is rooted in, you know, indigenous. Communalism and theory and stuff like that that I think is really important. Is just fulfilling that responsibility and being there for people. And when it comes to, because, you know, we always try to provide folks listening in other towns and stuff who maybe, like inspired by this with options for how they might move forward and trying to replicate some of y'all's successes if people are looking at OK, I would like to help do sweep defensive. I would like to do, you know, work kind of like this in my own community. How do you recommend? Because obviously there's, you know, how how to build organizations is another matter. But like, if you've got a group together to help folks, how do you recommend? Kind of starting the process of introducing yourself because you can't just like show up and be like hey, like just be like, hey, we're gonna certainly not with guns, but yeah, that's the cops do and yeah, doesn't work. Umm. You have to develop a really, really strong rapport with your Community first, and you also need to make sure that it's your community like. You know. Umm. I I I spent a really long time curating relationships with the unhoused populations of South Dallas. And that took literal years, you know, expecting people to trust you off the bat and expecting people to just like. You're like, oh, you're one of the good guys. It's not going to happen, especially if you're white. Like, honestly, if we be in, if we keep it a buck because like. There's a whole lot of black and brown people out there in these vulnerable communities, and usually the white people that they see are the white people who are talking down to them and not treating them as human beings. The main thing that people, the people out there, need most is consistency from you. Even if you don't, even if one day you don't have anything and you can just hand out water there with them and developing community that way, you know? And one of the things that people tell me a lot is that just it was. It's been very shocking to me. How much I've heard it is. People are like you don't talk to us like how other people talk to us. You talked to us like we're people. And the sheer amount of time, I was really shocked by how many times I've actually heard that, because I'm like, you know, I don't really think I talk much differently from anybody else, but then when I go out there and see other people, just random people hang out mcgriddles or whatever, you know? There's definitely a switch, like if you were talking to a pet or to a child. You know, like you pity something. People will not want you around because honestly, they don't want your pity. What they want is bottles of water. You know, if you're just only showing up when ***** going down, you don't actually have the people's trust. And I think if anything that that hurts it a little bit because it's like, oh, I am only here to make you feel good about yourself. You want to be the one saving everybody. It's like you got to dismantle your Savior complex first before you do anything. And I I think it's good to talk about kind of how this actually how these actions actually look on the ground because again, the thing that sort of has gone semi viral on Twitter has been the fact that like, you know people with guns. Stood off the cops. But if you're imagining some sort of like, big armed standoff, like that's not how this is looked. Which is the thing I liked about the Dallas Morning News article, which we will do. You mean the article or the opinion piece? Sorry, yes the ohhh what's the title of the article? I am pulling it up right now just to to have that. We'll have it. There's an opinion piece already. Ohh, anytime on house people pop up in the discourse, someone is ready to write like a girl. Yeah, it's the piece. Yeah, the article. The article. Armed activists block Dallas workers from clean job of not kind of over emphasizing the armed part and talking about the actual work y'all were doing in the community. I was kind of impressed with it, especially given the Dallas Morning News most recent like General Trends, shall we say, and considering their opinion piece they published yesterday. Yeah, I hadn't seen that one. Could you talk a little bit about how these, these actions have actually looked on the ground during the day of yeah, so on the ground, some people arrived very early and you really never know when the cops in the city are going to show up. So Elm Fork showed up close to 9 and they're already like 4 cops there. And that, you know, that's unfortunate. We probably should have shown up earlier. We, you know, if if we're going to go to protect the other activists, you know, you don't want to leave the unarmed activists exposed to police violence. But either way, you know, we we formed up. It was maybe 2 unarmed activists for every armed activist and. We discussed what to do. Some people decided to block off the streets with their vehicles. The cops were there for a solid hour and a half before homeless solution or yeah, office of homeless solutions and code compliance started arriving. So by that time a good number of armed activists were there and the cops had been discussing amongst themselves. You know, whatever it is that they were talking about. But when OHSU and code got there, they talked with the cops for about 30 minutes and and they started leaving. During that time, the unarmed activists were packing things up. Get, you know, getting people ready to move if those people wanted to move. But one thing to to kind of go back a little bit, one thing that we've learned carrying is it's very difficult to do the same things that we were doing as unarmed activists. You know, we we don't really want to be carrying tents and stuff while also trying to negotiate. You know how it is. It's very difficult to do the same things that we were doing as unarmed activists. You know, we we don't really want to be carrying tents and stuff while also trying to negotiate, you know, having a rifle in our arms. So, you know, there's kind of a division of Labor there. But you know, before 2 hours had even passed, basically the sweep was called off the city and the cops left and the mutual aid work continued throughout the rest of the day. Elm Fork had some members switching out, you know, some people had to go to work, some people arrived around noon. That was kind of the main switch out point and you know, a lesser number of people but still a significant