Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 170

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.  Coffee Unions Spread to Peet's Defining Anarchism feat. Andrew Mutuality feat. Andrew Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #4 You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone  Sources/Links: Coffee Unions Spread to Peet's https://linktr.ee/peetslaborunion https://peetslaborunion.org @peetslaborunion https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLR6ZV4VZRBPT/checkout/2KLSQDHYHY7D3GNP7YUX62CD Defining Anarchism feat. Andrew https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/david-graeber-on-acting-like-an-anarchist/https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/glossary/a-new-glossary/ Mutuality feat. Andrew Debt by David Graeber: https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/glossary/a-new-glossary/ Antinomies of Democracy by Shawn Wilbur: https://humaniterations.net/2016/12/28/the-distinct-radicalism-of-anarchism/ Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #4 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/world/americas/trump-migrant-deportation-panama.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishing-the-presidents-make-america-healthy-again-commission/ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/18/kennedy-lays-out-hhs-plan-00204675 https://newrepublic.com/post/191630/donald-trump-tom-homan-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-immigration https://popular.info/p/in-botched-dei-purge-osha-trashes?r=4v4dm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web  https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-list-officials-resigned-fired-musk-trump-federal-government-2025-2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/17/doge-social-security-musk/  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fired-officials-bird-flu-rehire-rcna192716 https://www.theverge.com/news/614078/faa-air-traffic-control-spacex-elon-musk-layoff-staff-shortage https://apnews.com/article/rubio-plane-mechanical-issue-munich-conference-031928b920ff8e8d495d1590d508e1e5 https://x.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1892086856990237059 https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-auto-tariff-rate-will-be-around-25-2025-02-18/ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/18/trump-order-power-independent-agencies-00204798 https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302481/trump-independent-agenciesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York,

since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. 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. Welcome to Dick Adapid here,

a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. I'm your host, Mia Wong. As the new regime settles in, we face a struggle on a thousand fronts. It's bewildering. It's terrifying. It's an offensive design to overwhelm us with the sheer totality of the horror.

But its diversity is also our greatest advantage, because every struggle on every front brings us closer to victory. And that allows us, and it allows you, to pick a field and hold it. One of the most important friends in the years to come is labor. Much of what is to come

will be decided on the shop floor. And today, we're talking about that. And with me to talk about that is fellow worker, Gino, and IWWP's union organizer in Berkeley and fellow worker Cole, who's a IWPT's union organizer in Portland,

and both of you to welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Hello, thank you for having me on. Yeah, me too. I'm excited to talk to you both. So this is a Pete's coffee union. We have talked to several other unions, but this was kind of personal to me because this is one of the sort of coffee things that my dad kind of grew up on and I'm now here to deliver wrath against them for their many crimes. So, yeah, let's start off with, can you talk a bit about how these unions came together and what the sort of like beginning process of this organizing look like?

Yeah, so the first store that organized actually was in Davis, California. They organized, I think, in 2022, they launched their public campaign at the end in winter, and then they voted for their election back in January, 2023. That's around the same time period where a lot of media was writing about their unionization process. And a couple of the Bay Area stores heard about it and started to meet together. And that's kind of where we started. We weren't IWW at the start, but we eventually started meeting with unions and chose IWWW. Hell yeah. So it was an independent thing that became an IWW. Yeah, when we joined the IWW, we were basically fully organized to the extent that we were going to be. We already had our committee set up. We had our meetings regularly. We had like Roberts rules and everything already implemented. That's so cool. You want to talk a little bit about like what the sort of process of doing that initial organizing before you went to the unions look like, how everything sort of came together? Yeah, when we started organizing, it was very secretive and it was a little bit scary at the time because there was a lot of already kind of union busting from management.

There was a lot of managers kind of like trying to overhear people were talking about the union or already instigating themselves and asking like, what do you think about unions? And it was a little bit scary to try to just like go up to coworkers and be like, hey, like, are you interested in, you know, hanging out after work and, you know, talking shit about our like manager or something like that. And over time, we eventually started doing like one-on-one conversations with our coworkers and meeting together. Once we had our three stores that really were solidified, we had at least one person in each store that was like willing to like drive the campaign forward for moms and maybe even years. As some of us have been around for that long now, we felt ready to kind of like start setting things into stone. So we had like meetings every single week and we had biweekly meetings at some point. we had committee meetings and people started to kind of select themselves into like social media or we had outreach we had intake so other stores were also reaching out to us because there was like just

secret kind of like people knew what was happening people didn't want to say it out loud yeah so it was just a lot of like hanging out having socials and things like that that kind of like created the foundations for like personal relationships for organizing and at the time it was mostly just us complaining for a really long time until we were like, what if you did something about this? Yeah, one thing I'm curious about is like how large roughly are these shops? There tends to be about 12 to 16 workers at each shop. So I think the biggest union shop that we have has 16 workers in it. The shop that I work at is fairly small. We only have 12 workers right now. So fairly small. And I will say,

say, just to give some context for the organizing process from my shop as well, Pete's did not make it difficult to organize in terms of like the policies that they were pushing. Yeah. Everyone was pissed off about how we were being treated. And so just sort of pushing people in one-on-one conversations to look for solutions rather than just bitching about it, which is great. that's where it all starts, right? Pieces pushing poor policies,

they're cutting hours. That's one of the biggest thing. They're slicing our hours week after week, even as the volume of sales goes up. And so just being like, hey, do you want more hours? Like, do you feel like it's fair for us to be staffed this way?

Let's try to do something about it. Yeah, and the staffing issues, this is one of the things we're talking to, I mean, just people across sectors, it's really one of the, it's one of the things it's the most obvious if you're working one of these jobs and also somehow it's not something that ever gets talked about in the mainstream at all. Like it's never a part of the discourse that

you know, you don't have a set number of hours that you're going to work. You don't know when you're going to work them. And also, you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to get to work enough hours to actually survive. And then also the entire condition of labor, like every sector is just chronic, it's just chronic under-scheduling and chronic understaffing of everything. And that ranges from like coffee shops to like hospitals to schools to like everyone has decided that the way that you manage things is by chronically overworking everyone and trying to pay people as little as possible by not giving them hours. Do you talk a little bit more about the kind of the actual effects of the understaffing and

how that sort of drove people into the campaign? Yeah, I would be more than happy to. I mean, one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats. So when I first started working at the shop, it was around two years ago. They had just recently introduced DoorDash. So previously, you know, obviously it started. It was just a cafe. People would come in and get their coffee. Later on, they ended up introducing Mobile. orders through Pete's own ordering system. And then when the pandemic hit initially and everything locked down, they started doing DoorDash to try to continue having a revenue stream. Now, after more things started opening up, they opened the shop up again. Obviously, they continued to have DoorDash because it brings in a lot of revenue for them. Yeah. And then without really any forewarning and certainly without any increase in staffing for us, they introduced Uber Eats, which is a similar amount of volume increase, a similar amount of orders

increase as DoorDash. Like, we're probably getting at peak, like 30, 40 drinks per hour in addition to what we're getting in store from DoorDash and Uber Eats. That's a drink every, like, sub two minutes. Yeah. Jesus. And we are expected to crank these out at less than three minutes in order. And that's per order. So an order might have like five drinks, if it's Door to Hach or Uber Eats, where in particular, people will order a lot of things at a time. Yeah. Because it seems like using these sort of apps and stuff, people will order much more egregious things, much larger orders than they do when they're in store. And so everyone's really annoyed about this, just like, okay, all of a sudden we have all this extra work to do, they're not increasing our

hours at all. Yeah, you're not getting paid more either. Oh, certainly not. And we don't get tips from that either. Oh, Jesus. Wait, you don't get tips from it? No, no. I mean, like...

