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Hey, all of a sudden, it's Jess Hilarious, post of Carefully Wrackless on the Black Effect podcast network. And it's where I'm telling all my business and carefully commenting on other people's business too. Now it's respectable, but it's messy at the same time. So if you want to hear real stories, current events, commentary, and my real raw opinion on the ways of the world, listen to Carefully Wrackless every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network. I heart radio app, Apple Podcast, or whatever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Corzite, made to chill. I'm Munga Shatekler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop Groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The number one true crime podcast is back. Let's talk about the crime scenes. Accused murderer, George Wagner, faces a judge and jury. This is legitimately the biggest murder trial in the state of Ohio's history. I think the defense knows something that we all don't know. Will he face the death penalty, or will he walk free? Listen to the Pikes and Masks, season four. Trials begin on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or 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. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good nights. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It is 3 p.m. in the winter, so it's all of those at once over here. That is true. That is true. You just said it's here. It's regular, well, evening time here. The winter included, you know, just rain and hot. That's the two moods of the weather. Yeah, yeah. Which winter is it right now? Is it rain? Winter or hot winter? Neither. There is no winter. Winter is not well, I hope that winter never comes to the island. If it does, I think we'll be in some deep shit, you know. If you guys get snow, things have really gone south. It's time for us all to reevaluate our practices when that happens. Yeah, absolutely. That means the parrots have migrated to Alaska. They do a lot of movements around the evening time, so I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to pack up and leave us all behind. Well, this is It Could Happen Here, as you might be aware, a podcast about things falling apart. And today's episode is brought to us by Andrew. Hello. Of the Udru General, Andrew is some. Just a of white confusion with other Andrews, you know, abuse and like, realize, yeah, that's right. Son of the Queen. Yeah, you know, you could talk about Prince Andrew, you could talk about Andrew T. You know, it's like, I don't distinguish myself, you know. You're the best Andrew. Oh, appreciate that. Anytime, buddy. So I'd like to spend some time today, tonight, what is time really? And to talk about the concept of degrowth, you know, where it comes from, what it means, what it needs, and all that other fun stuff. Are you guys familiar with degrowth as a concept? Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. I mean, and it's, yeah, I, please, please, I mean, it's one of those things that gets a lot of like, uh, flag on one hand for people saying that it's basically eco-fascism. And then you have folks being like, no, it's a, it's a perfectly reasonable response to the kind of endless growth attitude that got us into the environmental catastrophe we're currently experiencing. That's yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that, um, I've been released a video on degrowth last week. And having read through some of the comments I've received, I've come to the conclusion that there's no getting through to some people. Yeah. Oh, no. People, people love to listen to like a third of what you say and then get really angry at what they think you said. Every time we talk about like the value of things like, you know, the fourth-eaves vinegar collective, you know, hacking different medicines or training people to be medics. Somebody hops on the sub-reddit and said, I think it's kind of ableist that they think that, you know, people can replace doctors with, with street medics. No one, no one's ever made that case. That's not a thing that anyone has ever said. Yeah. I'm going to make it my entire life mission to only specifically make this case. Oh, we need some guys with some gauze and water in a bag. Yeah, yeah. Doctors are bourgeoisie. I, but they, they, they must all die when their evolution comes. They will only be replaced with street medics. It's going to be great. I'm texting all of this to our friend, Kava right now, Dr. Hoda. Yeah, it's just ridiculous. So people literally project what they think you said onto what you actually said. Yeah. It's very, very obvious when it's taken place. I don't know how they'll feel embarrassed. You know, a lot of times I barely comment on things. I barely like respond to things. And when I do, I check and recheck and recheck what the person has said. Then I check and recheck and recheck what I see before I make the statement. Because I don't know how you can go in crazy. How do you feel embarrassed? Yeah. Like everybody who has watched the video can see that you haven't watched it. If just like a term search and then appeared and yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah, to come to engage you pretty much. Pretty much. But I mean, if I were to be asleep for the algorithm, I would say, all that engagement helps, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it does. It helps. It helps one thing for sure. Yeah. Help get us to a better place. Unfortunately. And speaking of things that do not help us get to a better place, I think it's the growth primarily is about confronting this destructive ideology of growth is on. You know, it's something we see all around us. Something we interact with on a fairly regular basis. You see the images of the Amazon rainforest being cut down to be sitting into soy farms until eventually it's made into a cattle grease in fields. You talk about the constant expansion of oil infrastructure. You talk about the constant expansion of mining operations. You talk about the continued rise of fast fashion that people are extremely defensive when, after you try to criticize it, all of these systems, all of these industries, all of these practices, parts of part and parcel, or rather products of this ideology of growth is on that capitalism is driven by. And I know it may be strange for some people to sort of deep program from this idea of growth is like an unadulterated could, unconsciously positive, because you know, nature is like all of old growth, right? You know, when you think of growth, you think of a plant peaking out of the soil, you think of a baby kitten growing up to be a cat. You talk about like babies becoming toddlers, becoming young children, becoming all their children, becoming, you know, twins and teens, and then finally adults, and then from there, Joe Biden. But you know, there's this whole idea of growth, and that growth is like a natural part of life. That is true, but growth in life does not go on and on and on and on. You know, organisms grow up to a certain point, and then they maintain a healthy equilibrium, or at least they try to. Of course, health is not necessarily a natural state of affairs, because viruses are just as natural as the cells they attack. And then you could also get all a thorough and talk about post-no growth, and how life is a constant journey of post-no growth and whatever. But speaking materially, we can physically growth has a limit. People grow up to a certain height, a certain size, and so on. And when growth doesn't stop, that's when we start running to problems. As I understand the reason that cancer is so difficult to cure, is because your own body turns against you. It's your, it's some of the many trillions of your own cells decide, okay, time to just grow and grow and grow without limit. And what happens in most of those cases, in many of those cases rather, unfortunately, people die as a result. So in our bodies and our own bodies, we understand that growth is not always positive. And yet, that's sick logic of growth for its own sick is exactly what the global economy relies on. It's not just things that has too much growth, too much money, too much stuff. You have all these wealthy nations that continue to expand and grow and attempt to hoard. I heard one person use the analogy, a carbon-behood was, is talking about how capitalism is now attempting to the new frontiers for capitalism is to expand and colonize our own minds. And so every economy, every sector, every industry is expected to keep growing, keep growing, keep growing, no matter what. One of the responses that I got on my video on decroof is that, oh well, you see in the growth, this is in growth, it's this capitalist thing, but China, USSR, and they grew and they industrialized and they are just as susceptible to ecological destruction as any other capitalist country. That is true, but that's also part of why I would consider those countries to be state-capless projects and not anything close to what I envision. But of course, the moment you introduce any idea that sounds even vaguely socially oriented, even vaguely, ecologically oriented, people automatically assume you're trying to go for like a new United Soviet socialist republic. But I think we need to explore different paths, to improve the quality of life, to quote unquote, develop in, and that's a tricky subject I'll get into a bit later. We need to think of ways that we can help people and help people live better lives without reliant, undecirutin the biosphere. It's a tricky conversation to be had, because when people think of growth, they think of it as a positive, and when you criticize that positive, they think the inverse, they think you're trying to make everybody degrade and go down to like a woof's quality of life to rush back to like a lower life expectancy or to transform our motor production back to like hunting and gathering. But the truth is that degrowth as a movement, as a system of thought, is more so about trying to find that balance between a good quality of life for all, not just this unequal quality of life that we see around the world and the capitalism, while also balancing the fact that we live in material world, we live on a planet that has limited resources, we need to balance those resources, we need to consider and be good stewards of, you know, a planet that we share with other living creatures. Capitalism really is driven by this ideology of growthism because it is structurally incentivized, structurally, it's a structural imperative in the capitalist system. It's not exclusively driven by greed as some people assume. I think that's that this idea that it's all up to like personalities, kind of hampers who possibility to analyze systems, because it doesn't matter whether we suddenly put each and every CEO in a position where they are all completely 100% altruistic. It's not how they all be driven by greed, it's because capitalism, you know, capitalists own capital and capital that is stagnant is capital that is losing its value. And so they look for things to invest in so they can grow their capital. Capital being anything from either state factories machinery, intellectual property, financial assets, or just the money that they use to make more money. If it's stagnant, it's losing value and so they're trying to increase its value. And so they see gold companies that have grown profits year after year so that their capital will grow year after year and if that growth sluice down, they pull out and look elsewhere to invest. Companies that fail to grow will lose their investors and collapse and so companies do everything they power to maintain growth. They can maintain their investors regardless of how much havoc they re-compond with. So if any barriers are prevent in their growth, they had to build those those barriers. Environmental protections, barriers, labor laws, barriers, protections policies, barriers, the commons will barrier, indigenous populations will barrier, and so on and so forth. All of these acts of violence open up these new frontiers for growth, for appropriation, for accumulation. And so income's degrowth or the French term for it is de croissant. And I know that I likely pronounced that incorrectly. It's the French, we can disrespect them. I have no consequences. Precisely. I think things are sedone reflect on their nuclear alarm fire. But anyway, this idea of degrowth really first was developed. I have to say that I appreciate what the intellectuals have come up with. They're good at sitting down and thinking about stuff. I'll give them that. I'll give them that. So this one French intellectual guy named Andre Gors in 1972 coined the term de croissant for degrowth. Gors basically posed a question that remains at the center of degrowth is the earth's balance for which no growth or even degrowth of mature production is a necessary condition compatible with the survival of the capitalist system. I would venture to say no. It is not in any way compatible with the survival of the capitalist system because we have seen that in the short period of time the capitalism has existed. It has rapidly triggered the capital of scene or as some people regrettably call it the antipar scene. It has rapidly triggered the sixth great mass extinction event. And so I do not believe that the earth's balance is compatible with its survival. And so de croissant movement of activists mainly flourished in the early 2000s in the wake of protests for car-free cities, communos and the streets, food cooperatives and campaigns against advertising. It went from France to Italy where green and anti-globalization activists mobilized against this whole concept of capitalism's constant and accrued ones and expansion and growth. Expanded into Catalonia and Spain in 2006 it eventually built up to the size where it could sustain a movement, a magazine rather, called La De Croissant, which currently sells a few thousand copies a month. Around the same time in 2004 a recent activist named Francois Schneider took a year long walk into an adonque to disseminate de-growth throughout France and I've received some media coverage. Eventually Schneider founded an academic collective known as research and de-growth along with Dennis Beon and Fabrice Flippo and they eventually began international conferences when in Paris in 2008 and second in Barcelona in 2010. So the English term de-growth was officially used for the first time at the Paris conference which remarked the booth of the international research community around de-growth. Following the success of the conferences in Paris in Barcelona, other conferences were held in Montreal in 2011, Venice in 2012, Leipzig in 2014 and de-growth as an idea spread to groups in Flanders, Switzerland, Finland, Poland, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Czech Republic, I guess it's Czechia now, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, Bulgaria, Romania and elsewhere. De-growth as an idea as a smooth one has been getting ground. Despite the criticisms that somehow that oh, what you can't call it something negative like de-growth because people won't be happy with it or whatever. And I'll get to that criticism in a bit. But it's been steadily growing since it was first developed in the 1970s. At this point in time, if you go on the de-growth website, you'll find thousands of articles and studies in their library. And of course, it's not to say that because a concept has a lot of followers or thinkers or published works as automatically a-ok, ultimately correct. But at this point in time, I think a lot of people are looking at direction we are going in and recognizing that we cannot continue along this path of growth. And so they're actively looking for a way out, looking for a way to find that balance, recognizing that capitalism is not compatible with the earth's balance. And so de-growth ultimately rejects the illusion of growth. It calls to repoliticize the public debate that has been colonized by the idiom of economicism that has been driven toward as a social objective economic growth. De-growth is a project advocated for the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability. I think when some people care de-growth despite all the explanations out there, despite even consuming those explanations, they might still have this idea and they had a de-growth as this thing where a bunch of armed government-sponsored environmental activists roll up and take your car and your house and force to live in a cave. But de-growth and how we de-growth our economy is going to rely on the popular involvement of people, you know, it's not like you could just snap your fingers or just decree it and make it so. It's not meant to be like how it is under neoliberalism where you have all this austerity. De-growth is supposed to be all of us coming together to figure out how we can live in alignment with our biosphere, our bio-region with the planet, scaling down our individual and our community supply chains and localizing our consumption in order to reduce the reliance on this highly extractive, highly-growth dependent capitalist, global capitalist economy. De-growth also signifies a direction, a desired direction, one in which societies use fewer natural resources and organize and live much differently than they live today. The ideas of, you know, sharing, which is something that we teach to preschoolers, simplicity, conserviality, care, and the commons primary concepts in terms of what a de-growth society should look like. In one of my previous podcast episodes I would have discussed the commons a bit, so if everyone is curious about what the commons are they can check that out. Of course on my channel I also speak about the commons as an institution and about libraries of things. So de-growth has offered a framework that connects all of these different ideas, concepts, proposals with the criticism of growth, with the criticism of GDP, with the criticism of commodification, the process that converts social products and socio-ecological services and relations into commodities, the monetary value. On the constructive side, because de-growth is not just limited to criticism, de-growth imagines reproductive economies of care, the reclamation of all and creation of new commons, man-made and natural. Caron for commons in communal forms of living and producing, liberates in our time from work and making it available to care for our communities and care and for ecology. Because if you think about all of the activities that are currently so needed at this point in time, in terms of ecological restoration, in terms of decroof, they're not profitable, you know, planting, mound grooves to shore up our shores to defend our shores from erosion and from storms, is not profitable, replanting forests and sparking nature's processes of ecological restoration, not profitable. And of course, there is a whole sort of ecosystem, economic, political ecosystem dedicated to these kinds of projects with all the NGOs and government organizations involved in replanting the Sahel region in Africa, for example, creating the green wall. But those projects tend to be right for issues in the lack of maintenance because they do not involve local communities in the decision-making surrounding that process of restoration. And on top of that, of course, these projects are not embedded in broader project for decroof. So a government might be a government might be planting trees and planting forests in one part of their country and extracting and drilling in another part of the country. And so there needs to be an integration of all these different projects with a broader push and direction towards decroof. I want to go back around to this idea that decroof is a critique of GDP as a concept. Decroof is not necessarily the same as negative GDP growth, but when you consider how GDP is measured as it's counted, it's about financial transactions. And not necessarily the non-financial ones. And so if we were to green our economy, if we were to decrew our society, we're not going to be seeing the yearly growth-domestic activity increases of 2 or 3%. Yeah, there's an old 2011 slogan that's, with the bank takes your house that