amount stayed there until 4-5 PM. Before it comes with guns, the main thing that I like to have them do is surveillance and be watching so that way we can focus on having other volunteers actually help people you know and like, have them help them move and stuff. And the surveillance definitely helps because what happens when the cops leave and when the city leaves is that they'll still have people, like, watching and driving around and trying to surveil us. And so having more eyes on that situation and having them know, like, yeah, we're still here is really helpful. Great. Thank you. Did anybody else have additional questions to ask? James, you you had one or two more things? Yeah. I'm like, I'm interested in maybe asking bubble discs. I'm just looking at the pictures on the on the Dallas Morning. Story and incredibly they didn't lead with a picture of you all sort of suited and booted in full battle rattle, which I think is good on their part. But how do you present an event like this? Right? Like obviously I think we should probably mention that, like I'm guessing it's legal to open carry where you are. Yeah, you're not like immediately criming and and therefore provoking a sort of violent confrontation with the police. Other obviously the police are always turning up armed, and that always brings violence into the equation. But are you, like masked? Are you full, like this person I'm seeing is like masked helmet, goggles, plate carrier? Is that generally how you present, or is that just left up to individuals, I wonder? We try to be pretty uniform, but it definitely varies by action. I think the last time we came out armed we were not in helmets and play carriers. Umm. But you know, everyone has one now. And. We discussed it beforehand. We decided to go that way. We try not to park directly where we're going to get seen. You know, if all possible, because we do need to get out. You're up, you know, walk over in all our stuff. But. Yeah, I think, you know, for a lot of actions now, including security, that's kind of been our. Go to way of presenting. The full masks are very important. We've moved from like. You know, medical style masks to Ala Clava style masks just to get more skin coverage. Protect our identities better. Yeah, that makes sense. And one other thing I just wanted to ask and perhaps like explain in in a context that might might not be relevant to Texas. I don't know. In California at least, you need 2 proofs of address 2 and a firearm, right? And if you're unhoused, you might not have those. And therefore people are alienated from what it's theoretically they're right. Whether you want to see that as a universal writer of constitutional right is, is that the case there? Or are these people able if they wanted to? Texas doesn't give a ****. No, Texas, you don't. You don't have to file A4473 to buy a gun in the state of Texas. My gun literally was just given to me by somebody. I didn't have to do it title transfer or nothing. Like guns are so easy to get. Texas. It's actually really scary private sale. You can basically do whatever you want it. It is hard not to wind up owning a gun in the state. Yeah. Easier than owning a place to stay. Definitely. Way easier. Yeah. What a country method for the House. OK, magnificent. OK, well, yeah. Not the case in other States and I guess to and and nothing that we've said here should be taken as legal advice RE how to protest or partake in armed activism, because that can vary. That varies wildly based on your ZIP code. And everything we've talked about today is a massive series of felonies and a number of other parts of the United States. If you're not, you're not going to be providing sweep defense in New York City in this manner, you know? Yeah, you do this where I live in Portugal. Show up with the yeah. Into consideration, yeah so take obviously I mean that's a big part of what you're saying though is you have to take the situation on the ground. You have to take the situation with these people as individuals into you. You can't just you can't just go in and impose like this is how we're going to do sweep defense. You have to be go in there like being willing to learn and adapt because this is not you know, your day-to-day life and it is life for the folks there and you have to come in willing to learn and understand what they need rather than like what you think. They need. Yeah, the we never know what the city is going to show up with each time. Like the Monday suite before this past one, it was all marshals. It wasn't even act like regular DPD. It was all Marshalls. They were ready to arrest. They had bulldozers and cranes and all types of ****. And that was also that was kind of awkward because I was like, wow, y'all are being mad aggressive this time. I think we just ****** them off too much to the point where they were like. We have to be, you know, meaner about it. I mean but we haven't been arrested yet. So fingers crossed. I do wanna when I do want to mention one more thing. I know we've talked about how this kind of pertains to Dallas and you know, had the similar, you know, situations on increasing the sweeps across the country in Portland. Like I think last month there was an episode on this show about a homeless encampment in Ohio. And in terms of like similar stuff that has happened to to kind of demonstrate this is like, you know, this is the thing going on. All across the country there was a really interesting situation in Boise, ID. Earlier this year that we may want to cover more in depth in the future. But in January when it was freezing outside, protesters and and homeless people launched an encampment in front of the Boise State Capitol to kind of both provide, you know some type of shelter and community to help keep each other warm, but also in front of the Capitol as like a protest to demand access to shelter. You know, and while in the middle of like a pretty bad housing crisis and as it's freezing outside, people at the camp faced a lot of basically nonstop harassment from the state, whether that's police or like state, state police. They also faced a lot of problems from far right militia groups, the Idaho Liberty Dogs showed up to harass people. There was, you know, militia showing up with guns. So you can see like another instance. Where something that you know where another instance where our community defense could be, could be a part in trying to keep of situations like that. From not escalating if done