Wait, oh, the tips all go to the drivers. Jesus Christ! Which I won't... Like, that's not a bad thing necessarily the drivers should get tips. But you should get paid too, yeah. But it's like Uber who's taking the vast majority of the money from that. And peace. And so us and the drivers are both getting screwed over by this.

Yeah. but we both have to do all the sex-strainius work. So people were super fucking irritated about that, myself included, for sure, and that really got people going with like, okay, what are we going to do about this? How can we try to push them to staff us better? Yeah, and it seems like the incentive structures

for these delivery services add up really badly in terms of the way that incentives people to order because, you know, you have these like minimums on the amount of like stuff you have to order to get below, like, there's all these, you know, all those,

like, threshold stuff of like, if you do this, you get free delivery, you spend this much, you get blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. And so that, yeah, it seems like this sort of perfect mailstrom for producing even more work. Yeah,

and I will say this, is that they like to push out promotions to people of like, buy one, get one free, that sort of thing for,

like, our Pete's location, constantly, and they, they never tell us about it, So, you know, one day we'll just be getting like five large mochas in like six different orders and we're like, why are we getting five large mochas in all of these orders? And someone pulls up the DoorDash app and they're like, oh, it's because there's like a half off if you get more than four mochas or, you know, something like that. It's just like we never hear about this until it's actually happening.

Yeah. And that's the case both for DoorDash Newberites, but also for just like internal Pete's promotions. Like we tend not to hear about any of these things until we are on the shop floor working and people are asking us about it. Customers are asking us about it. Yeah, it seems like the way that the integration of these apps into these business models

is working is just every single thing they do just compounds the amount of work you have to do and compounds how awful the experience is. And speaking about how awful the experiences, unfortunately, we are a podcast sponsored by ads So go experience them or don't. I don't know. If you have Apple, there's a, there's a thing you can get called Coolers out and Media where you don't have ads.

The Android one, I don't even know what I'm legally allowed to say about that shit, but oh my God, it is the biggest legal cluster fuck I've ever seen in my entire life. We're going to leave it up there, but we're trying. We're doing our best. We are so back. Yeah, so let's go into their other of their married crimes. Oh, man, where do I even start? Pete's the second they found out that we were organizing launched like their worst union-busting campaign they could have ever imagined, wasting so much money.

Oh, God. Right after we went public, the first big thing that they messed up on was they took me off the schedule indefinitely and we had to like file a whole unfair labor practice about it. An unfair labor practice is a charge with the National Labor Relations Board and we claimed that they were being retaliatory. And at the time, it was very clear that management thought I was a key organizer. I was very public and vocal about being a union member at the time everyone was. But for some reason, they singled me out.

That was one part of how they messed up, but they eventually put me back on the schedule. Apologize, gave me back pay. And we withdrew the ULP because we were like, all right, I guess it fix itself. Yeah, that's the thing that happens, by the way, like, if you're submitting an unfair labor practice, and the company resolves it. You don't actually have to, and this is actually one of the things about UOP sometimes, is that, like, neither you nor your employer

wants to go sit in front of the National Labor Relations Board and, like, do a whole thing. So, like, sometimes you can get them to resolve it just by, like, just by the threat of it, and then you don't actually have to go sit in front the National Labor Relations Board because they've done the thing they were supposed to do. So note for all you people out there

who are considering filing one of these. Yeah, no, just stack them up. and sometimes that's enough to put pressure, especially for smaller businesses or people who just, especially corporations that don't necessarily have experience with union investing quite yet. Yeah, so at the time, that worked. And within a week, I had my job back and everything. And that was right after we had filed, which meant that if for some reason I wasn't put back on the schedule, I would have been gone leading up until the election, which would have been

really bad in terms of having those one-on-ones with coworkers and making sure everyone was connected. I also just want to mention here. It is illegal to fire someone for union organizing. Like, it's not the most easily enforced thing, but they legally cannot do that. So just note for all the people who are listening to Unity episodes for the first time, they can't do that. And if they do it, you can launch campaigns and you can sort of force them to do it. But yeah, this is the Mia Labran note of the episode.

Yeah, no, and I think especially something that's very IWW of how we reacted to that situation, was that my co-workers were also just like being really like annoying to the manager being like, what happened to Dino? Hell yeah. Why aren't they at work? Like, what's going on? And I think that internal pressure also made it really uncomfortable for management to realize how much they had fucked up and how much my coworkers were willing to have my back.

There was definitely more talk of like actual direct action in other ways that eventually like we actually didn't do because I got my my hours back. So that was really good. Yeah. And then, yeah, so that was still within the first few weeks of when we filed our paperwork to have an election with the NLRB to be a certified shop according to the government. Not that that's always important, but that's something that we wanted. Especially as the fucking Trump regime unfolds. Yeah. Yeah, no. It's a really tough position, especially because, I mean, we're IWW members, and I know that there's definitely an internal debate of whether or not, you know, contractual agreement.

versus direct action. But there's always the option to choose to both, a combination, diversify our tactics. But yeah, so that happened. They also hired a union buster. Of course they did. Now, according to L.M reports from the government that they have to file,

they spent over $100,000 in like a span of like two weeks to hire this union investor. Jesus Christ. And... What's an LM report, by the way? It's like a report that you file with the, I think, forgetting which department it is, but... Is it the OLM?

The Office of Labor and Management? Thank you. Yeah. So they are required to file that by, I think, March 30th of the following year for like fiscal reasons. So we finally got those documents this previous year. So they did spend a lot of money. And this guy who was just basically messing with us for like two weeks and he was, you know, trying to be super helpful, answer any questions about the union and, like, tell people that the union was, you know, like, racist, not for them, or that the union was exclusionary or that unions cost a lot of money.

And thankfully, that didn't work. We won all of our elections. But leading up to that, it definitely kind of morale dropped a lot. People felt a little bit, they were questioning whether or not it was the right decision we made to unionize in the first place, because it's, seemed like this was just the start of Pete's just messing with us because they can. And it didn't seem like there was much that we could have done in that

situation other than try to maybe have fun with the union buster and mess with him. But even then that still wasn't like enough to turn out the fact that like people were just being messed with at work and they couldn't literally leave. Like there was someone like on the floor asking them questions

about their, you know, activity with the union. And even though now we know it's like illegal and we could have filed unfair labor practices on that at the time we just didn't do it and now we're learning about it but that's something I definitely wish we knew and stood up for a little bit more yeah did you tell a little bit about what the specific thing was so that if people are like experiencing it themselves they can know what what they can do yeah so management shouldn't be asking for your um like affiliation within like a union they're not allowed to ask or make assumptions about it so like if i'm a manager

I'm not allowed to go up to me and be like, hey, Dino, like, since you're in a union, like, what is the union doing about X, Y, and Z? Like, that's not an appropriate question. And there's definitely times where, like, my own manager asked me questions like that. And I definitely had to, like, hey, like, this is actually, like, not appropriate for you to do. Like, I don't feel comfortable with this. But that's not always the case. And some workers definitely were, like, disclosing private and confidential information about the union to management.

and it was really hard to make sure that every worker felt comfortable. And they definitely picked out workers based on, you know, like social personalities and things like that, which is really disheartening to see. Yeah. It's really scummy. And I think morale is a terrain of struggle. And that's one of the things here, too, where it's like a lot of these efforts are just attempts to make everyone in a workplace miserable. And attempt to make people sort of too depressed and too despondent to sort of organize.

And a lot of that, yeah, again, is like stuff you can organize against and stuff that, like, they're not allowed to do, and whether or not they're going to be able to do it is a function of labor regulation and labor law is not something that's enforced by the government, it's something that's enforced by you, and it's enforced by the people around you. And so, you know, like the law can sometimes help and sometimes dozens. It's useful to cite the management. It's useful because it makes them think that there's like the full power of the state behind you or whatever.