increases GDP. That is true. That is true. A lot of positive and constructive and beneficial actions that people do on a regular basis do not contribute to GDP, whereas entire destructive industries contribute significantly to GDP every month. We started this by talking by comparing the quest for endless growth to a cancer. But I almost think a better comparison is like, you know, there's that article earlier this year about how specific kinds of people, particularly like rich weirdos in the tech industry are paying thousands of dollars to have their legs broken and like LinkedIn so that they can like be three inches dollar. That's a that's a shitload of how at like, yeah, I mean, it's weaker. They can never we can never run again, but you are technically taller. So we'll count it as growth. Yeah, yeah. You don't you don't have the hotspot to be a short king. Unbelievable. Sometimes I do think that like when anthropologists on a civilization, the wonder where we were so fascinated about line go up. But like then they realized that the whole point that the civilization was line go up like that. That was identity. Truly. Yeah, truly. It's it's I don't know. My eyes, my eyes bleed sometimes thinking about how this whole system is structured and how it just continues to choke a lot. But that's why I spend so much time writing and reading and talking about these issues, right? Trying to find a way out. And so that is also what degrowth advocates are looking to do with the looking for no way out, you know, way for a better life. Versaul. Which brings me to the whole criticism of de growth that is essentially optics, right? They say it's not appropriate to use a negative word to signify desired positive changes. But degrowth advocates deliberately choose, I mean, in my video, I said that I'm fine with either quality growth or quality post growth or whatever. But degrowth advocates have chosen the term degrowth for a reason. The use of negation for a positive project is aimed towards creating that sort of questioning, you know, towards getting people to reconsider this idea of growth as an ultimate good to decolonize an imagination that has been dominated by this whole capitalist conception of the future consistent of, you know, line go up. Is this automatic assumption and association of growth with better that the word degrowth wants to dismantle, wants to deconstruct? And so degrowth is a deliberately subversive slogan. And of course, degrowth is not aimed at, you know, deconstructing the most necessary sectors devolved in the most necessary sectors. We're not talking about degrowth and education, degrowth and medical care, degrowth and, you know, well, renewable energy is kind of a tricky subject, but degrowth and renewable energy. It's more so about primarily, at first of all, targets in the most deutin destructive industries, you know, the financial sector. We would prefer to see institutions like health and education flourish rather than grew or develop. We want to change that is qualitative, not necessarily quantitative. We want to see a flourishing of the arts, a flourishing of philosophies, a flourishing of vernacular architectures, a flourishing of the creativity of people. And that's qualitative. It's not about, oh, well, line go up so things more good. You know, it's not about, we have 10 industrial outputs last year. Now we have 12. That's so good. You know, we want something, we want quality to change. And if most people release it down and think about what they want in their life, I don't think a lot of people are going to think of, oh, well, I want next year's iPhone to have a 12% increase in the camera quality. You know, it's more so that you want to better, you know, rest, more connected communities. Healthier, commute, or healthier, I guess, city layout. It's more conducive to interaction, it's more conducive to small scale movement. It's not about, like I said, you know, it's not about trying to get line to go up. I can crypto currency as I think about it is like perhaps the best example or like NFTs, right? Like they created a bunch of value that literally created nothing, I have nothing other than exchange value. Exactly, exactly. It's just nonsense. Yeah, return money. I was going to talk for a moment about like development as a concept, right? Because another common criticism of deep truth is that, oh, well, what about the global south? What about the third world? What about all the poor countries and poor people of the world? You just want to leave them behind. And for one, I find it strange because the person in question, at least with the video response that I got implicitly assumes that I am from like a global North nation. I'm just fine. Sitting down with my, you know, CMD Amazon delivery and Starbucks and sprawling suburbs and whatever it is that, you know, imagine my lifestyle is like, but I think first and foremost, parts of the whole move of teacroof is to consider, like I said, reason, improving people's quality of life worldwide, which capitalism is not interested in. Capitalism will maintain a perpetual underclass because they're easier to exploit. And so this is what idea of development, right? It has this baggage, this very colonial baggage, but it's development is really like growth. It's meant to have like a limit. It's unfalling towards predetermined end. You know, an embryo eventually develops into a fetus. So she eventually develops into a baby, she eventually develops into a child, she eventually develops into an adult, who then ages and dies. But development for the sake of development with no end, with no aims, with no goals, with no sense of self-protection, questioning, it's a disaster waiting to happen. I can look at my own country and from Trinant to Diego for those who don't know and think of things that need to get better, right? Things that would really improve people's quality of life. You could think about the fact that we've really need to get rid of our reliance and cars and bring back our train system. There was dismantle so long ago. I could think about the fact that we need to improve our food or autonomy because we are extremely reliant on food imports. Things like that I can think about that improve people's ability to live well and sustainably on this island. But those things, those aims, those are those are goals, right? I'm just thinking all development development development. I'm thinking okay, there's point B, how do I get there from point A? How are we going to meet people's basic needs? And this whole and the whole deep growth project is really about that whole conversation between the global North and the global South, right? The global North needs to reduce the demand for a lot of the resources and goods so that they're more accessible to the global South. But in making those things more accessible, places in the global South are not meant to follow the same path that the global North took that put us in our mess. The whole idea is we need to find a different path. We need to find a different trajectory between to think for ourselves instead of trying to keep up with the joinsys, in order to determine what a good life would mean for us in our ecological niche in our geographical situation. Yeah, I was just like we did we did that we did this in China, right? Like we did the entire development thing and the product is now like people literally walking 18 miles on foot after having broken out of a Foxconn factory that they've been locked in and forced to make iPhones because someone had like three people have gotten COVID so they just like locked everyone in the factory. It's like, you know, it's not. I think it's also sort of like briefly worth mentioning that like development as a concept and the sort of like developmental economics field was like this was like specifically developed in sort of the battles of the American State Department as a response to like basically as like as a way as a kind of like simplified capitalist version of Marxist theory that they could throw out to sort of like explain what was happening in like as a way to sort of an alternative to Marxism for like all these sort of like newly post colonial nations. And you know, it's gone about as well as you would expect. Stink of the valves of the State Department to be alternative to Marxist. Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Well, this has been fun. I love I don't know thinking about capital. I mean, this is it's this is important because like we always need to be thinking about what comes next. This is constantly like a problem that the left has and certainly a problem that the liberals have, which is that the vision of the future is is very rarely anything more than fighting against kind of the the demons of the moment as opposed to like what does it actually look like to get ourselves to a better place to a place that's more sustainable both in an environmental level and in like in a manner of human ecology too. And yeah, I think this is like this is kind of the hard work that people need to be thinking about wherever you wind up landing on on degrowth as either a concept or as a term like these are the paths we have to start beating out of the bush, you know. Exactly. So there are many potential paths that have already been thought up and there are many that have yet to be imagined. In Ecuador, the project of sumac covese in really the rest of Latin America, the idea of when we were in much of South Africa, the concept of Ubuntu in India, the Gandhian economy of Puminance, all of these projects are more explore alternatives to, quote unquote, development alternative trajectories to a good life. That is rooted in environmental justice. That is based in a retreat from the narrow confines of the global North's imagination and what that imagination has promoted worldwide and forced upon the rest of the world. Degrowth requires us to think for ourselves to think creatively about how we plan on creating a good life in the context of capitalism's degradation, the Earth's degradation due to climate change and what that will mean for our future. It is we really need to sit and think about what our future is a species, what our future as regions, our future as communities, our future as individuals is going to look like what trajectory, what path we want to take and how we begin that journey. And so in the second part of this two-part series, I intend to discuss what concepts are essential for degrowth, the steps we can take to move towards degrowth and how we can integrate degrowth in anarchist politics. Alright, and that's going to be the end of part one. Come back tomorrow for part two. And probably more discussion of that weird surgery rich people get to have their legs broken repeatedly until they're taller. There's never been a better time for football fans to join the Huddl with Bed MGM. Sign up today and place a $10 free game wager on any pro football team to win. If any player scores a touchdown in any pro football game, you'll win $200 in free bets regardless of your wager's outcome. 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You'd think that there isn't much to learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's where you're wrong. Listen to Wewives with Bethany Frankel. I'm the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast for wherever you get your favorite podcast. Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm a show where things happen. And people talk about it. Yes, in this present location, that's correct. Last episode we spoke about the concept of degrowth and what it means to degrowth. How degrowth as a movement came about, what inspired the critique that degrowth pushes and what degrowth means for those of us who live in the global south. How we can go about imagining new and different paths to a better life within ecological limits. This episode will continue in that conversation talking about what is essential for degrowth. As I discussed in the previous episode, degrowth is about striving for self-determined life and dignity for all. It means an economy and a society that can sustain the natural basis of life. It means reduction of production, consumption, the global in the north, and the liberation from the one-sided western paradigm of development so that the global south can explore our own self-determined paths of social organization. Degrowth means an extension of democratic decision-making to allow for real political participation. Degrowth means that social changes organized and oriented towards sufficiency and self-sufficiency and ecological sustainability rather than a pursuit of a line grew up, a pursuit of economic growth, regardless of its impact on people, planet. Degrowth, of course, advocates for the creation of open, connected, and localized economies. There are several steps that need to be taken in order to achieve a degrowth society. Achieve a degrowth world to degrowth. For one, I think that as Jason Hickle advocates in his book, Lessons More, we absolutely need to put an end to the practice of planned obsolescence. Whether it be in household appliances, in tools, in furniture, computers, we need to shift away from this idea of products being produced to break down in a certain timeline and require replacement. I, who's snowy, have witnessed a lot of older technologies that continue to last to this day because they were invented before this whole practice of planned obsolescence really came about. My family, we have a microwave that is like a decade older than I am and it still works fine. Wow. Yeah. And I mean, in my own lifetime, I've had to purchase multiple microwaves. So it's ridiculous. Yeah, there's always one of the things that I always thought like there is a real sort of like this is how you, this is how you appeal to conservative people with this is just like, hey, we're going to bring back like 1960s microwaves where everything is a dial and it doesn't break ever. Yeah. I think what's missing in the conversation about team growth is a lot of people like they assume because they react to negative, everybody else will. They kind of project their own reaction to others, but I think political spectrum aside or political chart or how are we going to map out the unmapable. I think that people generally, as I was discussing the previous episode, want a good life and that requires qualitative changes far more than it requires, quantitative changes. Of course, there are places where quantitative changes are needed to make certain things accessible to the population, but we already overproduce a lot of different things. And a lot of overproductions completely unnecessary because it is based and planned up lessons in order to increase profits. And so that needs to once that is discarded, I think people will have best be able to access that quality of life because we look at a lot of the certain expenses that people have to deal with. You know, you fridge suddenly breaking down, you're still suddenly breaking down. You might have to wait for your toolsters suddenly breaking down. And all your washing machine, I think in this year alone, if I had to fix the washing machine, three or four times because it's just constantly breaking down. And when instead, we can save that those resources, save that time, save that energy, save that money, just produce a quality for the first time. You know, putting an end to those deliberate manufacturing decisions and developing long-lasting modular products that can reduce our material and energy use worldwide. I think in a lot of cases, we don't necessarily need more innovation. I don't think we really need a smart fridge. I think we just need a fridge that works for decades without breaking down constantly. Yeah. And like so much of the stuff that's sort of like, nominally is supposed to be innovation is just how can we make this product in such a way that we can sell consumer data about you from it? Exactly. We don't need to do that. We can simply not. We can simply not. We can simply not. Exactly. Exactly. And speaking of things that we can simply not. We can simply not. A salt, our sense is constantly with advertising because advertising just continues to save this purpose of generating social divisions, highlighting class divisions, and manipulating people into consumer stuff they don't need. As a card carrier member of Generation Z, I have not, I do not typically watch much TV. I used to watch TV because I'm the older Gen Z, content, Gen, but the rise of streaming services, which I do not use, yohu, who is allowed to say about that. I have not watched much TV, but there's certain reality shows that I enjoy, like the Emmys and Race. And so those sense of show on TV, like, like, a jeopardy. I like to watch jeopardy. And the constant, deeply unfunny, irritating, annoying, loud, flashy, barrage of commercials is quite aggravating. Honestly, the goal in Age of Crucials being funny was a long time ago. And now it just suits. One of the things that I mentioned that in the episode that we had done on the commons, one of the things that I, one of the positions I held even before I was in Alan Kiss was my opposition to the advertising industry, to advertise it. I cast stand advertising. Every way you walk, every screw, everything you watch and listen to, it's always gonna sell you something. I would love to go outside and not see ads all the time. I would love to go to the scroll through the incident without seeing ads all the time. And so, getting rid of the advertising industry, getting rid of all of these ads that are just pushing us to consume more and more. And oftentimes, just promoting a lot of really harmful societal ideas, you know, body images used and alcoholism. And a lot of our worst practices and a lot of really terrible things of being promoted through ads. And so, yeah, tear it down and watch consumerism perish. Anything about really the history of the advertising industry and how it came about as a mask renegation student at something that I would have spent some time looking into. Advertising really came about in response to, you know, this need that people had really, that companies had to get people to consume. Because in a lot of cases, you know, people would buy something and a newer model would come out and they would really pay attention to it because, oh, I already have the thing. I don't need to get another thing. But, you know, you can't run a profitable business factory. So, they basically used advertising to push people to consume more. And so, we need to get rid of the advertising industry. Another step we can take towards the growth is to shift from ownership to use the fruct. Use the fruct is something that Marie Bookchin, social ecologist, talks a lot about in his work, the ecology of freedom. And it's essentially the freedom of individual, so groups in a community to access and use but not destroy common resources to supply their needs. The term use of fruct comes from Roman property law, I believe, which would include use us the right to use. Sorry, unfortunately, I did not take land. Yeah, practice is just the right to enjoy the fruit of one's property and abuse us, which is the right to destroy one's property. So, use us, fruct us and abuse us. And so, use a fruct is really the combination of the first two principles, right, to access and use and enjoy the fruit of commonly held property without, you know, the right to destroy it. So, everyone can supply their needs. So, instead of, I mean, two libraries are already a concept that exists around the world, rather than a hundred people in a community, each individually ordered an electric drill, one person or rather one library can host or three or four electric drills, and effectively serve everyone's need for a drill when they need it. Because unless you're a carpenter or really enter arts and crafts, you probably don't need an electric drill at the time. And another thing that would really help and I'll push towards the growth would be getting rid of car dependency because the consumption of vehicles, the maintenance of vehicles, the maintenance of the infrastructure of vehicles use. All of those things requires a lot of resources, you know, concrete and oil and gas and metals and very earth minerals and rather than forcing