properly. Obviously if done improperly that can escalate situations. So it's up to you know, you have to make sure that you're with people who are you, who you know, who you trust, and who are responsible. But it's just, it's another instance of stuff like this happening. Anti fascists and other activists were able to push, were able to keep conflicts from these militia groups to be relatively low at at the at the encampment and after a few months and like courts were trying to shut down the protest. That was unsuccessful because of certain laws around camping on on like a capital grounds for protests. But after a few months the protest was able to end and the city is now been pushed by the protest to open up possibly hundreds of units of shelter in the near future. So you see other instances of of these types of protests that you know rely on a lot of like radical mutual aid, a lot of resistance to the state violence. The resistance to far right violence actually being somebody like successful. So there's a lot of places to learn from in this type of thing around homeless encampments, encountering state violence would recommend it's going down, has a lot of good coverage of the Boise ID thing. So yeah, that's just like a whole whole other angle to this, to this sort of trend that we've been seeing the past year. I would like to say that. You are not. Fidel Castro, you know you are not the revolutionary leader, you are not the one you know like and you need to keep that in mind when you're moving in these spaces and doing this type of work is. If your goal is to try and be like the guy you know that does way more harm than good, and that's really important to keep in mind and dismantling your savior complex as part of that. Of course in that case, you know the houses, people, residents were, you know, consenting to it and things like that. But please do take into account the amount of danger that you are putting very the most vulnerable populations into. It is not necessarily a good idea or a morally OK idea to. Make houseless people into your people's army. You know that is not, and I want to make sure that everybody you know listening is also well aware of like that is the wrong way to go about this. The People's Army should be people like us, not the most vulnerable of us, because they are already fighting very hard. So that means that's like, it's the same thing like saying white people should be at the front lines protecting black and brown people during protests. It's the same exact concept. You protect the most vulnerable of the group, you do not make them. You know your army and try to convert them into something and be the leader of that either, that is that is not the way to go about that. Yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're entering into this relationship with the plan that like this is a way for us to build power for whatever end as opposed to we're here to like help these people. Then you're you're putting them second to whatever your political goals are, which is bad, broadly speaking. You know, I know at least in the case of the idea of of in the Ohio encampment that we talked about earlier this month and the Idaho one as well. A large number of people who are like leading up that project and in prominent organization roles where houses people who are living at those camps like it is very important to have. People who are like, you don't want to go in as someone with stable housing. Be like, OK, I'm in charge of this thing now. No, it's like the people who are actually experiencing it need to be the, like, critical role in actually how it functions. Yeah, and they're we've had, not we. But like, there was somebody who tried to do that, and it definitely did more harm than good. Putting your political goals over just the people, it's always going to fail every single time. Listen to the people. If they're not leading it, don't do it. You know, like at that point, your only priority should be getting them what they need and defending them if necessary, trying to lead stuff and, you know, have them. Putting them into more vulnerable situations than they're already at without, like, fully being transparent with people or being transparent with all the risks involved, you know, like it's that's real grimy, real, not OK behavior. So that's something I also want to caution people against. And all of that definitely roots back to dismantling your Savior complex. And there's. A lot of good. Resources out there for starting with that process if you have not already. Some of them are on your chest Instagram. After you get out and follow us or something. Yeah. Yeah. Do you wanna I think, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm at the out of questions personally. Do we want to? End with kind of, yeah, how folks can follow you and and stay in touch with what y'all are doing or potentially even support you. Yeah. We are at say it with your chest, DTX, on Instagram. I also organize with the Dallas Liberation Movement, which is a bigger org that mobilizes across the 9000 square miles of DFW. I run that with three of my good friends and organizers. And so you can follow us at Dallas Liberation MVMT on Instagram. Ohh, if you're willing, able and financially stable, throw us some cash, please. And listen to black women. Listen to black and indigenous women. That's all I got. All right, Bubble, did you have anything to add? I think it's important to have a diverse collection of groups. You know, Danny's a hero. She's out there almost every day. For Elm Fork, we do a lot of trainings. We do a lot of classes that take up our resources, but we have these long standing relationships so that we can support each other. When need be. You know, take care of your take care of your spaces, take care of your communities like Danny said. Focus on the people in those spaces, whether that be unhoused people or your own organizers and activists. You know, you got to keep, you got to keep things safe. It's hot out here. There's been a lot of stress and and conflicts and you always have to practice. Restorative justice and and accountability. And, you know, just keep fighting, keep keep loving each other. All right. Well, that's gonna do it for everybody here at it could happen here today. Yeah. Go, go, go do something good. 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. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. 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