But like in terms of how you deal with this stuff, it is something that is enforced by you, by how organized you are and by how organized your shop floor is and about how how organized your community is. And that's something that's, I think, important for people to understand when you're forming your own unions, which you should also go do because you can just do it.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Like, the people who organize unions are just regular people. Like you, person, dear listener. So you can do this too. What do they say? It's like a union is just two workers talking to each other.

Yeah. And yeah, just to expand on that point a little bit, like the NLRB is, quite understaffed and it will be more understaffed almost certainly as the Trump administration gets deeper into gutting the entirety of the government. It already takes

months, two years to get unfair labor practice, filings resolved for the NLRB to do most things. So that is a core tenant of the IWW is actually taking action on the shop floor. Yeah. Like, that is the key aspect to unionism as a whole.

And I think one of the great parts about the IWW is that it actually acknowledges that that the power comes from the workers. It doesn't come from laws. The laws only came because workers were pushing for things on the shop floor in the first place. So it's like, let's get back to the root of that. Yeah, like the NLRB, we've talked about this on the show before, but the National Labor Relations Act, I think I'd establish

National Labor Relations Board. Like, that, that was part of effectively, like, a truce that was enforced by the government, because as a way to have, like, labor unions stop being armed and stopped getting into shootouts with bosses. So, yeah, it is, as this framework comes apart, it is important to remember, like, why we had this

in the first place, which was, union militias would occasionally start, like, small-scale civil wars in the U.S. with bosses over stuff. people would shoot cannons at each other. We're sort of distant from that period. But there's also another thing about direct action, which is that, yeah, it's hard to organize,

but also, like, quite frankly, with the way that the NLRB is functioning right now, like the time to organize that, A, makes a union better, and B, is going to be faster than the NLRB right now. So, yeah, yeah, this is, this is your practical. We have your ideological pitch. We have your practical pitch for direct action,

which is that it's quick. Unfortunately, the other thing that's, quick is the approach of this ad break. Here's ads. We are back. So let's talk about sort of what's happening right now with the union, how things are going, and what management has been doing. Yeah.

So right now, I mean, we're dealing with a lot of the same issues as we have been dealing with. The staffing issue is only continuing to be worse, right? one of the things that we're trying to get initially is schedules further out right now we get them two weeks out more consistent scheduling more scheduling obviously better wages better benefits you know all of these sort of things and those are only continuing to get worse and so we are continuing to try to think about tactics strategies to counter that right to give us more power so we're both doing direct actions and trying to push for a contract right now. Now, one of the big difficulties

is that Pete's basically hired this law firm to do the contract negotiations on their behalf. And the law firm is basically stonewalling us. Like, they are responding to the emails, but basically by just kicking the can down the road. Yep, yep, yep. And trying to not actually come to the bargaining table. And so it's this very frustrating thing of like, how do we actually get them to come to the bargaining table? And that's definitely still something that we're wrestling with and that we're working on.

Yeah, I don't know if you have any more to add to that, do you know? Yeah, no, I think another thing that's kind of on everyone's mind is that a group of us got written up for another direct action that we did back in October. And then we got ridden up like the week of Thanksgiving and holidays and finals for most of us that were students. So that kind of just dropped morale and activity. And because of the holidays, people were either kind of not paying attention or just organizing activity tends to just drop during no holidays. People are just a little bit. Yeah. People check out. People check out. People go home. And especially for like us and like food service retail, like a lot of people are

kind of just like around for school. So my location, we're like a few blocks away from UC Berkeley. So most of the students like go home and they're not going to like log into Zoom for a 30 minute union meeting and like hear what's like, you know, the most recent like check-ins that we need to do. So that is a little bit frustrating that Pete's definitely wrote us up right at the perfect time that where activity kind of drops. Yeah. So they're adapting. They're learning a little bit more. And it's kind of, it's really frustrating.

But yeah, no, a group of us, including me, got ridden up for something. And it was just a blanket discipline. And it started restricting all of our abilities to, like, cover shifts, to swap shifts, to pick up hours, to call out. And they restrict everything so badly. And then our also, like, final warnings. And there's no, like, period in which all these made-up rules that they're making kind of end. I'm just, like, waiting to hear. when my manager decides to like stop punishing me,

which is like obviously very personal. Yeah. And that's like really worrisome because we tried to file a grievance with Pets according to what they told us. All our district managers were like, yeah, file a grievance with HR. We'll discuss it there. And then we did that. We filed a grievance.

We all signed on. And then management turned around and was like, actually you haven't bargained for a grievance procedure. So we actually don't care about this. And unless it's legally mandated, we won't listen to you. So now we're again stuck between like, we want to bargain, we want to go to the table, we want to meet with Peds, but they are creating these made up rules on how they want to bargain and meet with us and they're unwilling to cooperate with us. There's like five public shops and they're like not willing to meet with us at the same time. That actually makes no sense. We have like the same bargaining team members for all our shops. We're in the one big union. It doesn't make any sense that they're trying to, I mean, it makes. It makes it. It makes. perfect sense for management to try to divide us, but it's what the workers want to be in one contract, to, you know, be able to do like one grievance and like, you know, go against management together.

But yeah, it's like a really annoying thing. And it's really frustrating to not really know exactly what our next move is. I mean, this is something that I think both union organizers and management knows, which is that the first place that unions fail is trying to get the vote, trying to get to, which is trying to get enough people organized around this sort of campaign. So the second place that fail is before the first contract, or trying to negotiate the first contract. And so every company just, like, tries to draw the shit out as long as humanly possible.

Like, it took us, God, I think, what, two years in bargaining? And that's, like, not even that. Like, for a first contract, I mean, that's, like, bad, but it's not even as bad as it can get. And there's the other aspect of it, too, that you've been talking about, which is that the way that companies break union is just terror.

Right? It's just a terror campaign. It is a campaign to inflict sort of fear and suffering on people. And the fact that this is the way that the system works, that, you know, there are a bunch of people in power who are, through the way that they're attempting to keep their power is just through fear and through, like, inflicting pain on people is just ghastly. And if you want to sort of take a step back and go, like, why is everything like this?

It's like, well, that's because that's what this entire system is built on. has always been built on. Yeah, and I think in terms of countering that, one thing that I definitely want to call for from all of my fellow baristas out there is to organize your own shops, right? Like, that is the key thing. The more people that we have pushing for better rights for workers in the workplace, whether that's through a contract or not, the more effective. it's going to be. And it's when we feel alone and isolated that their terror is most effective. It's when we're together that it is the least effective, that they are the most scared by our tactics. So just keep pushing for it. I mean, I think that's one of the things that the Starbucks campaign has

showed us, you know? They still don't have their first contract, sure, but they're so much closer now, like over, what is it, like almost three years down the road with over 500 shops organized than they were when those first shops organized in Buffalo. And that's due to that persistence and due to having more weight on our side. So please, organize, do it. That's just my little call for that. Yeah, it's a snowball rolling down the hills. Like the more, the more shops organized, the more that will convince other shops to organize. And the larger that snowball is, the harder it is to stop its momentum. But what do you think the next steps are going to be for this campaign?