everyone to produce those things so we could consume those things. We can instead shift towards a walkable model for our urban environments so that people who do need to use vehicles in rural settings, for example, can use them and use them without causing unnecessary, unnecessary harm, contributing to unnecessary harm, superfluous harm on the planet. The narrative car dependency would also mean that fewer people would need vehicles and vehicles, the few vehicles that we do produce can be shared in common to serve needs that cannot be filled by like bikes or, you know, public transportation systems. Another element of decro that would really be the reduction of our energy material use through the transformation of our agriculture systems. It is true that we currently produce enough food for, I believe, 10 billion people. A lot of that food is wasted, a lot of that food doesn't reach people. It's really an issue of allocation and not necessarily production. But at the same time, that production is extremely harmful. It relies on a lot of damaging chemicals. It relies on the stripping of our top soils, relies on the overuse of antibiotics, relies on the abuse of animals. The way to be currently feed the world is deeply unequal, extremely inefficient, environmentally degrading and energy wasting. We cannot continue to treat our farms like factories. We need to find ways to feed ourselves densely and compatibly with the living and living world. Scaling down to localised permaculture can help regenerative based agriculture systems, community supported agriculture, urban gardens, aquaponics, cultured meats, aquacultures and exploring other more traditional forms of food raisin will need to be the route that we take. Already, we are killing our soils. We are running out to the fossil fuels that the agricultural industry relies on. And if we continue on the trajectory, we have a big storm coming. Already, the greatest famine the plant has ever seen on its way. If we do not aim to build food or autonomy, aim to rewild our ecologies, aim to reconfigure our consumption patterns or food production and consumption patterns to see question more carbon, to allocate to more people, to produce healthier foods and to really to recover the earth. Another important step we can take in the growth would be to get rid of what's scaled down to some especially destructive industries. There is of course agriculture, there is the fossil fuels industry, the arms industry, private jet industry, the automobile industry, the airline industries, all of these industries must either be slimmed down or gotten rid of because as the pandemic has shown, very few of the jobs that are currently undertaken around the world are truly essential to maintaining the bare bones of life. And of course, we do need to reconfigure the way that we live, or ways of life to reflect ecological limits, but even with that reconfiguration, I think we know what industries needed and what aren't. I always find it strange, and this is a tangent, I always find it strange that politicians are celebrated for bragging about creating new jobs when in reality, I believe, and really the vision was in the 20th century, that we would reach a point where fewer and fewer people needed to work and that we needed to work for less time. And so that really is part of the aim of decrow, reviving that pursuit, reviving that goal because we have reached the point where we can scale on the amount of time, each person has to work, scale on the amount of jobs that are necessary. If you've read Bullshit jobs by David Greer-Bull, you'll see that a lot of particularly serious economy jobs are practically worthless. And I actually saw a kind of funny video talking about how at this point, office culture is more of a religion. Yeah, so good. Yeah, so that would go around, we can turn around and Twitter, that was really funny. But yeah, we just move around a bunch of people, we're on a bunch of numbers. If you've seen the show succession, sorry, not succession, severance, if you've seen the show's severance, it's pretty much like an R-slash anti-work type show. And so I think one more people are coming to the realization that, hey, this kind of sucks. The fact that we have to work this much. So we need to reduce the amount of time we work, the type of work, we need to change the type of work we do. So it's a quantitative and qualitative shift. And something I spoke about with Tim, I mean for you on anti-work or post-work, whatever you want to call it. These changes, these steps to scale on total energy use can be taken by a broad range of organizations, groups, mass movements, popular assemblies, unions, cooperatives, not wasting for the state but going beyond it. I think we've seen by now, I think if you have not seen by now, it needs to open your eyes. The state is not doing enough, or it's okay, it's not doing anything at all, to respond to these crises. And we need to take it into our own hands to do so. I have a video in store for December that as one of my patrons, jokes might have the alphabet agencies after me, but there are a lot of different actions that we can take, to integrate decroeth, to move towards a decro society, to decro out economies. A combination of acts of confrontation and non-cooperation and prefiguration. In some decroeth challenges, the dominant growth imperative, it's in the name. It is intentionally subversive in its title, because it requires us to think about how we can collectively organize the restructuring of our economy and the downskilling of energy and resource use worldwide. The transition back into balance with the living will in a safe, just, an equitable way. Decroeth means striving for a self-determined life and dignity and abundance for all. Decroeth means liberating ourselves not just from the ways that the growth imperative has shaped our technologies, education. Decroeth will require that we not just liberate ourselves from the ways that the growth imperative has shaped our technologies and institutions, but it demands that we also reconsider our education, our cultural norms and values, our identities, our mindsets, our relationships. It will be a massive shift with anarchists called social revolution. But it's one that is worthwhile. As some decroeth advocates would say, it's decroeth by choice or decroeth by force. What's the use of decroeth as being used slightly differently? Decroeth by choice being like I described, collectively organized, democratically managed, no restructuring of the economy, the brand and the balance of the living will and a safe, just, negligible way. Where has decroeth by force is more so a combination of austerity and apocalypse. So up to you. Well, power to the people. So there's a Japanese Marxist named Kohaisito who's been writing like a bunch of stuff recently, who basically like, he's been probably the biggest voice of decroeth in Japan. And his book, Capital and the Anthropocene, is finally getting translated into English pretty soon. And so yeah, check that out when it comes out. His stuff is really good. And he like basically has revived both Marxism and decroeth in Japan after Marxism's kind of like getting plosured after a bunch of weird, anyway, we don't need to get into the story of the collapse of the Japanese left. But yeah, that's coming. So check that out. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that book when it comes out. Yeah, you too. If you want to check out my videos on this topic than others, just go to youtube.com slash andrism. You can also follow me on Twitter while Twitter still exists. I underscore Saint Drew. And you could potentially even support on patreon. patreon.com slash Saint Drew. That's it. Peace. Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to serve Mixelot? Wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now I heard as a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier and on my new show, Where Were You In 92, we take a ride through the major hits, One Hit Wonders, an irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to first open. Well, the president came after me. Everybody had a time Warner with madness. To imagine trying to put a record like that out right now. We'd be canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Saint Mixelot, Ice Tea, Tori Amos, and Vanessa Williams, this podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Were You In 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow me on the iHer Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, it's Bethany Frankel. My time on the Real Housewives of New York is a few years behind me. And now I'm ready to put the wheel back into the Real Housewives. That's where my new podcast Wewives comes in. This isn't your typical We Watch podcast. I'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities. I'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind the scenes. And I'm not just pulling in cast members for post-game analysis. I'm doing something a little more interesting. If you've ever seen an episode of The Real Housewives, you know the drill. But beyond throwing drinks and legs, there are lessons about marriage, divorce, friendship, money, parenting, and fame. If you have the right minds analyzed and dig deeper. So I'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and celebrities to give their take on the chaos. This season I sit down with Elizabeth Moss, Kevin Neill, and Suzy Orman, Griffin Johnson, and more. You'd think that there isn't much to learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's where you're wrong. Listen to Wewives with Bethany Frankel. I'm the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Hey, I'm Joel Stein, and I'm here to save you from the endless onslaught of news headlines. I don't even need to know you to know this. You want to read those deep magazine articles. The long, weird ones. The ones that change how you think. But who has time to find them? I do. And that's why I'm here. Each week I find one of those stories and call one of my fellow, but greatly superior journalist friends and get them to tell me all about it. I do the work, you get the stories. Or more accurately, some reporter does the work, I don't pay them and put my name on the podcast. But the important part is you get the stories. Because I, Joel Stein, of Story of the Week with Joel Stein, care about you. Listen to Story of the Week with Joel Stein, on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye. It could happen here. I don't know why I did that voice. I'm Robert Evans, host of a podcast that has many other hosts who all are on the podcast right now. We have in order of them being on my Zoom screen Chris, Garrison, Cherine and James. Hey, everybody. How's it going? Good. Great. We brought the full crew in to talk about the worst shit. Yeah. How much of kind of, kind of not great things have happened the past week. Yeah. So we took, we took last week mostly off from work due to a series of court cases. And thanks to an injunction, we're allowed to podcast again. So I figured it would be, we had a couple of, I mean, horrifying stories, break in a row that we as the people we are, kind of had specific bits of insight on that I think might help catch our listeners up to some maybe underappreciated aspects of some of the big stories of the last week. So we wanted to start with the mass shooting in Colorado Springs, specifically talking about the family of the still alleged, but you know, definitely did it shooter. James, you want to kick us off there? Yeah. I wanted to start out with this. So the alleged shooter is called Anderson Lee Oldridge, right? But comes from an LDS later they say family in San Diego. And like, I think everyone has probably seen this very viral 32nd clip of his father that went around Twitter. But I'd be today after the shooting and his dad just so we're super clear on this says from disgusting things and there's a piece of shit for saying them. I don't want to excuse any of the shit he said. I also don't want to excuse the way that that was cut because I think it was pretty pretty shitty. Like there are people we should be really fucking angry at and his father is one of them. But his father didn't excuse the shooting. And if you look at that eight minute interview, he says that like what happened was wrong, et cetera, et cetera. And there are people who have excused the shooting, right? Like, yeah, I think Chris is going to speak to some of them. Tim Poole, Tucker Carlson, people who created a climate where this happened and have asked for it to fucking happen again. And I'm asking continually for it to happen again. His dad didn't do that. Like again, his dad, his dad doesn't seem to have been a great dad, right? His dad was, was like using when he was a kid, his dad was abusive for what is his violence. I think we all know lots of people who are raised in those climates who didn't go on to shoot up a nightclub. And it just kind of, I saw some, I don't know, I was upset by the response to that in a sense because like I know so many people who come from, from families and homes like that. And like being like, oh, he was doomed to be this way because of how his dad was just like isn't, I don't know, it just upset me. It's not the response we need. You know, like I think we should hold, like, hold what his dad said, like hold his dad to account for what he said, but also not like allow that to explain. Yeah. I have a couple, like I have confused feelings on it because his dad does go into a long thing where he says, you know, you shouldn't, there's nothing that justifies violence, you know, these people's lives were precious, all lives were precious. But he also was like, I taught him that violence was a great way to solve problems. And you know, expressors that he was glad to learn that his son wasn't gay. And I don't just fucked up. Yeah, I don't know. I don't, yeah, I don't know how much I want to like interpret that as he really meant what he said about nothing justifying this and those people's lives being precious because that is kind of this thing that like you get on the, and this guy's obviously not a thought leader on the Christian right, not like a, he's not like a luminary. I don't think he contributed outside of, you know, the things he may have raised his son to believe to the broader national climate of hate right now. There was just a study that was released today that from the armed conflict location and event data project data confirms that anti LGBT mobilization is now the leading driver of far right protest activity in the US. So obviously this guy didn't make that happen. But I notice a similarity between like the, I, there's nothing worse than my kid being gay, but also, oh, when a bad thing gets done by a Christian to gay people, well, their lives are still precious. We just like hate what they how they live them. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where to, where to go further with that. But you're right. That like the, the, the 30 second clip is very dishonestly edited in order to like cut out a lot of what this guy was saying, which I have a problem with regardless of who you're doing it to. Yeah, it's just, it's bad journalism and like I would rather we point our rage at the people who are going to make this happen again unless we stop them. Yeah. Like this guy, I'm this guy, the degree to which this guy contributed to this massacre by being the students dad. I don't think there's anyone else he's going to push into killing. If, if he indeed did that, whereas people like Tim Poole are going to continue to do that. Yeah. And also I do want to say like like the, the Mormon church does not get a pass for this. Yeah. Like no absolutely. Unbelievably fucking homophobic. Like absolute pieces. Shit. Super racist. Like, yeah. And you know, a lot of people really haven't been talking about this. And they should because they fucking suck. And yeah, this is, this is, this is as you know, like, yeah, it turns out when you fucking have a bunch of people like giving sermons about fucking musket balls. Like this is what happens. Yeah. You know, they don't, they don't get off the hook for this either. No, and they're like domination of politics in some areas. Yeah. You really needs to be seriously looked at. Talking of like domination of politics, I do want to talk about his grandfather a little bit. Yep. Because his grandfather is bonkers. So his grandfather's called Randy Vopal. Might be pronounced verbal. But he's, he was mayor of San T. So San T is a town east of San Diego. It's not very far east. I think Shireen you're probably familiar with San T, right? Yeah. San T is a place. That's, that's about it. Yeah. People sometimes call it clandet. Definitely like Metzger was there for a while. Right. And yeah. When Vopal was mayor in 2001, there was a school shooting in San T about which he spoke. He hasn't spoken about this one yet at all. He's, he's, he's really, yeah. Strange that. Strange. He's pretty much going to which is not like it's when this guy speaks, he, he rarely helps himself when he speaks to media who don't agree with every position he's on. So I want, like, I want to ground, like he became mayor of San T in 2000 in 1999, a black marine by the name of Carlos Colbert, who was a large corporate in the Marine Corps was beaten and paralyzed by five white men at a memorial day party in San T. Like, and it doesn't represent the whole town, but that was how people thought of that town in the early 2000s. Right. It's a place, it was always a place to avoid. Like, you don't really want to go there. I don't know. Yeah. I have friends who still don't want to go to San T. Like, I have friends who are like delivery drivers who are like black people who have been told like they'd used to not sound black folks delivering to San T. Like, it definitely has whether or not that's the case now. It's becoming more, more diverse, I think like ethnically, but it certainly has a reputation of being a place where like, it's not safe. And this is a place that Alex him as mayor in 2000, right? 2001, they have a high school shooting and he just kind of continues to spout some absolutely crazy stuff. It's probably worth noting that he's not as like far from the like the norm of the GOP, which is still a long way from like good, when it comes to like LGBTQ stuff as he is for other things. Like his, his probably his most famous crazy position is that climate change is good because most of our enemies live in, I'm quoting now, most of our enemies live in hot climates, desert climates that will probably have a negative effect on their environment. Most of the Muslim nations are in hot areas of the world. Honestly. Wow. Yeah. Just absolutely incredible. Did we, did we find the world's first pro eco fascist? Or it is. Yeah. I have met a few anti-specialists who are pro climate change because it will be the first race of civilization. But this is, this is like a whole other level. Well, there's no like dry us out. Do you want to know why he thinks this climate change happens? Please. Oh, God. I believe about 1% of climate change is impacted by human beings. The rest of the 99% that should not rest and 99% rest at 100% buddy is solar cycles quote the natural wobbling of the earth and volcanic activities. This is the classic eddicline. Wobbling stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple of good ones. I personally, partial to, we didn't have enough CO2 in climate change is the only thing that's going to save us from the CO2 shortage that we've experienced. Yeah. You're going to get it. Notable other vocal bangers include, I'm getting attacked out here by the Vietcong stealing my copper. I don't like it. That would be, it would be super funny if it turned out that the Vietcong had sent like a deep cover, special spec opting it to California. Just to fuck with this guy's copper. Just to pull copper. Yeah. Just a, a, a, a, just a, yeah, just a, a powerful example of what happened to you, lick-led paint. Yeah. Like just an incredible boomer. So he was voted out in 2020 by a considerable margin. I think you got about 30 seconds of both. Jesus Christ. Oh, he's, he's, he's trying to, sorry, this, this, so he's serving out his, he just got voted out. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he was like 20 years. He's, how many? He, he moved in, I think 2016, he moved into the California assembly. So representing like this. This was a crust. Yeah. Yeah. Statewide office. So like, yeah. I mean, this is the, here on the left coast. California is, it means one thing to people who have never been to the West Coast. If you've been to the West Coast, the conservative parts of California, like, they're a Republican party. They're massive and the Republican party has absolutely locked in control. It is very difficult to remove, to move them in places like the OC. There's, there's more Republican voters in California than most states. Yes. It's been mostly, you know, six. Yes. Yeah. If you want a slice of, of like, Eastern California, just check out Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco's Instagram, where he mostly just rides around on a horse and criticizes COVID restrictions. But yeah, this is, yeah, it's really something incredible poster. But this is, I think, an insight into like the side of California that people, it doesn't mean that everyone who lives in these county, of course, is bigoted or racist. There are lots of very nice kind people in these county. I know there are some like anarchist commutes out there. But, um, yeah. This, a vocal claims he hasn't spoken to his grandson for years. But this guy has been spouting this shit for 20 years, right? Like he became mayor of San T in 2000 that was when this shooter older, which was born. So like for his entire life, uh, vocal has been saying stuff like Levit Kong are stealing my copper. I mean, it is, it is true that this, this person did grow up surrounded by a constant bubble of, of homophobic rhetoric, um, dehumanizing rhetoric. And that, that does shape the person that you are. Obviously that doesn't, it doesn't mean you're going to go do a mass shooting. There's lots of people who grew up in those environments who turn out to be very wonderful people. Um, but, but yeah, it is definitely like, it doesn't, the environment that you raised in and around, obviously doesn't, obviously affects who, who you're going to be. And yeah, this, the shooter is posting, like burning a pride flag on, on his very limited social media presence. Right. Yeah. And like every time his granddad had the chance, he's going to be again, right? Yeah. He was raised in an environment where hatred of LGBTQ people was not just like present, but was used as the justification regularly for like legislative action. And he was also raised in an environment where all of them in around him would have praised violence in different ways. And the fact that he wound up doing violence against the queer community is not like surprising. Yeah. Yeah. Was it his dad also like an MMA fighter? Yes. UFC. Yeah. UFC. Whatever. Some, some sort of combat sport. Yeah. He's also in a bunch of movies. A lot of poor movies because I think a lot of things were normalized that were just like maybe not for other people. Yeah. That is a man who has no barrier between the two sides of his nose due to a lifetime of snorting every single chemical he can possibly get his hands on. Um, not that there's anything wrong with that. Yeah. His dad doesn't seem to be like entirely lucid and to you. Well, the other aspect of this is that the shooter in Colorado was like a known figure as well. He wasn't. He wasn't a nobody like people had. He did like a bomb threat last year. There was a standoff with the police where he was in armor threatening to go out shooting. Yeah. That's I was really I'm really hoping the conversations shift more towards him as a person because I can only blame the family so much. Yeah. I. Yeah. He's done some terrible things. I think that's getting glossed over by the fact that he has his people in his family that are questionable. I think the number one thing we should be pointing out because I also don't believe we should be focusing entirely on his specific actions. We should be focusing on the fact that it would have been incredibly easy to stop this guy. He was the most obvious candidate for a mass shooting imaginable. Um, and nothing was done to stop this. Like that's that's the biggest thing here. Whiteness is very helpful when it comes to hate. But yeah. And I don't worry with crime. And all of the time I've been following mass shooters. I can't think of one that more directly talked about wanting to do a mass shooting in a way that was immediately obvious to all of the law enforcement in his area and had already forced a response from them. There was absolute and and again, for talking about his gun control always comes up in this. Colorado has red flag laws. Like Colorado has the restrictions people say should be but the problem is that none of them were actually used against him. Um, anyway. And that I think comes back to like again, like the problem like one of the largest problems again with gun regulation is that you you're relying on the police to enforce exactly. Yes. And the cops believe like 95% of the same shit that this guy does. So, you know, yeah, they, like he's letting these people come to pride. Like this, this is going to great go great for you. They just assumed he was an excitable boy and it was going to be, you know, he just needed to get it out of the system that time. He had a standoff with the police over a bomb threat where he talked to his mom about wanting to go out as a mass shooter like most young men like all. Yeah. I have a century. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Should we should we take a break? Yeah. We should. No. Yeah. Do you know what else would help? This is any. Nope. And here's the code break. Yeah. Do some insulin. We're back. I hope everyone took insulin. Um, everybody. It'll I don't know what it'll do. Um, that's not. It's very hungry. You don't have to sleepy and hungry pills. Look, James, as a podcaster, it's my job to tell people to take medicine, not to have any responsibility for what happens when they do. Well, I'm just going to go fly up to Canada and get some free insulin and then come back. Smuggle it down. That actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe consider. Just have them fill up your car. What are we talking about next? Yeah. So I want to talk a bit about the reaction to this on the right because. Yep. This is something. Okay. So like the far rights reaction to mass shootings has never been good. Like I sort of put this out of the base. It's usually been like, oh, this is this is still unfortunate that it has. Yeah. Yeah. It's usually like, well, I was like, Michelin. This is like the pale something like they are just pretty open. Here's the thing. What would I originally did this? Right. I had a Tim pool tweet that I had pulled and then he made like every successive time we were about to record this episode. She had he makes another even worse really. So here. Here's the most recent. Okay. First off, first off, I do want to. We have to one of the things I want to try to keep in mind is we are more online that a decent chunk of our audience. Tim pool is a guy who attained prominence, uh, live streaming during the Occupy Wall Street rallies. He kind of framed himself as a broadly progressive kind of liberal journalist. He's like a skateboarder and he's doing shit. You know, he's live streaming a lot. He's doing, you know, he's experimenting with all these like novel ways of covering the news at the time. You know, we're talking like 2012. Obviously, people since then have pointed out that like he was kind of a giant dick at Occupy. I was just like, I know people who were there who fucking pitted him. Yes. Yes. He had a big platform as a result of that. He got hired by vice for a little while. Most serious journalists who have worked with him will point out that like he's a giant asshole and like kind of not good at anything. Just like not very smart. Like doesn't really know what's going on or deliberately obtuse. I've heard people like be it anyway. Uh, he gained prominence as he kind of increasingly through the Trump years would lean in on hard right stuff while still claiming to be liberal and progressive and just that he was increasingly lost by the progressives who have gone crazy for a while. Yeah. Anyway, he's just gone. So that he's he has a huge audience. He does a lot of like live streaming. So the primary way that like when I say that he used to do live streaming where he would show up at a thing. He's rich now. He doesn't leave his his house in Maryland. He sits there and he like plays clips from the news and books that articles written by other people and then talks about them really usually wrong. Yeah. Poor commentary on it and has millions and millions of followers. Yeah. And it's constantly and continues to platform people who are self-described fascists far right people. Um, he's kind of he's like a he's like a vector point in that. He's very large. He's fairly influential within the social media algorithm of particularly Twitter. Um, he's able like his he's able to get shit trending a lot on Twitter. So he's not someone you can entirely ignore. He has a he has an impact on like national discourse and he's a lot of people on the right. See him as a valuable person. He's had Alex Jones on. He's hanging out with Kanye and Nick Fuentes now, which is what we're about to talk about. But the thing since uh, since the Colorado spring shooting, he's gone kind of completely mask off about the groomer thing. And most of his comments have been along the lines of like well, these people were hosting a groomer event. And so violence was inevitable. Yeah. And I mean like like what like that's not exactly I'm just going to read one of those tweets to get like that. That's that's not an exaggeration or any kind of reading of subtext. Literally what he said was quote, it seems around 10 p.m. Club queue posted that they were having an all ages drag show the next day about two hours later the shooter came in. People keep calling for wood shippers. And this is what happens. Yeah. Like open like and this has been a thing across the entire right. Like they're just there's openly either like very, very openly celebrating this or you get you know, like this is one of like one of the things that it's inevitable because the gaze are so did yeah, degenerate like like Jimmy, Jimmy fucking door has gone like just completely like like literally started with like started this thing on this with a giant rant about how like how like disgusting it is that like drag queens are around kids. It's like they they are just openly into full scale just openly into the like we need to get these people killed. Yeah, this is in some ways the most horrifying instant like this because this is the first time that the reaction widely on the right has been either this was a good thing or this was this obviously was going to happen because gay people are evil and are grooming children. So violence has to happen against them. And like that is that was that's such a popular sentiment on the right in the aftermath of the shooting whether it's whether it's implied and whispered or whether it's just said completely outright like it was a very clear consensus that this is what the Republican reaction was going to be and anyone far the right of the Republicans like it was it wasn't even just like a Nazi talking point it was just like regular Republicans in office were talking about this this style of rhetoric in response to the shooting and for that reason it's kind of the most horrifying instant we've had because you know like in the aftermath of like the pulsing shooting we did not have rhetoric like this mainstreamed in the way that it is happening for the club queue shooting it was a very very different response to the to the pulse shooting. Yeah, also probably because the shooter there wasn't white. Yeah, yeah, they had a lot of big ice connections. Yeah, they'll be like no the problem here was immigration right and no for this like he's like he is obviously a white dude. His lawyers are pulling bullshit to get his hate crime charges pulled but like it's obviously it's it's obviously this white guy and the right's response is yeah, he was probably justified in doing what he did. Yeah, I mean, I I feel like they're setting him up to be the next Kyle Rittin house where like he's just going to become like this kid celebrity that I don't know if we're there yet. Yeah, and partly because he got the shit kicked out of him. But I think no, not by police by a trans lady and yeah, I think you've made a good point out that like what they did get away with some shit with Kyle Rittin house that like I think they would not have pulled even five years before that like I think you wouldn't have found in 2015 people being like yeah, he shot people in the street and this is good. Fuck them and it is like the slippery slope fallacy isn't always a fallacy but like you know once you start there, I don't think it's a massive leap to being like yeah, this kid shot queer people in the nightclub and that's what they had coming like even if they don't make him a hero like I do think that that like the overton window moved with Rittin house yeah, and it's moving again with this little fucker. Yeah, I think he's slightly too toxic to to go through that same celebrity status that rent houses. You also can't speak I think he's been like in his court appearances. He's like not capable. Yeah, I think he's saying God, he's very badly to shit. Yeah, the thing that the thing that scares me as like a potential Rittin house event but kind of in the in the anti queer mass shooter vibe is like you have some father or something who's separated from the kid and their other parent takes them to a drag queen event and dad shows up and starts shooting and like that's a thing that's a lot easier to get the right to pile on. Yeah, that's that's the instance where that person now becomes a cultural figure in a way that's more similar to what has happened with Rittin house. Yep, and that just is like the hell scenario. And I think the other important thing is like they're deliberately trying to inside this like this is this is deliberately like and this there's an interesting thing like Nick Fuentes had this interview and I mean this is partially just this is who fucking Nick Fuentes is we had this thing about after the election where he was like well, I mean like we can't we can't take power via like like we can't actually get our agenda by voting. We have to do it by like theocratic fascism, right? And and I you know, okay, so obviously this is Nick Fuentes, but I think this is part of what's happening right now, which is that the reason that they're doing this, right? The reason that right now the thing they're trying to do is inside a genocide is because they're fucking losing every they know it, right? Every single day church attended drops. It's been dropping for fucking 20 years. It's never coming back like 9-11 didn't do it like Trump didn't do it nothing nothing is ever going to bring people back to these churches like unless maybe they sold their sexual assault problem, but that's not good that like they structurally can't do that, right? So you know, every single day religiosity drops in this country every single like every single day very slowly and we have been doing this roughly for about 15 years now we are winning. And this is what they're fucking terrified of, right? They have to move right now like exactly in this moment is the moment they can exterminate us. If they wait any longer, they're fucked because they're you know, the the the base for this kind of sort of like like this specific kind of of Christian fascism isn't going to be there like there will be other fascisms, but you know every every every single day that they fucking wait like another person leaves the church. And so, you know, like right now in and you know and they they can't do it electorally, right? We just saw that they got fucking destroyed trying to lean into the shit because and then this is the everything, right? Like the everything that's been happening since the 2000s and this is the thing that is very different about this moment than any other moment that has happened in US history is that the vast vast majority of people are are are poker whites are pro-LGBTQ are pro game marriage, game marriage, post consistently at about 70% right? And even with this shit that hasn't moved the needle on it, right? They know that they they have to right now, right? They have to fucking kill us. All they have left is this solely have left. They have they have no work direction basically. Yeah. Yeah. They they see no other viable way to to mainstream this. And that's why we have hours after the shooting lips of TikTok posting about a queer events in Colorado because they're they're trying to get this thing to happen. They're trying to do more trying to press the attack. Yeah, but I think I think I think this is this is like like this is a sign of their weakness, right? And then again, like the number the physical number of people who are pushing this shit is not that large, right? And you know again, like this is this is you know, I've talked a lot about how sort of the the silent majority in this country doesn't fucking agree with this shit. And like they literally are not that fucking many of them. We can stop them. Yeah, this is an actual thing. Like you know, like there's a limit to which we can even sort of talk about this. But like, okay, we've been doing community self defense, like as sort of like the big principle of the left sense the Trump era, we have reached a point where like, you know, we can defend ourselves. But if we look if if if we're limited to just defending ourselves, they're going to kill a bunch of us first. And that means that we like, we actually have to start taking the fight to these media platforms where we have to start taking to fight specifically trying to get these people fucking off air and then you know, failing that like fucking showing up and like blowing a fucking air horn in tria right checks like ear every single time she leaves her house, right? Because all of all of these people fucking their entire lives dependent on our labor, right? Every single fucking Uber they take every single meal they eat is all prepared by us. And you know, we can fucking find them and we can we can make their lives fucking hell if this is what they're going to do to us. Gary, I think do you want to do you want to talk about focus on the family of talks and Colorado? Oh, yeah, there was speaking of the kind of direct action. Chris was talking about showing up where these people are and making it very clear that they don't get to pretend anymore to not be complicit and murder. That that's a story. Yeah, some some people did did show up at the Colorado Springs, focus on the family headquarters, did a did a graffiti left some left some messages out front and hosted a community of sorts. I think they call them Dubonic, which is pretty funny. I remember in the message written thing, right? Yeah, that is a weird place. It talked about how Satan this can disguise himself as an angel of light. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's that's talking about the types of like self righteousness that these Christian fascist groups put on and in but in effect, they're all kind of murderous snakes. That was people trying trying to use the Bible against these guys, which is is funny in an ironic way. And I don't think they actually care because they don't know they don't think they actually care what the Bible says. No, they don't give a shit about what the Bible says. They give a shit about yeah, but that's showing, but showing up and doing doing a little thing outside outside their headquarters is definitely a good first step. And when when me and James went there, you know, like in terms of this is just an interesting interesting comment. Like police did not help at the club queue shooting. At all. They came afterwards and they held and they they you know, as as they usually do, they'll they arrest the person who who who helped who helped stop the mass shooting. When me and James went to the focus on the family headquarters last summer, there was a Colorado police officer inside the building the entire time constantly there mostly watching me because I was the obvious obvious outcast inside there. But that police are stationed at focus in the family all the time 24 seven to make sure nothing bad happens there. But they're not going to do shit to help queer people getting murdered. But they're going to stay they're going to have a police car outside of the focus in the family building and have have an officer inside all the time because that's what the police actually do. Yeah, I mean, it's like it is increasingly obvious if you've been paying any attention in the last decade, the only consequences that exist in this world is us. And you know, it is in our hands to decide what the consequences for these people fucking attempting to inside a genocide are. All right, yeah, that's going to do it for us here. It could happen here. Until next time. Uh, I don't know. Until next time. Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mixelot? Wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now I heard as a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Longfay. And on my new show, Where Were You In 92, we take a ride through the major hits, One Hit Wonders, an irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to first open. The president came after me. Everybody's time Warner with madness. She might have to try to put a record like that out right now. We'd be canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mixelot, Ice Tea, Tori Amos, and Vanessa Williams, this podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Were You In 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the IHIR Radio F, Apple Podcast, whoever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, it's Bethany Frankel. My time on the Real Housewives of New York is a few years behind me. And now I'm ready to put the real back into the Real Housewives. That's where my new podcast, We Were It's Comes In. This is in your typical Rewatch podcast. I'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities. I'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind the scenes. And I'm not just pulling in cast members for post-game analysis. I'm doing something a little more interesting. If you've ever seen an episode of the Real Housewives, you know the drill. But beyond throwing drinks and legs, there are lessons about marriage divorce, friendship, money, parenting, and fame. If you have the right minds analyze and dig deeper. So I'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and celebrities to give their take on the chaos. This season I sit down with Elizabeth Moss, Kevin Neill, and Susie Orman, Griffin Johnson, and more. You'd think that there isn't much to learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs, but that's where you're wrong. Listen to ReWives with Bethany Frankel. I'm the iHotRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Hey, I'm Joel Stein, and I'm here to save you from the endless onslaught of news headlines. I don't even need to know you to know this. You want to read those deep magazine articles. The long, weird ones. The ones that change how you think. But who has time to find them? I do. And that's why I'm here. Each week I find one of those stories and call one of my fellow, but greatly superior journalist friends and get them to tell me all about it. I do the work, you get the stories. Or more accurately, some reporter does the work, I don't pay them and put my name on the podcast. But the important part is you get the stories. Because I, Joel Stein, of Story of the Week with Joel Stein, care about you. Listen to Story of the Week with Joel Stein, on the iHotRadio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to It Could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about how to put them back together again. And today we have a special episode. We're going to be talking about a place where things did in fact fall apart, and people are, you could say, still in the process of putting them back together again and trying to do it in a way that is much more equitable and better than things had been before the collapse. That is Rojava in Northeast Syria. I'm going to introduce kind of that concept in, I'll do it right now. Basically, if you don't know anything about this, you might check out our podcast, The Women's War. But it is an autonomous region, not a state in Northeast Syria that is not under the control of the Assad regime or of any other state in the area. It's an independent community that is based on some pretty radical, its organization is based on some pretty radical political philosophies. In large part, ones that were sort of initially explored by a man named Murray Bookchin, who is an American social theorist and anarchist political philosopher. And some of his ideas were adopted by the leader of a militant group in the region called the PKK. And the leader of that group was a guy in a Turkish prison named Abdullah Ajalan, who was, you might say, a Kurdish freedom fighter. Ajalan encountered bookshans ideas and started writing his own books, the political theory that were kind of based off of them. And then when 2013 you get the Syrian Civil War, it reaches its kind of height. ISIS becomes the thing. Suddenly, the government's not in this area that has a large Kurdish population in Northeast Syria. And people who are followers of Ajalan takeover and start as their fighting ISIS, instituting this kind of radical feminist, egalitarian vision of society, which is currently under attack by the Turkish government, which is what we're going to be talking about. So I want to introduce our guests for today. First off, we have James Stout and we have Chris on the call from our normal cool-bond team. And then our guest today, our Debbie Bookchin. Debbie is a journalist and author and co-editor of the next revolution, popular assemblies and the promise of direct democracy. And then we also have Megan Bodet from the Kurdish peace institute where she is the director of research. Welcome to the show, Megan and Debbie. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you both for your time. I think maybe to start us out, Megan, would you be willing to talk a little bit about why the Turkish government is so aggressive towards this independent region in Northeast Syria and kind of what the situation on the ground is now? Yeah, absolutely. So for some background, essentially since the division of the Middle East into the modern nation states that exist there today after World War I with the agreements by European powers, the Kurdish people have been divided between four different states, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and Syria. And all of those states have had governments that have been ethno-nationalists, that have been repressive, that have not provided Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities equal citizenship rights to participate in politics and to practice their culture to speak their language. In addition to denying many of these rights to many of their other citizens of different ethnicities and religions as well. And so as a result of this repression and the repression in Turkey was some of the strongest and most systemic, the Kurdish people in these regions have continued to struggle for and demand self-determination and freedom in different political forms. What happened in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s there were Kurdish revolts against new Turkish Republic, which was a very autocratic nation state that denied the existence of all non-Turkish ethnicities. And these revolts were all violently put down with attacks that not only targeted those who tried to resist these policies of assimilation, but that also resulted in Turkish mass violence against Kurdish civilians in these regions. You had forced deportations, you had ethnic cleansing, you had all kinds of brutal violence against civilians in order to specifically create this homogenous Turkish ethnic identity in Kurdish regions. And so after this period of time there was a period wherein there was less resistance. And I think the Turkish government believed that the Kurdish problem had been solved by force. They had successfully been able to kill or assimilate all of the Kurdish people. But in the 1970s and the 1980s, sort of concurrent with many national liberation movements around the world, you had the beginning of the PKK or the Kurdistan Workers' Party's national liberation struggle. Now they began as a socialist movement seeking an independent and socialist Kurdish state. And they saw Kurdistan as a colony that was occupied by Turkey. And with the colonialism of Turkey in Kurdistan was supported by imperialist powers in the rest of the world as well. And they sought to write that as other national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America. Many places at the time did with an armed struggle for independence. And in responding to the PKK's formation and armed struggle, the Turkish state once again, rather than exceeding to any Kurdish demands, they responded with brutal violent oppression of not only Kurds who were active in the armed struggle, not only politically active Kurds, but on all forms of Kurdish identity. After the military coup in Turkey in 1980, the Kurdish language was banned. Kurds were imprisoned on false charges or no charges at all. Torture was prevalent, show trials were prevalent. Any kind of publication or other public interaction in Kurdish was completely illegal. So there was this full scale effort to repress the Kurds and any other progressive segments of society in Turkey that would have supported them. And as the conflict went on, Turkey did very little to change. By the 1990s, the success of the Kurdish movement had forced the state to recalibrate as had developments in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurds there achieving autonomy. And so you started to have the ability of Kurdish political actors to work within the system. We saw the development of pro-Kurdish legal political parties at that time. But there was still very severe repression of any and all things Kurdish as they made their demands, even of those who increasingly attempted to make demands peacefully. So the conflict went on throughout the 1990s and the 2000s. And to this day, despite a peace process between the government of Turkey and the PKK and the Kurdish movement between 2012 and 2015, that process failed when Erdogan's government saw that it was allowing for Kurds to take advantage of expanded democratic space in Turkey, organize and achieve electoral political success. The government abandons its commitments and sadly returned to war and the conflict has been going on ever since and has included, you know, again, not only this military component, but this component of crushing all forms of organized, Kurdish political and cultural expression. So what we've been seeing in Turkey over the past, nearly a decade now, more than a half decade is the repression of the pro-Kurdish political opposition and parliament, the People's Democratic Party or the HDP. We've seen repression of Kurdish media, attacks on Kurdish journalists. We've seen any kind of Kurdish activism, not only that that's explicitly political, but any kind of acknowledgement of the Kurdish language, of Kurdish colors, of Kurdish clothing, very readily criminalized. And this campaign of attacking and repressing all things Kurdish has of course expanded beyond Turkey's borders. So Turkey opposes North and Aceria because the Syrian Kurds have created a form of autonomous governance that protects and promotes Kurdish rights, because they have done so in the framework of the Kurdish freedom movement that has its roots in Turkey and in Otalon's ideas as you explained. And because they've been able to create a successful alternative to the very sort of nationalist project that the modern Turkish state is based on, you know, I would say that the Turkish Kurdish conflict and I don't like to call it that, but that is what most people call it today, is really a conflict now over two competing visions of regional order with Turkey's based on the right-wing, the neoliberal nation's state and the Kurdish movement's vision of a Middle East based on self-determination, liberation, equality for women and other values, not only for Kurds but for all people. So because North and Aceria represents both Kurdish success and in creating an autonomous region and it represents these ideas of the Kurdish freedom movement that challenged Turkey's nationalist project. Turkey has been trying to destroy the autonomous administration of North and East Syria by all possible means for a very long time now. They've invaded Syrian territory twice to attack the autonomous administration and the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces. Once in Afreen in 2018, Afreen is in Northwestern Syria and then once in 2019 after, you know, Trump and Erdogan's phone call that we all infamously remember in Seri Khanyeh and Talabiyad in Northeastern Syria. So you've had these two invasions and occupations of North and East Syria's territory that have included not only the terrible violence of invasion and occupation but also all kinds of crimes against civilians who remain. We've seen uptakes in violence and abuse of women ethnically motivated, religiously motivated, hatred and persecution that's driven virtually all of the non-Arab and non-Muslim people living in these regions to flee their homes, attacks on anyone who is perceived as having collaborated with the prior administration all being carried out by Turkey and Turkish-backed Syrian militia groups. So we've seen the persecution of civilians in these areas with the intent of changing demographics and installing not only a government sympathetic to Turkey and the military structure sympathetic to Turkey but also removing the social base for the autonomous administration's project. And then in addition to these all-out attacks on the autonomous administration in these regions, Turkey continues to threaten the territory that Northeastern Syria does have left which is still nearly one-third of Syrian territory concentrated in the Northeast. There's been an escalating campaign of drone strikes targeting leaders in the autonomous administration and the SDF as well as Syrian civilians. Turkey is cutting water access to Northeastern Syria by restricting the flow of the Euphrates River. This is an agricultural region. People depend on that water for all aspects of life and certainly for the economy. That's caused a great deal of suffering. The entire Turkish-Syrian border is very heavily militarized. When you drive by it and you see the wall and you know very lit up at night with the barbed wire and everything and you just look at you know these civilian towns very peaceful on both sides. It's something very disturbing to see but it's a highly militarized border and it is a completely sealed border. Turkey does not trade with Northeastern Syria and supports an international economic blockade on the region including by pressuring its allies to restrict the access of goods to Northeastern Syria. So there's economic air going on there. There are really every tactic that Turkey is able to use whether military, economic, environmental, political or anything else in order to crush and destroy Northeastern Syria's political project and force the Kurdish people and the other peoples of that region to flee so that there is no base for such a project again in the future. They're doing everything they can to achieve that outcome. So the situation is very difficult and it is a direct result of Turkey's you know century old Kurdish question that it has been unable and unwilling to honestly and in good faith seek a peaceful solution to and we'll get to it later but the international community has played a very big role in ensuring that that conflict goes on with all of those negative consequences for Northeastern Syria. Yeah I mean and that's one of the so obviously Turkey is the second largest military in NATO and it has you know one of the things that is such like so messy about this is that on paper and on the ground in fact the United States has been supporting the autonomous region in Northeastern Syria and particularly the the YPG and the YPJ which is you know the the militia essentially as partners in the fight against ISIS and still to this day right now there's an operation going on in the out-whole camp which is where a lot of ISIS prisoners are held that is like a coalition supported operation and at the same time that the United States is doing this we're selling weapons to the people who are have essentially declared the folks that our military has been ating a terrorist organization which is a peculiar and frustrating situation to say the least. Yeah and and actually the other thing that's happening Robert is that you know Turkey while it's threatening a full-scale invasion they've been doing all of these things that Megan described sort of on this sort of low intensity warfare scale a kind of military strategy that uses a whole variety of tactics that are short of you know a full-scale invasion which still may come and so you know there's these extra judicial killings of some of the leaders of the SDF which is the Syrian Democratic Forces which is the sort of umbrella group of the two militia Kurdish militias that you described and which also includes many Arab fighters and others who have been central in defeating ISIS at the cost I might add of about 13,000 lives you know and you know and the use of the proxy groups like the Syrian so-called you know SNA Syrian National Army which is really you know a group of of jihad militias that Turkey is kind of assembled and now completely is responsive to Turkey and is are the sort of shock troops for when they went did go into affron and for these other invasions you know economic pressure as Megan described but the point is that this kind of warfare it produces these sort of ongoing low level attacks but it keeps it sort of off the radar of the of the bigger political and media machine and therefore it keeps it from getting the attention that it really deserves in western societies it also has the impact of displacing hundreds of thousands of people and and you know and many hundreds have also been killed I'm sure probably you're familiar with some of the recent bombings by drone that have been occurring in in Mojava which you know including many civilians schoolchildren Turkey Turkey is doesn't care at all about about who gets hit and they have been very aggressive without any respect for civilian casualties as well so you know so I mean I think it's it's important to also just note that this democratic project is in Syria is a deep threat to Turkey because and and that every time Erdogan steps up these military sort of the aggression it leads him to bribe slightly in the polls which is something that's important to him because he has an election coming up next year so there's that sort of political dimension to it but the fact is that that Rojava is basically a women's revolution women are involved in every aspect of running society they're the political the social the economic and Turkey is essentially a femicidal state you know it not only reviews women within within Turkey is less than human where husbands can basically get away with murdering their wives but you know it it targets girls with drones as it did on August 18th when a Turkish drone bombed a UN supported education center for young girls and and Hasek and Rojava so you know it's it's very much as Megan said a war of ideologies as well again one of the things that's so frustrating with this so historically the reason why Turkey was it was so important for NATO to get Turkey as a member is because that's essentially NATO's eastern flank if you're still thinking about that big theoretical conflict between you know Russia and and the Western democracies that was why you know part of why why initially like Turkey was such a valued partner and then as time has gone on it's primarily on one of the big things as we have a massive airbase in Turkey in Cerlic where a number of US nuclear warheads are kept so there's a tremendous fear cowardice