If you can actually talk about it in terms of like putting pressure on the company, in terms of like drawing other people in terms of like what's going on in the shops. Yeah, I think one of the main things that we think that we've been really quiet about is how much union investing they've been doing and just talking to the public about that. I think part of why we're here today also, is it's going to help with that. A lot of people, especially when people were calling for boycotts on Starbucks, were like, okay, we'll go to Pete's then. They're like the good company. And I think Pete's gets away with a lot because they have that kind of protection of like,

oh, they were a small company from Berkeley and they're, you know, still in the Bay Area. They're so small. Now they have like so many shops like across the world. They're like an international conglomerate. They're part of like a large holding company. And they got. bought out like over 10 years ago and the quality has been declining. They treat their workers like shit. We don't get any raises anymore unless it's like minimum wage increases are mandated by law. So a company that maybe was right and was maybe a little bit better is now like just going downhill. And I think people still like pride themselves and being like a peatnik and being a customer and being part of this weird subculture of coffee

that is no longer kind of, there's just like, it's just not what it was back when it was created like in the 60s in Berkeley. It's not the same and it can't go back to that anymore. Just now with the way that they're union-busting, now with the way that they're just cutting the quality of everything and over, like, yeah, everything, the exploitation of us and in other ways that they do, it's just not sustainable.

Yeah. You can see that it's not the same company by just like, oh, yeah, hey, they've, you know, I mean, and this is, this is not a defense of, like, small businesses, which also do just absolutely terrible shit to workers. Like, if you ever worked for one, like, good lord. But, you know, like, as, as these companies get larger and larger and as, as this sort of, the endless march of capital goes on, you know, you like, you see the current, like, nightmare of, oh, hey, here's, like, an additional 50% of your workload and also you don't get tips on it. and you know unless this stuff is rolled back and unless people understand what's happening unless it's more organizing like that's just the latest terrible thing that's going to happen. They're like five years down the line

they're going to have invented a new app that like does something the magnitude of the horror of which we haven't even like comprehended yet like I don't know we're probably two years out from like the Chinese style thing where you could order a coffee on a train and someone has to go run out to the train platform

to the next station to hand it to you on the train, like there are depths of even this algorithmic hell that we haven't hit yet. And the only way for us not to continue to plunge the depths of suffering with a line the size of the universe is by organizing more. And by getting people to understand

that all of these sort of progressive brands are a thin veneer for exploitation and suffering. Absolutely. And honestly, one of the legitimate work that we have about next steps and the evolution of what Pete's coffee shops are going to look like is the register folks being replaced with kiosks, you know, like self-service kiosks. I mean, that's something that we've seen, you know, in a number of places from grocery stores to like McDonald's now and Dunkin' Donuts.

They're even rolling out some like beta testing kiosk shops for Pete's in the Bay. area. And pizzas introduced this new service deployment system within the shops, which basically pins the person on the register to the register, where they're not allowed to do anything else. They're not even allowed to turn around and get coffee for the people. And, you know, the more that we do this and the more that we get yelled at by our managers for literally trying to help a customer and get them something because we're, you know, deployed to the register, the clearer it becomes that they're just trying to basically make that position obsolete so that they can shift it into a kiosk. Yeah, it's just more corporate cost cutting because, you know,

if they're not bringing in any more revenue, they got to make that profit line go up somehow, right? And so, yeah, one of the big things that we're doing right now to try to push back against that is doing this sort of PR campaign to try to, just bring more people into the organizing effort on the worker side of things and on the customer side of things, just making people more aware of what's actually going on here. And that, you know, we're not actually better than Starbucks. Yeah. You know, we're not the better option.

We're part of a massive conglomerate that is practicing the same horrible anti-labor business practices as the rest of them. Yeah, I think that's a good place to end. And if people want to support y'all, where should they go? We'll also have links to stuff and what other things can they do to help? Yeah. So you can go to our social media at Pete's Labor Union. We also have our website.

We have an intake form. So if any barista is interested in reaching out, learning more about organizing what that entails. And if you want to organize their own shop, we have members, part of our organizing committees that are willing to meet with you, sustain. Hell yeah. contact through however long you need for your campaign and you'll be part of our organizing. We have shops across the country

organizing with us. It's very exciting. I'm sure there might be a shop near you already organizing and we can get y'all connected as well. Oh yeah. And Jesus Christ, I had a terrible based coffee people of the world unite pun thing, but it's slit from my mind. All right, all of you will be spared by terrible coffee-related puns as long as you go organize your fucking workplace.

So go do that, go join the struggle, go make it stronger. And I don't know, like, there's going to be a number of you for whom this is, like, not your terrain, right? And if this isn't your terrain, find it. Find the struggle that you were going to do and wage it there and take your field and hold it. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here because it could. My name is Andrew Sage and I'm also Andrewism on YouTube. And at time of recording, the year is still technically new. So I wanted to start it off with some refreshes on anarchism.

In the first episode, we'll look at the meanings of anarchism, authority, and anarchy, and the next time we'll look at free association, mutual aid, and the role of solidarity. And don't worry, next month I'll be getting back into the Latin American anarchism series, as I still haven't done Uruguay and Mexico yet. Oh, by the way, I'm not talking to myself. I'm here with the one and only... Via Wong. Oh, I keep forgetting that you do a...

an actual throw instead of actually saying the name. Not to worry. Only been doing this for several hundred episodes now. You'd think, you'd think, but no. You got it. You got it. Hello, I'm excited to do this. Also excited for the Mexico episodes because Mexican anarchism is a trip.

Eriguan anarchism is also a whole lot of people digging tunnels out of prisons. But we'll get to that later. We will. We will. So I was to start off with, I want to find out. And I ask this question with tongue in cheek, of course. How familiar, but you see you are with anarchism? You know, I have a very silly, like, kind of, like, how did I, like, actually finally become an anarchist?

Because I've been around anarchists for a long time. But, like, the thing that, like, actually convinced me to be an anarchist is I sat down and I got a bunch of, like, anarchist history books from a library and started reading them. like Marx Netlau and them those sorts of people are so specifically it was a lot of like Krups like Hadesuzo and Pure Anachism in Interwar Japan which I've talked about on the show at 100 billion times

stuff like that actually I think I read Capoletti's anarchism Latin America around that time too It's a very good resource Yeah yeah so pretty pretty familiar with With stuff But yeah we'll see we'll see I'm excited to talk about it

Yeah, I mean, we'll see us right because, let's see, I've been an anarchist, when I was supposed to introduce to anarchism, I would say somewhere around 2017, 2018, through Christian anarchism, actually. That was during my reconstruction, I stumbled upon Christian anarchism and briefly flated with it, but didn't really get seriously into the studying of anarchism until, like late 2019, early 2020, around the time, at least in 2020 is when I started by my channel. Let's say I've been studying anarchism. for about five years seriously,

I feel like I'm now getting started. You know, like I'm now starting to like grasp what it is. And the thing is, there's so many interpretations of anarchism, you know, so many different schools of thought. I mean, that's not to say that it can't be defined or that any attempts to define anarchism is like exclusionary or unanarchist. And I see that argument floating around that like, well, no, you can't define anarchism because that's actually authoritarian.

But, you know, there are such a thing as that. But there is room, of course, for a negotiation of meaning. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very, well, usually, it's a very syncretic ideology. It pulls from a lot of different places and it pulls from lots of different, of its own strands. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But let's say if you had to like define anarchism, like right now, like what would you say is a non-negotiable, basic, fundamental definition for you?

I mean, the opposition to hierarchy on a basic level, the opposition to the state, to capitalism, to patriarchy, to systems of hierarchical power is, I guess, like, the baseline definition and then also in terms of what it's, you know, the replacement for that can be a lot of things. But, yeah, it's the building of society where we don't have power over one another. I think it's like a very baseline kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's pretty solid.

For me, I find it fairly similarly. I would say that I think the opposition to authority is the most important part. You know, I would say definition I've been sort of workshopping, sculpting over time. And as a right, I really like to play with words a bit and find the best ways to put things. So for me, what I've come up with is that anarchism is the political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society. And so basically the rest of this episode is going to be me breaking down how I came to this

definition, what I'm expounded upon with this definition. So for one, just taking a look at the structure of it, we are looking at an oppositional stance and a propositional stance. And a propositional positional stance, opposing and proposing. You know, we're not just for the negation of all things, although there are schools of anarchism that do lean in that direction. We also, of course, we want to be constructive. We're not, as some people seem to presume, you know, obliterate in the state and then leaving warlords in their wake, you know?