might be a better way to say it on behalf of politicians in the United States and other Western countries to actually engage with the ethnic cleansings and with the human rights abuses that the Turkish government particularly under Erdogan has has continued and one of the things that's really frustrating about this you know if you think about the way in which ISIS was discussed by US media was discussed by you know conservatives by Donald Trump during his campaign you know it was this ultimate bogeyman well a huge chunk of the support for for ISIS and in fact even logistics for some of their fighters came allegedly courtesy of the Turkish state and there's some evidence for this there's certainly evidence of support for wounded fighters and kind of a alax policy that allowed a lot of people to come through Turkey and get into northeast Syria to fight um and you know as you noted earlier 13,000 somewhere around there fighters men and women in the YPG and Jay died fighting ISIS in you know um and we're you know not just fighting ISIS kind of with the backing of the United States but prior to getting any support one of the most important things they did the while ISIS was on the move in Iraq as well as Syria they were carrying out an active ethnic cleansing a genocide a lot of operation in Mount Sinjar against the Yazidis and that was only really stopped because while they were fighting a defensive war in northeast Syria the YPG sent fighters into Iraq to stop the genocide and they were successful in this you know you talk to as I have a lot of Yazidis survivors of the genocide and they'll say the only reason we got out is because of you know the YPG um and the PKK and the PKK well and that is that it is it is so we we should we could talk a little bit about the PKK they are the the YPG and Jay and the SDF which is kind of the umbrella organization are not recognized as terrorist organizations by the United States or by most Western democracies the PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization. Turkey's allegations would be that the YPG and Jay and and other you know militias are just PKK affiliates. The reality is that they are in quite in fact quite closely tight and you will you know but also there it's not the exact like when you're in Rojava and you encounter people who are PKK people will speak about them differently than they will talk about other people who are kind of you know they're the folks from the mountains is the term that I hear used the most. But the thing is see here's the problem the problem is that that whatever the PKK's history is and has been and it's where more than we can get into the PKK made a dramatic shift in its ideology and has done everything possible to try to restart peace negotiations with Turkey. So first of all you know there are several as Megan mentioned before there was a peace initiative that went on for a few years that then everyone decided wasn't you know beneficial to him so he stopped it but the PKK and recently as I think a year or two ago the leader of the PKK and the mountains right now is a meal diet wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post saying we want to have talks we want to have reconciliation with Turkey we're not asking for a separate country state all we want is some degree of autonomy and you know and and it's actually to the enduring shame of the Western media including the New York Times that they continue to talk about them as a separatist organization but that's another story as well the the fact is that these ideologies that they both subscribe to PKK and the YPG YPJ regardless of whether to what extent they may be related the political ideology is an ideology about direct democracy it's about empowering people at the local level it's about making sure that every adult and also the youth have a say in their communities and it's as grassroots democratic as anything that you could ever imagine and so really you would think that the United States you know would understand that there's certainly no threat that neither the the YPG nor the YPJ has ever shown any aggression towards Turkey which is what makes this idea of a buff the idea that they need a buffer zone kind of a joke you know so really it's it's a ideological shift that's so profound and so empowering to local people that it's also something that frankly those of us who are on the left should be much more supportive I think than than people have been so far yeah I mean the thing that is most remarkable because I spent a lot I spent more time certainly in Iraq than in Syria and we should note here that we're talking about Syria today and we're talking about Rojava Turkish aggression against particularly against the pkk but against you know Kurds kind of in an ethnic sense extends beyond Syria Turkey has illegally attacked Iraq and in fact moved troops into Iraqi soil a number of times escalating within the last year and killed a substantial number of people in the in the Kurdish regional government territories so that is also occurring here although it's it's worth noting again because people mix this up a lot what's happening in Kurdish control the Iraq is profoundly different from what's happening in Rojava and they're extremely different political organizations yeah yeah I think it's also worth mentioning that it's not just um Kurdish groups have been attacking in Iraq there've been a bunch of attacks like on the news survivors yeah yeah yeah it's called a bunch of those people too it is yeah they're just they're doing the genocide again yeah the I think yeah and it's um it's interesting you know I uh it's also kind of worth the thing that was perhaps most surprising to me there was the degree to which people I would meet who were just like in many cases just like kind of you know terrorism police Acaiish guys or people who were like working traffic checkpoints or working in the farms the there were people were really careful to not refer or talk to like what the project was as a state and it's it's not on a state it's an autonomous region that's one of the terms I heard the most is the autonomous regions which is really interesting to me and it's hard it's something certainly like mainstream media writing about it um seems to have trouble grasping as you say and it's interesting because obviously it devian case folks haven't put it together you are the daughter of of Marie Bookchin who is the um who is the the political philosopher whose ideas formed a significant like core of sort of what the organizational structure in Rojava is um well I just want to say first of all thank you for that yeah I also just want to say that I really want to remind everybody that of course you know Abdullah Chalan read hundreds and hundreds of books not just my dad's no I mean I appreciate that but you know they have he has really especially placed emphasis on the need for any revolutionary project to have the liberation of women at its core my dad talked a lot about hierarchy and patriarchy but Chalan by making women central has really done something unique I think you know in in the history of because in the history of sort of revolutionary you know movements because as many women who have participated in those movements in the past can tell you it was always sure a fight with us and we'll deal with the women's issue when the revolution is over and Chalan turned that upside down you know and he said it's got to be a women's revolution yeah not a revolution at all and the women in those movements over there really fought for that themselves yes and one of the things that you know was most interesting for me to see um was when I would go into meetings there with women in all kinds of different you know military and civilian institutions in different cities across the region that before I would even bring it up as a researcher you know women would say to me that if it weren't for Ocho-Lan's theories we wouldn't have the organizations that we have we wouldn't have the political power that we have and they had this incredible articulation of how they use these ideas you know as inspiration for their own work and also as almost political cover to do kinds of things that wouldn't be accepted in other places because they can go to men who they work with who might be suspicious but who you know have this public stated claim to this ideology and they can say well Ocho-Lan's books say that society can never be free without women's liberation that women can have their own separate institutions so they've been able to really take these ideas and expand on them and you know push them and use them with their own practice um and the way that the ideas came about themselves uh one book that I would recommend anyone interested in the Kurdish movement um in revolutionary women's movements anywhere in the world in really any topic related to any of this to read is um the autobiography of Sikina Johnson's who was the only woman present for the founding of the PKK and was really instrumental in organizing both the armed and civilian sides of the Kurdish women's movement in Turkey um there are pictures of her everywhere in Syria she was assassinated in France in 2013 by Turkish nationalists affiliated with the state likely suspected you know hoping to disrupt the peace negotiations that were ongoing at that time but she's remembered everywhere in northeast Syria for her role and you can see in her book her talking about seeing the inequalities that as Debbie mentioned women in socialist movements and revolutionary movements often faced where they were asked to you know be as committed to the struggle as their male comrades were but were still treated um in very patriarchal ways by men that they worked with because um you know the patriarchy embedded into these societies and you see her talking about organizing women to overcome this um and when you look at the history of the Kurdish movement moving into what you see in northeast Syria as well you know women were really able to do so much in practice that the theory had to move to catch up to them and then to take this new incredible theory of you know women's oppression being the basis of all oppression um and the form of oppression that you know must be addressed to free all members of society in all ways you know they took this and they continued to expand it so in a very difficult place in context to do so I mean we know that in more um there's more violence against women there's more discrimination there's more emphasis on traditional gender roles that this holds true across different societies in different conflicts so they have um they face many challenges they're up against a lot here certainly you know with all the problems um that they're facing in northeast Syria because of conflict and poverty um everything that Turkey's doing that we've discussed uh so they're up against a lot and it's not easy but they've really you know they've come incredibly far um and seeing how you know they've taken very high level theoretical ideas and then done so much in practice and how their practice and theory in for each other um is really one of the most incredible things to see over there um and it's another reason why Turkey wants to destroy them because Erdogan does not believe that women can be equal to men um he does not see male violence against women as a problem and yeah you know as we've discussed uh Turkey and the Kurdish movement couldn't be any more different on this question no and it's um i think the thing because you know going over there i went with the i as a journalist where like i had heard all these things and then rojava has kind of become among some chumps of the let chunks of the left that cause celebs um in part because of you know the achievements uh of the revolution in that space and i wanted to see how legitimate it is and um part of why you know i kind of went in with that attitude is that i spent so much time in the Kurdish regions of Iraq and if you remember when the fighting against ISIS was at its height there was a tremendous amount of coverage of the the female pashmerga and the fact that you know the Kurds in northern Iraq who were the workforce in Iraq that collapsed the least when ISIS was on the advance um it's overstated how well they did that's why the ypg needed to rescue these edis at syngar as the the the Kurdish military in northern Iraq just kind of bounced at that point but um you know i had heard about you know these that the this women's right situation is great in northern Iraq it's very egalitarian there's women fighters and it is it's certainly and anyone who lives there will tell you much safer and easier to be a woman in in the k rg the Kurdish region like control Kurdish regional government parts of Iraq than it is further south in the country but that doesn't mean it's it's good it is it is more like certain things are somewhat more tolerated there's more freedom but it's still a very traditionalist society and for example i didn't see any female pashmerga um they did not make much of a presence on the ground and and their their their their involvement in the fighting was exaggerated somewhat as part of a conscious PR strategy um as soon as you cross in to northeast Syria you see women manning and running checkpoint stations you see as you go in because they're like you know they that you like you get like passport and stuff like looked at and you get like stamps and and whatnot when you kind of come into the to the region um you see a lot of women like running that part of the operation you go into the actual country itself and there's we we visited a restaurant that was run by a collective of women who had all lost husbands in the fighting we ran we went to a farm that was all young women who had left their families who were very traditionalist and their religious attitude um and and go on independent and of course you see um female military units and female we saw mixed male and female like military policing units and stuff and it's it's one of those things that if you are going there kind of uh with a critical eye to try and see how extensive the revolution can be i can't imagine not being convinced of the reality of it because it's it's just so stark well also robert you know first of all just to again you could say a lot about what's going on in in Iraqi Kurdistan but just to very quickly sum it up I mean it is a capitalist petrol state run by a clan yeah the barzani's you know who who a crew basically all the wealth to themselves and you can't even begin to compare it with with the kind of revolutionary project in Syria so I mean I just want to in case so people understand I mean I don't want to use I hate to use the word socialist because it's such a it's so fraught but you could the closest thing you know it's it's built on a socialist economic model except a better one more like what my father and what Abdullah Chilan have in mind which my father called communalism and this democratic confederalist model is based on cooperatives you know where people really do have the means control the means of production as much as possible I mean it's obviously all you know still information it's still growing and there's areas like the energy sector where things of you know are less like that but are I I hope you know give it a move in that direction yeah I mean obviously no this is certainly not some kind of perfect utopian of course the middle of a more zone but but as you pointed out what you see when you go there is women so active in every aspect I would add to to what the great examples you gave the women's houses oh gosh yeah I wanted to talk about that right where they they are literally resolving all so many problems for both men and women you know at the community level and and so it's it's really quite an extraordinary you know I guess what I want to say about it is that like if if we all got on board of you know one of that that Creighton Elon Musk space ships down to colony you know where they were doing this we'd be cherishing it we'd be going oh my god you know look at these people they're like they have a cooperative economy and they have women's councils at every level wow men can't overrule women on a decision that comes to say women's bodies think here the dobs decision right on the Supreme Court women only women can can decide those issues that are related to women and there there are councils at every level and people sending delegates you know meeting in their little villages and towns and communities and electing delegates to the next level it is a true grassroots democracy and it's ecological and it's feminist it's like if Ursula look when we're writing about it in the desert we'd all be going wow so so really you know it's something that I think especially anybody who considers themselves a feminist you know should be supporting and and certainly and I hope all of us do you know and and certainly anybody you know I would think who's an anarchist to me it's pretty close to any and every anarchist's dream you know and and so I think yeah I just wanted to make that contrast with Iraq because I think it's really important that really goes to why the Kurdish project really needs very badly the support of people in the United States because in so many ways the United States kind of calls the shots about what can and cannot happen over there if you look at the problems they have you know to all of that because of course all of these places are not perfect and have you know these serious issues alongside these serious achievements every issue that they have is an issue that any society would have if that society had been through 10 years of war were impoverished and blockaded from virtually all economic activity with the outside world if they had had to not only you know fight the occupation of a group like ISIS but then immediately turn around to fight a state army much larger than them you know bent on taking and occupying their territory a society where people fear going outside because they don't know if they'll be in the wrong place at the wrong time when there'll be a drone strike on a local military leader going around doing their job keeping their communities safe from ISIS or a local political leader going around doing their job trying to you know build this new system so I think when we look at the flaws uh their flaws that are the result of in large part poverty and conflict and all of the compounding crisis crises that uh the people of North and East Syria have to face because of what they've gone through you know as Debbie mentioned much at the hands of larger powers so much of what happens in Syria is up to what the United States wants up to what Russia wants up to what Turkey wants um all of these countries and regions you know with different priorities different outlooks but it somehow happens that at the end of the day uh you know the one thing make an allegory on is that um it's okay to sell out the autonomous administration it's okay to have consequences for them you know if the Kurdish people suffer the Yuzidi people suffer the people of North and East Syria all of these different demographics if they're the people who are victimized you know because they don't have a state because they're fighting for something different because they're challenging the status quo it's okay they're the ones who face the consequences we saw this you know with what happened with ISIS we saw this with the complete international silence when Afrin was invaded with the you know piecemeal response that stopped the Turkish invasion in 2019 but allowed them to convert what they were doing to this kind of low intensity war um you know with a terrible ceasefire you know with undefined lines and with these drone strikes being allowed in areas where Russia and the United States both of which have agreements with Turkey are active um you know in both of whom tolerate this so essentially every powerful interest in Syria can agree on you know ensuring that the autonomous administration comes in last and as people in the US you know anyone who considers themselves on the left to consider themselves a feminist who cares about persecuted ethnic and religious minorities who opposes endless war and militarist foreign policy that props up autocrats and you know