Yeah, Bakuden sucks in a lot of ways, but the creative verge is a destructive one, has the order of events correctly. where like the point is to create something. Exactly. Exactly. And as you know, Buchanan is one of the earlier thinkers of anarchism.

Though I've never really been partial to him, you know? Yeah. Usually I've been more of a Krapartkin and Malatester kind of guy. But lately, as, you know, sort of problematic as he is as well, I haven't gotten into a bit more pruron. I recently got the pictures of Prudan Reader that Ian McKay put together for AK Press.

Extremely problematic guy. Oh, boy. Yeah, but he certainly wrote a lot. And so I want to dig through and see what gemstones of his work I can find, you know? Yeah. I think that's important to sift through. He's a mixed and baffling figure,

who also was a pretty large influence on Marx, if you like read him, even though Marx hates him, which is very funny. Marx also didn't always understand Ferdon's definition. Honestly, I don't think Vrudez necessarily always had like a very consistent application of his ideas. Hence the misogyny, despite being

an anarchist and becoming a politician of one point in his life and all that jazz. Yeah, and people may know this who listen to this show, but the term libertarian was invented by anarchists specifically to describe how they were different from for Don because they weren't sexist. Like, it's a whole thing. Actually wasn't aware of that. Yeah.

Yeah. That's why in most parts of the world, libertarian is like, is a term that means anarchist. It's just, it's mostly largely in the U.S. where that's not a thing because the right libertarians like took it. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the U.S.'s cultural hegemony has sort of. propagated that American version of the team as the popular one. But yeah, whether you're talking about anarchists or libertarians or mutualists,

you're all getting it from basically that same sort of original pool of late 19th century, early 20th century thinkers. And we're sort of using their sort of explorations to build something of a political philosophy. But in my definition, I call it a political philosophy, but that can be a contentious way of describing it, you know. Anti-politics is a term that's used to describe opposition to or distrust in traditional politics. A structural politics is usually associated with the art and science of government. So there are anarchists who would argue that anarchism is not a political philosophy.

It's actually an anti-political philosophy. I think these people are very... Okay, this is one of the things about being an anarchist, right? This is the thing about being a leftist. And it's something you have to be able to set aside when you have to be able to set aside when you have to do things. But a lot of being a leftist is being annoyed at other leftists

and I could put together an actual detailed theoretical critique of anti-politics, but mostly the people who talk by anti-politics just annoy me. It's like an affect thing. I feel you. I feel you.

To me it's like, it's when I like to pick up, look around that, you know, play with for a little bit, put it back down kind of thing. You know? I'm not committed to it.

But I think it's like, it's good to look at more than one ankle of definition and understanding. Yeah, I mean, of course, I suppose a critique that could be made of define anarchism as anti-politics is a sort of a narrowing of the definition of politics to just that sort of art and science of government

when politics can also be defined really broadly as just about the relationships between people and groups, which anarchism is concerned with, primarily so. But I do find it an interesting point to wrestle with. And so other than it being a political philosophy or anti-political philosophy, we could also define anarchism as a practice. This is something that I believe Graber did in his life. He saw anarchism. In one interview, he said, quote, it's possible to act like an anarchist, to behave in ways that will work without bureaucratic structures of coercion to enforce them, without calling yourself an anarchist or anything. In fact, most of us act like anarchists, even communists a lot of the time.

To be an anarchist, for me, is to that self-consciously, as a way of gradually bringing a world entirely based on those principles in to be end quote. So this is basically the idea that anarchism is actually something you think in your head. It's a method of change as something that you practice. It's something that, in fact, some anarchist don't even want to call themselves anarchists because they see anarchists about something that you do rather than something that you are. Yeah, that was with Graberlund. I think Ursula Quinn kind of had a similar relationship.

towards calling yourself an anarchist. Yeah, that's possible. That sounds very familiar. Yeah, I think, I think Alam was like she didn't feel like she could because you had to do it. But yeah, it's a pretty common way of thinking about anarchism that I like a lot. Yeah, for sure. Another part of the definition of anarchism that I put forward is the opposition to all authority. And that a statement could actually get me some pushback, getting some trouble with

some anarchists surprisingly. And I'm sorry, I blame Noam Chomsky. Oh my God. As a historian, as a linguist, okay, whatever, sure. But it was not historically controversial among anarchists to say that you were opposed

to all hierarchy and all authority. Yeah. The definitions of those terms do get confused often because, like a lot of words in English language, they do have multiple meanings. You know, you don't want to fall into the equivocation fallacy where you use a word word or phrase in one way and then you use it another way in the same argument. So someone might say,

for example, anarchism opposing authority is stupid because authority just means having a difference in expertise or a difference in influence or that hierarchy, opposition to hierarchy is stupid because, you know, food chains or, you know, a hierarchy of needs. But as I know, anarchists are focused on very specific things or we use these terms. So arguing against it with other definitions doesn't makes sense. And by hierarchy is anarchist, or fring, a stratification of society, which gives some individuals, groups, or institutions, authority or for others. An authority refuses to recognize right above others in a social relationship to give commands, to enforce obedience, to control property, to exploit, and so on. And I really don't see the benefit in Chomsky's sort of unjust

authorities or unjust hierarchies approach to define him. I feel so. Yeah, because, I mean, the thing about hierarchies is that every hierarchy argues it's just. Like, you would get slave owners, like, doing these whole speeches about, like, the inherent morality of slavery. Like, it's not actually a, it's not actually, like, an ethical position that leads you to, like, the opposition to hierarchy, because, again, every, every hierarchy is self-justifying. Exactly, which is why I say oppositions, all authorities and they're justifying dogma. because all of them have dogmas, including the example that Chomsky uses, which is typically of the parent pulling their child away from traffic.

That is not an exercise of authority, and the relationship between a parent and a child is something that can and should be interrogated. You know, that is a caretaking relationship primarily, a relationship of responsibility. It does not have to be a relationship of authority in the sense that I suppose. Yeah, and the way that it turns into a relationship of ownership, is something that genuinely can and should be opposed, but it's also something that, like, gets a lot harder to oppose

when you're sort of stuck up on this, like, well, actually, no, it's good because this is authority or whatever. So I think the way that Chomsky obfuscates this stuff makes it, like, harder to actually do politics that's useful. Exactly. Because that it also makes it hard off people to sort of question the authority they're more comfortable with,

or the hierarchies are more comfortable with. So you'll see that where so-called, like you say, oh, no, we don't actually oppose all hierarchies, you know, parents, like, and you really, you see it in ground in a sense, because you make it harder to identify and really question those things, because you're shutting down that avenue of questioning, you know? And so when we speak of authority, we're really speaking about that right, the rights, the rights, the authority, like, gives to certain people over other people, you know, privileges that are recognized and enforced, and a right being a sort of a priority that is above others.

You know, the right of authority is a guarantee to actions or resources that absorb the individual holding that right of consequences. The right of authority compels and support needs the desires and needs of those below that authority. So, you know, authorities have the right to command, recognized and enforced by their underlings. You know, They're the right to enforce the obedience of the endlings. They're the right to control all the properties the earth has been carved into. You know, the right absorbs them of certain consequences and sort of goes in one direction. It's a unilateral sort of thing.