props up far-right regimes anyone with any of those values should be very concerned about the situation in northeast Syria right now and should be looking at what we can do to uh to get our government to stop supporting some of these very harmful policies against the region you know even while it claims to be supporting their fight against ISIS what can people listening here presumably most of you are in the United States or Canada or Western Europe what can people listening here particularly in the US do to have an impact to help well uh we could talk about that um we could have an entire other podcast episode on that because there's a lot to be done but you know to summarize in a few words the way that the United States supports Turkey's war on the Kurdish people uh all the peoples of the region and the Kurdish national liberation movement is through um military cooperation and support through diplomatic cooperation and support uh intelligence sharing and these pro war legal pretext so go tell Congress that you don't want them to send weapons to Turkey there's an F-16 sale right now that um it was really great to see uh the majority of Congress including all of the squad members people like AOC uh Rashida Tlaib Elhan Omar all opposed that sale so opposing arm sales very important something that there's momentum there for um and that there's momentum among progressives therefore which is very heartening opposing military aid and security assistance to Turkey you know I've done research on this US security assistance has trained senior Turkish officials including the country's current defense minister and several perpetrators of the violent repressive 1980 military coup obviously we should not be training coup plotters and war criminals that is not something I think most people listening to this want their tax dollars to go to so calling for an end to US security assistance to Turkey very important in addition to ending those arm sales and challenging the pro war legal pretexts and designations that um allow Turkey to get this kind of western support you know a wonderful thing that we saw um a couple weeks back was the democratic socialists of America the largest socialist organization in the US saying that they oppose the terror designation of the pkk and believe it it should be delisted that's something that progressive support uh very strongly in Europe we've seen you know calls from places like Ireland and South Africa where people know a lot about you know what terror designations and you know the criminalization of struggles you know can can have impacts on conflict resolution you know people who've participated in these kinds of post conflict processes in some of these places saying get rid of the designation it's harmful per piece you know it will be difficult to end this less violently without it so that's something where you know it seems the international case for it is something that's rather obvious and where pressur in the US on the US designation to remove it would be an important step for facilitating dialogue and a negotiated end to this conflict so understanding how the US supports Turkey's wars on the Kurdish people and opposing all of those different policies and programs is one of the most important things that we can do to say this war is not in our name we stand with the people of northeast Syria with the people in Turkey suffering from Turkish authoritarianism with the people in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yazidis and shengal being bombed by Turkish drones when we say that we don't want to support this war we stand with all of those people and I think that that kind of action against arms sales security assistance and pro-war legal pretexts could be a really great base for solidarity opposing endless war in the Middle East and standing up for you know peacefully ending this conflict and it would align us with progressives all around the world and you know people who really believe in peace and ending these kinds of things and if I could just add you know one one element to that would also be really pressing for a diplomatic solution to the whole so-called Kurdish question because Rojava will remain in danger as long as Erdogan and his party think that they can basically that they have to be fighting Kurds because you know to them as Megan said before Rojava is an extension of their own Kurds and of the PKK so what but what really needs to happen just as it happened in South Africa is there has to be a negotiated settlement one of the things that would help with this and there are movements that people can get involved with if they want would be freeing Ujjalan who has been in a sitting in a Turkish jail for the last 22 years because he is sort of the Nelson Mandela really of the Kurdish freedom movement and he should be involved in these negotiations and was even while he was in jail but really you know a jail person can't really do that properly so pressing for a diplomatic solution because basically Erdogan uses the PKK and the listing of the PKK as a terrorist organization to basically kill all Kurds everywhere and in order to stop that somehow there has to be a break in this and so I think that you know people there are certainly plenty of peace organizations and people who want to work on peace and I think this is a really important demand that they begin that the United States and the United States has nothing to lose by pressuring Turkey to engage in negotiations with the PKK. This is an hour war the PKK has never done anything to the United States it would make as Megan said for a lasting peace in the entire Middle East and would you know and so what I would say is first of all folks I would be great if people who want more information about any of this could contact the organization that I helped co-found the Emergency Committee for Rojava which is at DefendRojava.org and we have scripts to call Congress persons resources and we even have fun monthly meetings that people can come to you know and there's of course a lot of information at Megan's website also Kurdish peace.org but you know one of the things that people could do is go out and talk to their communities whether it's a religious community or a labor union or a food co-op or your kids nursery school or reading group women's group and sort of talk and help because there's a lot of people who surprisingly really don't know much about Rojava I think maybe because they're because the Zabatistas are a little closer geographically that that project is a bit better known you know so talking to people and getting people engaged and for example if there's anybody listening from New Jersey Bob Menendez is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he's been pretty hostile towards Erdogan and keeping on him with phone calls emails is a great way you know for for our somebody who worked in Washington for a while when I work for Bernie Sanders I know that these guys listen to their constituents you know and if they get enough calls they start to pay attention to those things that they come around we could even get you know somebody to send a letter around to their colleagues in Congress saying you know it's time to start peace negotiations those kinds of things do have impact because as I said before unfortunately the United States is really at the helm and in so many ways of what happens internationally in these geopolitical battles well thank you so much Debbie thank you so much Megan I think that's that's going to do it for us today please you know continue paying attention to this did you want to you know Megan did you have anything else you wanted to kind of add or let people know actually both would let people know where they can follow you on the internet yeah well I mean I think that that about covers it look the only solution for peace democracy and self-determination in turkey and in the wider Middle East is a just and democratic negotiated settlement to the Kurdish question and I think that just as Debbie said learn about what's going on reach out to your communities talk to your local Kurdish community if there is one find the opportunities that there are to engage with people in turkey in Syria in all of these places you know working for peace and standing up for these ideas and then no efforts too small because ending this conflict would benefit everyone in northeastern Syria everyone in turkey and all of us here you know knowing that our government was no longer supporting this terrible unjust war so just get out there and do something to see the work that the think tank where I work is doing on this issue you can go to Kurdish piece.org where we have research and analysis on everything related to do related to the Kurdish issue from all different perspectives and you can check out our work there and you can follow me on twitter megan bodet and the twitter handle is at five underscores mjb peace. My twitter is simpler it's just Debbie booktion at Debbie booktion and again I just want to say that you know people we do at defendrojava.org and we are also on twitter at defendrojava we have so many ideas and so much information about how people can get involved this Megan said if nothing else no more weapons to turkey until they begin peace negotiations give rojava political recognition that would be another thing people can be demanding also that Kurds have a place at the bargaining table in any discussions about the future of Syria so we have all those kinds of ideas scripts as I said model emails and more at defendrojava.org. Awesome thank you all for for being on and yeah that's going to do it for us here it could happen here for the day thank you for having us thanks where were you in 92 were you bouncing your butt to surmix a lot wondering if you like Billy race Cyrus can pull off a mullet yes 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive and now i hard as a podcast all about it i'm Jason Longfay and on my new show where were you in 92 we take arrives to the major hits one hit wonders an irresistible scandals at shape what might be the wildest most controversial 12 months and music and pop culture history never angry at me they thought i was uncontrollable and wild i wanted to first open the president came after me everybody time Warner with madness to match trying to put a record like that out right now we be canceled before it made it to the post office featuring interviews and special guests like surmix a lot iced tea torre amus and vinescia Williams this podcast poses the question what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous so buckle up and tune into where were you in 92 new episodes drop every Wednesday listen and follow on the iHer radio app apple podcasts or every listen to your favorite shows hi it's Bethany frankle my time on the real housewives of new york is a few years behind me and now i'm ready to put the wheel back into the real housewives that's where my new podcast rewives comes in this isn't your typical rewatch podcast i'm watching only the most iconic episodes from all cities i'm sharing never before heard stories of what happened behind the scenes and i'm not just pulling in cast members for post game analysis i'm doing something a little more interesting if you've ever seen an episode of the real housewives you know the drill but beyond throwing drinks and legs there are lessons about marriage divorce friendship money parenting and fame if you have the right minds analyze and dig deeper so i'm bringing on unexpected thought leaders and celebrities to give their take on the chaos this season i sit down with a lizard with moss heaven kneel and zuzi orman grip and johnson and more you'd think that there isn't much to learn from flipping tables and yanking wigs but that's where you're wrong listen to rewives with Bethany frankle on the iHer radio app apple podcasts forever you get your favorite podcasts hey i'm Joel Stein and i'm here to save you from the endless onslaught of news headlines i don't even need to know you to know this you want to read those deep magazine articles the long weird ones the ones that change how you think but who has time to find them i do and that's why i'm here each week i find one of those stories and call one of my fellow but greatly superior journalist friends and get them to tell me all about it i do the work you get the stories or more accurately some reporter does the work i don't pay them and put my name on the podcast but the important part is you get the stories because i Joel Stein of story of the week with Joel Stein care about you listen to story of the week with Joel Stein on the iHer radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast hi everyone it's James here a welcome joy could happen here today it's just me and we're talking again about the UC strike but the audio is not great we had some technical issues on my end not not a match end but we wanted to put it out nonetheless because we felt there was very important episode and things of developing very rapidly at the UC and we thought that our listeners would like it so apologies for the poor quality of the audio we hope you can get through it anyway all right so i'm talking today with Matthew Ehrlich who's a seven seven-year PhD candidate in the history department Matthew would you like to explain a little bit of who you are and what you've been doing with reference to the strike in the last three weeks and maybe before as well yes so i studied Spanish history in the kins and Korean Empire i've been a UCSD for seven years research in spain for two years during the open end of it so there was a sort of great in my university for participation between my name my qualifying exams for three years i was there and then i left 19 back and i know the campus was quite different both from COVID and the recent economic hardships so in the last year we have all been targeting trying to let by any contract and as I'm sure all your listeners are aware by this point that my final part of the monoclonal year in 18 months in some cases without a successful resolution and with a ton of unparalleled practices on behalf of the UC administration so on November 15th i believe was today we walked out on strike i had signed up several months earlier to be a strike captain for the history department and is assisted by a sort of informal committee of five of the younger people next sort of due to the pandemic a lot of my colleagues in my cohort would not able to go and do their research i sort of get generally out of the country right now to do their real research so we have a really great department of primarily first three third years that are participating and then meeting the other i also had signed up to be a ticket a ticket leader and boiled down to why i've been really occupying myself and i have to be saying has been being approved captain so we have been cooking for about 150 people and wow we've been getting lots of great donations some food and and that should be really investing that to these 100 picketers and spread out of people of vision that's really cool yeah i think that's really nice to to bring up actually because i think we were speaking about before the call right so many people are familiar with and supportive of the concept of of unions and unionization and workers rights but i think relatively few people have actually been on strike and and seen what it takes to organize and all the little things you have to take care of and so did you just step into that food captain role like kind of ad hoc yeah more or less i've been showed up on the first day and i realized we had been marching around and shouting ourselves for it yeah there was no water so i went down to the grocery store and i bought a bunch of water and that's where i snowballed into cooking now we have about eight or nine people we wrote eight ships and meal planning um we actually used the history of working with lounge but yeah you know that assessment really been our experience of picketing is for all the organization and and signing up for different tasks that we did before and hitting the ground and seeing what what is needed to sustain that yeah i think a level has been a journey yeah i bet but it seems to have been largely a successful one like everyone is out energetic um there have been some really impressive actions actually like i don't know if you were part of the uh la hova it's drive uh it's shut down and all you want to call that yesterday but uh did you take part in that no i was i was okay okay yeah yeah i found the people who were there amazing yeah yeah yeah we actually found a faculty uh spy of the eight four who went in and asked what time that was one day my sorry our uh our window there's been a lot of direct action and it's been very successful from the morale expected and uh conversationally i'm sure you're aware we uh approach chancellor bolst lot i guess they are they and even though obviously we didn't get a promise from him that he would raise our wages or tell president draped raise our wages uh it was you know very energizing for uh people who have you know been been not able to show up because things can be great or of all between there the direct action is is one of our strong seats at this point yeah yeah yeah it is it is wonderful to see actually like so many of us spent so much of our lives like studying work as movements and unionization and strikes and it's cool to see people walking the talk out a little bit also very important like what are the really great things about going on strike with a bunch of statues you got the smartest minds in practically every field again you know come on patients that are uh are working on emails liars and and such you've got philosophy who are uh uh you know being lost first yes um the one uh uh you know quoting working class movements of the past uh uh shave our strategy yeah yeah it's a cool thing to see um i remember a uh long time ago in like 2010 and when last time we were on strike and uh yeah it was very cool um one of their professors i was working with with a lit professor and she came and read some stuff and then you know i made people listen to me talking about to root you for a while and uh i enjoyed myself even if maybe they didn't and so yeah it i want to talk a little bit as well about like you're in week three now and you said like you've been maintaining the energy and you're feeding people which is great um how has obviously like strikes come with an element of economic hardship and that's somewhat offset by union strike funds but it's given the economic precarity of people who are graduate students anyway uh it could be really tough so how has that been we're not quite a December first yet which would that be the first mispage heck if people are gonna not get paid we are most of us convinced that the UC will not have gotten their house in order by this point we were working until November 15th so at least you can kind of have a month's pay but as there's no real way for the UC to determine exactly which workers are withholding labor and exactly which workers are on strike it seems like the majority of workers will be receiving their first their their no bank pay check um tomorrow uh we have also received a service assistance from the union um it's great w um we're all aware that if we do receive our pay check from the university people have to return that money so that we can fuel future uh yeah strike assistance um and we're very large okay with that uh you know that uh I think they know that actually we support things the event they they know the strike assistance and so it's a sort of a holiday okay so for this month long way or another um we are all very hopeful that we'll be able to make ends meet uh next month is is you know if the strike does continue um sort of a bridge that will happen across I spoke to a lot of workers in the industry department who are very concerned about about this HX uh particularly also open the program that I teach for the making of the modern world which recruits heavily from the history department so it's a non-student to TAs and are not covered by the union and are not uh uh uh how is for perspective fully their labor and solidarity they're very concerned that uh you know they're primarily working as their