So the authority can take your house. You know, the bank, the government, the landlord, they can take your house, but you can't take theirs. You know, an authority can assault you, or be a soldier, police officer, whatever. You cannot assault them. an authority. You can take the fruits of your labor. They can take from these, the wealth of what you produce,

but you can't take from them. That's theft, right? An authority cannot be an authority by themselves. They have to have authority over. They have to have a hierarchical social relationship that deprive some to their benefit. And anarchists oppose authority because, you know, among other reasons,

those subjects of authority become controlled, they become dependent, exploited, prevented from accessing their full potential and even their bare necessities. I read that prevented from accessing their full potential is why a lot of addicts have spent a lot of time targeting our approach to parenting and our approach to education. Just this morning I was reading a bit of Emma Goldman and she was talking about Ferrer's schools. The way that she speaks, honestly, she was an excellent writer, an excellent speaker, but the way that she did so and the way she approached and recognize this need to tap into

potential, particularly from young, to prevent it from being limited by the imposition of authority is just extremely profound. It's necessary. It's necessary to start particularly at that age, but really at any age to break away from that condition that recognizes and enforces and obeys and accepts authority and the right of authority. You know, if everybody, if everybody including their underlings, decided tomorrow not to recognize and enforce the authority of presidents, of kings, of capital.

list, that fright would be gone in an instant. Else when he starts with us being able to actually question, to challenge, to resist authority. And that's something that has existed since humans have been humans. Throughout history, we see this sort of compulsion to resist authority. And that sort of seed of resistance is what anarchist hope to have thresh. Fortunately, we have to go to ads disaster fiasco. principles in shambles. But here's ads.

We are back. So like I said before, authority gets confused with a lot of different things. Force and violence is a main one. It's one that Marxists in particular love. That's a conflation of authority with any use of force. You know, the slave resistance and slave owner

is actually an example of authority. Incredibly silly. People who are otherwise reasonably intelligent, we'll just say this stuff. It's like, really, what are we doing here? Just, come on. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, force and violence are associated with authority, and they can be a mechanism of defending authority, but they're not in and of themselves authority. They're not the source of authority. They don't constitute authority, and you could just as easily use them to resist authority. Yeah, I want to go back to the slavery thing specifically about authority, because

the argument that it's an imposition of authority for slaves to free themselves is an argument that was specifically made by the Southern Plantation class. Like, that was their arguments about federal tyranny was that specific argument. So it's probably not a good theoretical basis for understanding

what authority is. If you're making the same argument as the Southern Plantation class, it's going to just just get, it's going to leave the one out there. Exactly. Exactly. And really, we have to understand violence, force, are things that are used by authorities. But if I

punch somebody in the face, that doesn't make me an authority over them. You know, if I defend myself from being a punch, that doesn't make me an authority over the person trying to punish me. The source of authority is really about that right, that position, that recognized right above others, that position, that's social relationship above others. That's what Grant's authority. It's recognition. The general of an army is not an authority because he's holding a gun to the heads of all

the other soldiers and making them do things. The general is to be recognizing his authority because of his position and the privileges and rights and powers that that position gives him. If tomorrow all the soldiers decided to tune on their general as has happened historically, that is 100% possible. That is an instance of force or of violence being used to resist authority. Rather than being used to be authority. another thing that that gets confused with authority is influence or respect so influence is really something I mean I might find somebody's abilities or qualities or achievements admirable right so I respect that about that that doesn't mean they have an authority over me I might be inspired by someone in a way that

affects my character or development or behavior but again that doesn't that influence doesn't automatically translate into authority you'll find that a lot of the anarchists thinkers of the late 19th to the 20th century, they were very influential. They were not authorities, but they had a profound impact on the people around them. And they were profound inspiration to us even to today. Yeah, there's a paper I always think about where I found it like a kind of liberal, well, like maybe center-lefty academic writing about Malatessa, who we've talked about a lot on this show, because Italian anarchists did a whole bunch of stuff. So when the Italian revolutions are happening in

1980, 191919, like Balatessa comes back to Italy because he'd been all over the world doing a whole bunch other stuff.

And he gets called like Italy's Lenin. For those who have listened to some of my anarchist history episodes, you know, that he kind of shows up

sometimes. You know, like he shows up in Egypt. Literally everywhere. He shows up all over the place. Yeah,

all of Latin America. He's in the US. And, you know, and so he gets called like the Lenin of Italy. And this paper was about like,

was he actually, did he actually act like Lenin? And the conclusion that they came to you was like, well, no, he didn't try to, he didn't come back to Italy to attempt to seize control of the country. Like, he simply did not because he was an anarchist, because that's what it means to sort of, you know, have influence, but not, like, rule. Exactly. Exactly. And that really gets into sort of the interesting conversation around anarchism and leadership,

and the different ways that you can sort of interpret the concept of leadership. But I'll save that for another discussion. there are two other things that authority gets confused with that I want to address. The first is coordination. And what's interesting about coordination is that it's very much tied to authority a lot in the present day. You know, a lot of the rules we have in the current system, coordination authority get tied up together. So you have a manager of an enterprise and that manager coordinates all of the workers in that enterprise. But the manager also has authority over those workers, you know, to fire, to discipline, to do all resource.

of things. Or a general in an army might have a coordination role of ensuring that there's communication between various militias or, you know, various regiments and that the soldiers within that regiment know exactly what their, you know, their goal is, what their task is and how they can go about to accomplish it. It is in many ways a coordinating role, but it's also tied up with the authority of the general as in the right above the soldiers, you know, to command them, to enforce obedience, to punish, and that sort of thing. We get tied up between a coordination and authority a lot, but coordination does not have to be ties to authority.

In its simplest form, coordination can just be the communication of information between parties to ensure they work together smoothly and effectively. That can and already does take place between equals. Okay, here's a good example. You know, you're trying to move a couch into a house or an apartment. And for those of you who have had to squeeze a couch through a door, you kind of know what I'm talking about already because you have to kind of come at it at a certain angle.

You know, the size of a doorway and the dimensions of a couch require a very particular approach. So you might have somebody who stands to the side and they're telling a person, okay, all right, so you know, it's slightly in this way. Because when you're lifting a heavy couch, you kind of just want to put it down. You know, you can't really think, okay, what angle should I take it at?

So you might have somebody in a position to say, all right, back up, okay, come forward, okay, turn it slightly, to the left, that kind of thing. That's a coordinator role, but that person doesn't have authority over anybody there. It's just communicating information to ensure the shared task that the people involved have can be executed effectively. So that's a long way of saying that we can't have coordination and organization in anarchy. It doesn't have to be or doesn't have to involve authority. Finally, one of the pet favorites of confusion is the confusion between authority and expertise.

an authority and expertise is a real example of the equivocation I was talking about earlier because authority is a synonym for expertise by certain definitions. But the kind of authority to anarchist opposed has nothing to do with expertise, which is what

Bacchion was talking about with his authority, the bookmaker argument. Now, if I could go back in time, I would just go and tell Bikudin, listen, a lot of people are not going to read this in full and understand the full context. so maybe don't use the word authority here.

Maybe be more specific and use the word expertise or something so people don't get confused. Because I mean, raised in context, it becomes very clear. But there are people who take the title of that pill article, or they take one quote or one passage is taken out to context from the whole, or they take,

like, for example, there's a version of that article that is cut off from the entire thing, on Marxist.org, I think. So it's like an incomplete version of that text available on one page, and then the full version. available in the Anacus Library. Incredible.

See, there are people who basically use that, that article to argue that actually, you know, Vakian wasn't against authority, but in context, it makes sense what he's talking about authority there, he's specifically talking about expertise. And he still says that in the end,

he's not going to be commanded by that expert. He's just going to take their perspective into account because he understands the incompleteness of his own perspective. That is a very different relationship from the sort of commander and subordination that we see in an authoritarian relationship. And while expertise often gets conflated with authority in positions in the current system, that often is damaging to authority itself.