full-time job yeah that's tough actually I've I've I've taught in that program too both as a student and a non-student and it's a good program but it doesn't pay a ton and you don't save a lot of money living in southern California so it could be tough is there a way to contribute if people want to contribute to those people who are sort of withholding labor and solidarity? uh yes so there is a uh U-A-W strike hardship fund yeah yeah I'll include it in then. You know if you had a hardship fund and there's also a uh I've then known that we're attacking donations for well in places. By depending on how long strike goes, it's definitely something that we do with large public support. I think that the public at large can be doing is concerning political pressure on the research to a lot of the stuff that we do. Yeah, and yeah, I hope they continue to do so. Let's talk a little bit about everyone we've talked to so far has been a science or engineering person. Obviously, the experience is a little different when you're a historian or up to a humanities person because you don't go to a lab, right? Your research is a bit different and your work is a bit different. So can you explain a little bit about the work that one does as a history grad student, the labor that one does for the university and what the difference is in what it's like withholding that labor? The difference is that when we are the vast majority of us that are in the industry department, are ASEs, we are TA's and of that the majority of us teach for either the writing programs for the industry department. So when we look at what we can contribute to the strike, we are looking at the withholding not only at grades but at the type of grading that cannot be replaced. Of course, I'm teaching for now there's five or six TA's, there's 650 students. I'm responsible for 60 of those students. Each of those students has a weekly discussion and whether five or six times the word they have a content analysis papers which there's now two of them that are missing. Those are things that cannot be reverted to multiple strikes at the writing program. It's not a formula. It's not something that the EESA we are aware that there has been some tension in terms of our strategic planning between the ASEs and S-R use in the STEM fields that on the one hand in their teaching duties, they are very afraid that their professors will be able to co-opt the teaching process by making example choice or something else. I'm not sure how that would work. I know that that's just not really possible. The humanities and the other issue which you can't actually really speak to, but I'm sure your other contributors have explained this is we don't work in labs. Our research is in a much more long term. We've primarily got that research either in absentia during this warrior with external fellowships or during the summer. Whereas S-R use and to be working in their labs more or less constantly. I've heard it said that one of the reasons that S-R use are rooted to be less committed to a long term strike is because missing two weeks in a lab since that back by six months in their career. For the master majority of the studies, ASEs and I talk to two weeks is very... I have to be picked up. You're reading a book in years very time. It's not something we need to be in with funds and burners and S-2 and other animals. There seems to be material conditions divide. S-R use and ASEs on one hand and the spam and humanities on them. Right. Yeah. There are definitely two weeks periods I spent on my research and stuff that I never used in any of my final projects. You could try to get an archive to open in Spain. I can often take that long. One thing I'd like to talk about is the... As it stands now, what you're hearing from the bargaining team and how that's being received. I know there are a lot of different demands, a lot of different things that bought people to strike. The access needs, the cola, the unfair labor practices, etc. etc. What are you hearing on the picket line and how is it being received? The news for the first week was on day 4, the S-R-U bargaining team agreed to accept a 7% yearly increase versus a positive investment that would be paid. I believe for the median rent increase in I think the most expensive city in the world, which means ADA, go and get some systems. To be honest, the strike was sold to the vast majority of the oneraticalized on an educated bank and file as being about the 54,000 base pay, as well as the access needs, as well as, you know, annual time employment for some units and various different things. But there was a lot of consternation on day 4 and I think a lot of us became very radicalized when we realized that not only had the S-R-U bargaining team apparently made a concession on day 4 of what was supposed to be a very powerful strike, but that concession didn't really resolve the issue of skyrocketing inflation and rent costs. You know, different campuses were weighing in to say the oneraticals went up something like 65% in the last year. I'm 7% and the black increase doesn't hope that's involved. The University of California is largest in Florida, and the largest landlord in state of California. The risk is raising, you know, their wages by a black rate and all the landlords in that area will continue to raise wages of rent, so a lot of us who were really, I wasn't around for the 2020 COLA wild tax strike, but in the process of this consternation of the S-R-U-V-C giving off this COLA that speaks to the median rent. A lot of us became very, I also disillusioned, but very arachalized and started looking into it more. In the humanities, I can say, in a hard-faked environment, related departments, who is very innocent. That was the first kind of moment of an Autismist Awareness, I think for a lot of us. And over the last week, it's not too late, it's kind of internal struggle over tactics and strategy. Whether it's reasonable to expect that we can hold out for our aims, the bargaining teams, and on our campus, at least, and there are exceptions, have generally advanced a sort of moderate line that, yeah, 54,000 is high in the sky, is great to me. But, you know, the way the bargaining works is walk or something high, and you get something low. I think we're all, you know, willing to accept that that is how bargaining works. But we have, at least in my opinion, at least in the humanities, been very concerned by the practical decisions to make certain possessions at certain stages without letting the full power of our strike take hold, especially the withholding of grades, which is not enough. Yeah. Just recent and next week. Another thing which, you know, most of us have not been on the bargaining team, and a lot of us have just kind of checked it again to this very long-term process, pretty late game, with the wash these bargaining discussions and see what you see is offering. Definitely does not seem like the bargaining team strategy of operating in session, or to get something else bigger, it is working at all. I think the main thing that makes a compromise is on accessibility needs in the hopes that we'll provoke. The UC to offer a compromise to be not advantage. Last thing we did, including the 1.5%, in case for the SRUs, proposal, and nothing for the ASCs. Oh wow. Wow, yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a still a long way apart then. So in both, in both the removal of Pola on day four, last time it's bargaining, I think there's real concern that the bargaining team is getting the short end of the state. Yeah, that's tough. If people don't remember from last time, by the way, Kohler is the cost of living adjustment that was the initial course of the 2020 Wildcats, right? Yes, Pola is possibly the adjustment, and there is a lot of really interesting discourse from out kind of what that meant. People who are chanting their Pola know contract, they define Kohler as as meetings specifically a yearly percentage increase that is tied to the median rent. Yeah, where asked, bargaining team had argued that a 7% yearly increase qualified as Pola, why does it hear me increase? Right, but maybe less than inflation given, and certainly less than rent given what rent has done in the last couple of years. And these universities are in very desirable places to live with very high rents. They don't offer subsidized, they don't offer significantly subsidized housing, especially to grad students often, especially not to all grad students. And so yeah, it becomes very difficult to live even on what would seem like a decent wage unless you want to can be a long way. Something like 90% of the work, and I'm a historian, not a political scientist, or a vast majority of graduate students who were told said that they were a ventvert that 50% or up there, many want to vent. Most people I talk to against more like 70%. Yeah, yeah, and you can find yourself in that situation working for the university, with the university also as your landlord and you're paying the census to which, you know, it has control over both ends and it's not doing much to help anyone. Let's talk about withholding grade because that's coming up, right? And that's kind of the the next level of escalation, I suppose, or like the next hurdle that's coming up. So what does withholding grades look like? And can you explain why there's sort of a pedagogical reason that people would be obviously like worried about doing that? Or it's this sort of barrier and what it would do to the university and what it would do to your students as well? Yes, so fundamentally the withholding grades use the withholding of the alter-conditioned product of our labor. We can talk about pedagogie and ideology and then, you know, highly ivory towering, you know, as much as we want. But at the end of the day, when undergraduate at the University of California pays their tuition, they expect to get grades and transcripts every time. And the reputation of the UC that makes it, one of the premier public institutions in the world, is that grading is a credit to be a responsible, very high quality of education. We are saying that we are not providing that ultimate record, which in the end is what a student would demonstrate if they were applying to graduate school, if they were micro internship, really anything that reflects their college experience would be high to be that grade. We are also saying that, you know, in addition to that very little kind of explicit result, the pedagogie itself is also a software that, you know, students are here to learn, and they might complain and they didn't get through a class, but by and large, they do get a lot from their education. And if they are not being actively taught by their teaching assistants, they are suffering. It is the M&W program, the UNI book, for the lectures are very, you know, it is a very large lecture hall. It is kind of a general viscous, vast majority of instruction both in the historical cultural content of the course, as well as in the writing aspect, which is the point of the program to develop a skilled analytical academic writers. And they are not getting that at all. That is a burden that is carried on 100% by the TAs, and by withholding that, it prevents the students from receiving quality education essentially. So we are hoping that particularly in the humanities where our labor is really irreplaceable, that will pressure the universe. Now we have been hearing that some universities have been literally extending the deadline for final dates, and I believe that either Riverside or Irvine, I just a message about this, I had extended January. There is a lot of sort of confusion about what that would entail. If this right is over and we all go back, we then have to make sure that stuff is back there. It seems like some faculty have either insolidarity or in desperation, decided to move the final exam, change the format of those exams. We are, I think, that group, the most afraid of the university, well, and some sort of emergency, because the party doesn't care what everybody gets passed on. It would theory weaken the union's power, but we're also weakened universities. We require those grades to progress higher college education, and they're like, it would be a huge flow for them to receive not a letter paid. Yeah, just a P. Yeah, that would be a massive step for university to take and undermining their own status, and the well-being of their students. If you have a required class or a required grade in a certain class to progress to graduate school, or to breast to a vocational degree, then that would make it, they could have long-term implications for those students. Yeah, that would be a big step for them. So, I suppose, yeah, that's interesting. If they extend it, would you have required to go back and redo that's a huge amount of labor that you would then be doing in a very compact amount of time to grade 3MOW assignments is an endurance challenge. Grades had normally due in mid-December, right? Is that still the case at UCSD right now? This is week 10. Yeah, the clock is ticking. So, how does the strike look if you go past week 10, right? If you go not just in terms of withholding grades, but obviously campus is very different when the undergrad aren't there. We have discussions about whether or not we're in it for the long haul. We are, I think, at the moment we're hedging our bets on the next two weeks being in some ways decisive. There is a action, a certain action that once finals are over, our power dramatically begins. Certainly, if the UCSD decide to provide us the rating for this, it seems like that would be a half an hour. I'm not convinced that they would do that. I do the longer that we would hold those rates. I don't think the UC will just throw up their hands. We'll begin to final and say, oh, well, it's right off. See you next quarter. Yeah, yeah. I think we have been about trying to hold you out. I'd love to know, like, to close out what you've learned through the three in a bit weeks you've been on strike and what you think people should take from this. It's an unprecedented era for workers organization in the last 20, 30 years. We've seen more strikes in the last few years and we haven't decades. So what can people learn from the UC experience? You guys have, so, Luke, one of the things that I have learned, which is very salient, in my mind, as somebody who started organizing about three or four months before the strike, I was approached to be a strike captain, and I think we were able to various trainings. I sat in on campus organizing for the meeting. And the issue that we were given kind of before the strike began was that we had an incredible amount of power. The strike ratification boat where we wore the three quarters of the Patrick students boated over well in the 98 percentile to the strike. We all went in with a very powerful sense of the historic nature of the strike and our our bargaining power and our solidarity. That seemed to be driven by any of the union leadership as a finite resource, as something that we want to let's pull the trigger on, set the workers out, pulled through our smart resolution, and if we didn't get it, then worked to wrap it up as quickly as we can. I'm sure that I'm giving them short shrifts. This is probably ultimately unbearable, because very much the percentage, you're extremely that the business is sustainable, that we are reaching our peak power, and that now is the time to start pivoting to make these concessions. And we're all kind of saying that the organizing doesn't stop when you walk out, the organizing begins when you walk out. And for people like me who at some knowledge, I've experienced in organizing, I've been talking by who I consider myself very well at your big medical, but just at the fact of getting on the pick of mind, experiencing a day that I'm awking to my fellow workers across campuses, across pick of minds, has been energizing and radicalizing all on its own. I don't think that the union leadership really knew what to do with that amount of leverage yet. It was just where it fishes, and horses, or whatever. I think that a lot of people with the arch-ampist leadership ought to have done a better job with the day-to-day energizing. One issue that I can't blame specifically on the specific bargaining unit, or even the UWAW to inspire, but the UWAW comes from above, is that if you do not pick it, you do not actively sign up for pick of shifts that you can get up this water around, you do not get strengthened. And for a lot of us who have accessibility needs or are not opposed to campus, or are unfolding their labor in active and distracted, in other ways, they do a life there's not really a place for them. And they're doing equally crucial work. Yes, it's good to have people pick it. And that disability, ultimately if there were two people picking, and everybody else was withholding their labor, we would still win the strike. So there seems to be a overvolving emphasis on the visible symbol of our power and our solidarity. And the concession that was made in day four was explained by the dwindling amount of people who were showing up for pickets, you know, from day one to two to three to four. And a lot of us tried to push back on that. So yes, you know, it's hard to sustain that physical presence. But we should also working to bolster and encourage and harness the power of those workers who can pick it every day, but have never less doing a crucial labor stopper. Yeah, is there still a remote-picking option to say account? Yes, yes, there is. And any organization that's funded by massive workers, their fees to growing pains, minor issues in the first week of doing willing remote coordinators with separate lists that result. And they seem to have been resolved by now, same thing with some delays in a process thing, strike pay, account disbursements. Again, there's no shading this happening. There's thousands of workers doing this for the first time. But for people who are, you know, sort of on the fence or I can't really afford to disengage that one's a real big stressor for them. And if they're willing to kind of be out there every day. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, it's already a stressful time. But don't you say these things will have people will learn in the process, right? Like it's new for so many people. It's unprecedented to have like 10% of the graduate students in the country withholding their labor. And so like they will of course be growing pains. And I think often when we look at strikes, like both you and me as historians and as consumers of the news, we like, we see one photo of a bunch of people like in high viz standing around a brazier and then three weeks later we read another story about a resolution contract, right? And in fact, what makes a strike powerful is feeding people and being showing up and looking out for one another. So like that's what we're trying to document. Thanks so much, Matt. And I wonder where people can find, if you'd like to give your own social media or where people can find strike updates from the UC and from UC San Diego, anything like that, you want to plug? Yes, I partisan in this, but I would highly recommend not getting strike updates from the UC San Diego. And you're so here from the campus, not from the university here. So fair, you see now dot on or dot the word. Yeah, I think it's still I think it's an org. On the ground. Yeah. I've been dealing with documents too much. I'm not going to be placed on Twitter. There's also been very despite all of its current information. Can you tell us to then know where people can like help in the true Spanish historian fashion feed everyone? Have you got a giant pie out there? Are you like with the spade? So I will clarify, this is a, this is a fun official. Yeah, this is not the UAW world wide and the, but the, the figures on the UCSK campus have been organizing eating the frowns of the blinds. I don't know is at the UCSK-Strike-Fund. Nice. Yeah, easy to remember. Hopefully you got some donations. Thanks to him, sure time Matt. I appreciate it. 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 from Cool Zone media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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