If you think of what the relationship people have, for example, with, and this is a sort of a contentious one, but even if the relationship people have with, like, their own, like, personal doctor, their family doctor, which is the relationship that they might have with a public health professional. When people go to their personal doctor, it's very easy for them to sort of, you know, accept that sort of expertise. They have a relationship with them.

They understand that. They trust them. What if the case would be? Of course, there are places where because healthcare is inaccessible, people don't have that relationship with a doctor, but, you know, I'm speaking internationally here. Yeah. Also, I need to put the trans note here, which is that, like, it is very hard if you're trans to find a doctor that you personally trust because, oh boy.

That is true. That is a time. That is true. That's the influence of, you know, cis heterarchy and its impact. Yeah, and so it's also an example of why you can't just sort of blindly accept the authority, like you can't accept the authority of people who have expertise because it's like sometimes they don't.

Exactly, exactly. Like a lot of times, in fact, the credentials don't actually mean that this person knows anything about trans health care. Like, fiasco. Exactly. It often just means that the person has been given the stamp of approval by an institution that has been granted authority. But the institution being granted authority

does not necessarily, or should not have a monopoly on expertise and often does not in practice have the full of the silent. The people who are produced by that institution do not necessarily have that full grasp and everything to see that, you know, they can be treated

as an unquestioned authority or expert. Yeah, and it's something that you have to have a kind of balance between what, you know, kind of like neoliberal like technocracy where you get like, we put the experts in charge and the quote unquote experts running the economy like did 2008. Or come on to like right wing think town.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll the other hand the kind of like reflexive contrarianism and desire to build a new expert that gets you like RFK Jr. as the future like secretary of health and human services. So, you know, you have to sort of like. Jesus. You have to sort of like balance between sometimes these people fuck up and also vaccines are good. this is not a problem that requires us to like fly through the pin of a needle.

We do have to have a little bit of, I don't know, it's not that difficult of a problem to deal with, but the way that authority is construed has created a sort of backlash to it, that has been used to sort of delegitimate genuine, useful expertise and create sort of like false expertise. Yeah. And that's exactly the point I was going to make to the institution of authority and the fact that authorities so frequently, you know, mess up and so frequently, like abuse the trust of people, increase the sense of mistrust, a rightful and valid mistrust in authorities that can often be misdirected or exploited towards ends that are not necessarily equivalent. So because these people in public health positions are tied up with

the government, people already don't trust. Any legitimate expertise that they may have gets soured essentially by that position of authority, poisoned by their association with a government that has clearly proven itself to not have the best interests of people in mind. All right, so just to get back to the definition again, anarchism is a political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule where self-determination, free association, and mutuality

formed the basis of our society. So, I mean, I've spoken a bit about that those justified dogmas came at Tomsky a little bit, and we spoke about how that's sort of incoherent because every ideology opposes unjust hierarchies. So I think it's important that anarchism calls out, you know, all the justifications.

I'm sure you could think of some of the main justifications that tend to be used. One of the oldest justifications is, of course, the divine rights of kings. Yeah. That one's mostly been broken. Hopefully, we don't have to deal with that shit anymore, but I, you know, I don't know.

I have eternal cynicism. I don't know, maybe the American people yearn for the Trump dynasty. Yeah, we're going to create their god king. Yeah, it's imperial presidency. But yeah, I mean, in more liberal circles, the justification for authority is usually the social contract theory that individuals implicitly consent to authority. But I don't know about you, Mia. Nobody asked for my consent. And also, I don't have any way of relinquishing my consent.

So is it really consensual? No. Like some fucking assholes in Philadelphia like 200 years ago we're like we're going to set up a thing and also slavery is good. That's like, really? What are we doing here? What in what meaningful way did I agree to this? Yeah, exactly. And it's not like I can step out to it. I mean, you hold a monopoly on literally every inch of territory on earth. Some state leaves, some claim to some part of the world. There's no escape. So it's not a contract you can opt out of. You know, another justification that authorities tend to use

this idea of meritocracy and economic Darwinism. That the best of the best, they rise to the top, that they're not really any systemic inequalities or structural barriers, that there is a survival to the fittest and the fittest win and the losers are losers. And they fail because they lose it. That's a very cynical sort of take

that I don't think many people openly espouse outside. of right-wing circles, but it's definitely one of the justifications for authority that gets used. Another one is also in conservative circles, the idea of natural hierarchy. The idea is that hierarchies are part of the natural order. You know, people will use evolutionary biology or rather just texts or pseudo-scientific claims to justify the inequality between genders or races or classes. Colonial and imperialist powers, for example, would justify their dominance by claiming cultural superiority. They would use ideas like the white man's burden and civilizing missions. to enforce their authority over other peoples and their lands.

And that justification, while questioned and challenged to be, still is at the basis at the root of almost every institution in our modern world. Yeah, and something I think is going to become increasingly visible in the US over the next few years, coming out of a period where it was like slightly more officicated. But, you know, all of the people who are about to be coming into power, if you spend even the tiniest amount of time

you will see them start talking about like fucking racial IQ shit and like all of this really pretty explicit ideology that they have that like of this sort of racial superiority that they think they have that's like a you know that is like the

motivating ideological factor and also the thing that you used to sort of justify their power yeah it's it's unfortunately becoming more and more open and common to see that sort of discourse on mainstream platforms like Twitter. The necessity of order and efficiency tends to also be used as a justification for authority. You know, the idea that authority is needed to maintain order, to keep things in place, to make decisions.

And this is really ignoring the capacity that people have already proven historically and presently to organize cooperatively, to organize without authority. to take on horizontal and decentralized approaches because it's something that is treating complexity as synonymous with hierarchy that you have to organize this way. It ignores all the inefficiencies of bureaucratic systems. It ignores all the harm caused by authoritarian systems that just says that, you know, we need these things to function,

but we don't. One of the weirder artifacts of the 2010s was David Graber had an argument with Peter Thiel. we're like, they like did a debate. And what a Grimber's arguments is like, well, what do you mean, like, our technical technological systems mean that we have to organize your society in a way? Like, like, is the argument that you're making that technological possibility makes us less free? It's like, no.

Ducks. Like, what are you talking about? And, you know, this is all people who make these arguments don't necessarily have an understanding of our systems. The internet is not organized by one central body. The internet is already fairly centralized. It's become more centralized upon certain platforms. But as an infrastructure, the internet is really a network of nodes that are all over the world and all over space.

Or we could take, for example, the international postal system. All the mail that gets distributed around the world internationally is not one central global body that's in charge of that. It's multiple organizations that coordinate their activities. to ensure that, you know, you get your mail. Or if you look at even basic supply chains of goods and resources, it's not all handled by one central industrial body. It's not all handled by the government or by one corporation. It's a set of relationships between groups,

between companies, between mining companies and resource extraction companies and shipping companies and processing plants and factories and all these networks already not undertaken entirely by one central body. They may be organized internally hierarchically, but that can very easily change. Finally, final justification I want to get into

is this idea that authority is the lesser evil. The authority might be imperfect, but it's preferable to boost alternatives, like total anarchy. And of course, some people say anarchy here, they mean it in the pejorative sense. They don't mean, like, actual anarchy in the sense of the political philosophy.

They mean it's in the sense of, instead of having one central authority, they have one to compete in authoritarian powers, a bunch of warlords fighting for power. That is not anarchy in the sense of anarchists pursue. That is, you know, petty authority fighting for dominance.

Which is, if you think about it really how historically states came into being. Yeah, well, it's like, what do you think we have now? Like, what do you think that, like, 190-something states are doing? Like, I don't know. I feel like a lot of these arguments are just describing

the current state of affairs and going, well, it could be like that. It's like, how would like communes deal with war? It's like, wouldn't the communists start going to war with each other? It's like, well, okay, like, look at the world right now and ask yourself the question, how are states dealing with a problem of war? And the answer is they're dealing with a problem of war by going to war with each other. Like, what are we doing here? Exactly, exactly.

So the more positive side of the definition of anarchy is one that I haven't quite gotten into yet, and I haven't broken down the ideas of mutuality and free association. But I'll save all that for the next episode. If you can't wait until then, my videos on how anarchy works and what anarchy needs should wet your appetite. But until then, I've been Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube at Andrewism and Patreon at St. True. This is it could happen here, the show where we chronicle collapse as it happens and explore how we may build a better future. And in my case, occasionally take a look at the past as well. And that's it.

All power to all the people. Today, good day, this is Andrew Sage bringing yet another episode of It Could Happen here. As my granny used to say when she answered the phone, what's happening? And the answer in this case is anarchy. Last episode, I gave a definition of anarchism. The anarchism is the political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy. A world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society.

Then we took that definition, we broke it down a bit further. You can go back to that episode if you want to hear how, but I left my explanation a bit incomplete. I didn't get into the positive side of the definition. So today I am joined once again by... Mia Wong, also who does this podcast and who is excited to talk about building the new world and the shell of the old. Let's go. So anikism proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society.

The unended pursuit element is another important part of the definition. You know, it's ongoing, it's a strive, it's not something, some perfect utopia that we reach and stagnate with it. In fact, it's not even assuming that people will become perfect anarchists. It's about currently and constantly pushing to be better, to create systems that produce better outcomes and greater anarchy. It's a continuous redevelopment of the values necessary to maintain anarchy, to never get complacent and to understand this is a species level project.

The idea of anarchy being a world without rule is actually something that gets some pushback from some anarchists as well. There's this sort of rules, not rulers, a version of anarchism that has a lot of sway in some circles. Ah, the anarcho-constitution. The anarcho-constitutionalists. It was popularized but the sort of direct democracy

libertarian Marxist crow that kind of got their popularity in the 80s to my teeth. But it's not something that I consider an accurate representation of what anarchism strives for. You know, now that we have access to more historical anarchist literature than ever, if you dive into any of it

and you get to the root of what anarchie is, it becomes very clear that anarchists were not into this whole direct democracy thing. They want to really into any form. of democracy as in the rule by majority or the rule by some abstraction called the people. Anachism is really about, it's not just no rulers, it's also no rule. I've been brought into this understanding by the efforts of the translator and

the sort of scholar of anarchist history, Sean Wilwell, who, in my opinion, is putting forward some of the best historical analysis of anarchism today. He's actually who inspired a lot of my definition of authority in anarchism. And so I have his work links in the show notes, of course. But in this, get into this sort of no rules, definition of anarchy, a lot of you might ask, you know, wouldn't we still need rules? But of course, enforceable rules are just really a full of laws that are backed by authorities, which anarchism opposes.

And unenforceable rules are not really rules at all. They're close. It's a norms of behavior. and if living in a society tells you anything, you should know that norms should be as open to questioning as the most rigid of rules. In fact, norms can be even more dangerous if we let them slide as just the way the things are

and the way we do things around here. Yeah, like patriarchy, for example, something that is, I mean, obviously, yes, prochequerque is enforced by the state and by, like, explicit violence, but it is also really, really enforced by norms in a way that like, you know, requires you to, like, reckon with norms as a concept theoretically. Yeah, there's a concept of authority that is inherent in Patriarchan, that is also the set of norms that exist to aid and to reinforce, you know, that authority. We tend to speak a lot of, you know, the people and the community and stuff, for anarchist circles,

but I think it's important to make sure it's clear that there's something special about, quote, unquote, the people or quote, unquote, the community. you know what the people or the community thinks is right and wrong should not be all litmus test on what is right and wrong. There's no virtue in being a majority and there's also no virtue in being a minority because you can see with instances where there are minorities such as the elite, the rich, who obviously half us over all the time. And then there are instances of the majorities that this exists to reinforce a lot of the rules and norms and authorities that are keeping all of us. out. So a Lickmus test is not majorities, what majority votes for, what majority wants, or what minorities desire. It's really

the absence of authority, the absence of this sort of power over others at all. And it's also inevitably the absence of commission and prohibition, the ability to permit things, the ability to prohibit things. When nothing is

allowed and nothing is disallowed, yes, people can do what they want, but everybody else can also do they want. And so that creates the incentive to be thoughtful and responsible in what you do. And to be thoughtful and responsible in how what you do affects other people. You do things and your things are open to like any number of consequences. And so if you want to avoid negative consequences, you can't get informed. You have to learn about how your actions might affect others through communication with individuals and groups. And you have to find compromises and solutions to points of conflict.

You're not an island. You're part of a web of mutually interdependent relationships. And that's something that exists in every kind of society at mutual interdependence. The problem with hierarchy is that in a hierarchical society to access that web of mutual interdependence. You have to obey authority. You have to take part in authoritarian systems. To have access to human community. So in an anarchic society, you don't have us obey an authority, but our behavior is still regulated, quote, unquote, in a sense that

We are dependent on other people, and we want to have as much as possible a harmonious relationship with those other people. Perhaps controversially, I could say that it's actually the absence of rules and rulers that makes anarchism work. Because, for one, harm can never be fully captured by rules, and rules cannot capture all the possible circumstances where harm could occur. But also for two, the existence of rule often provides protections for authorities. is something we talked about in our definition of authority

in the last episode. This idea that authorities, there's a right that grants it in privileges and protections. You know, the idea that the police officer can beat you up, but you cannot raise a hand in defense of yourself. You know, the bank can evict you from your home, but you can't be throwing Molotovs into the bank.

You know, that sort of thing is a very unequal relationship that is enforced and defended by rules, by the rights granted by those rules. And so rather than approach in society with a one-size-fits-all approach to rules that are enforced by some type of authority, we can instead create solutions that are tailored to specific problems. And yes, we might approach concepts like best practice and solving problems and conflicts, but that'll be different from rules. You know, that's something that's not enforced. Something that's constantly in negotiation, that's something that's constantly taken into practice and developed and shifted and is far more flexible. And I know that it can be difficult to break away from the idea that we need rules and that the rulers are essential.

But it's necessary that we can conceptualize anarchy from that angle with that implication. It's difficult because of how we've been socialized, how we tend to view human nature. I take time to develop these ideas to dwell on further. I'm still grasping some of these things and trying to understand them. But between this episode and the next and all the books and all the work that is being put out there to sort of develop. develop anarchism to bring it to more people. And of course, through practice, we can get a clearer sense of how anarchist organization can work in all of its harmonious complexity.

I see organization and complexity specifically because it is often assumed that the presence of anarchy is the absence of organization or the absence of complexity. Because those terms are often associated with or synonymized with hierarchy and authority. But you can have organization and complexity without that. So on the next part of the definition, we get into the idea of anarchy being a world where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society. Self-determination is probably the easiest to explain of the three terms that are used to define such a society because it's just the idea that individuals can define and pursue their own paths. It's the belief that people, individually and collectively, have the capacity to live and organize themselves in ways to reflect their own needs, desires and values. It rejects the notion that others, whether they be states, corporations, religious institutions, or other elites,

should have the power to dictate the lives of individuals or impose structures of exploitation and control. Self-determination is the basis of autonomy, which is necessarily followed by free association. First and foremost, I want to get into the idea of mutuality. Mutuality is feeling an action and a relationship that is based on shared benefit between individuals and groups in a society. society. It is reciprocity, it is communication, it's a sharing of sentiment and an exchange of positive actions, and it's not unique to anarchy. Mutual interdependence, which is a component of mutuality, is also not unique to anarchy. It can be found in pretty much every society, because we rely on neutrality to survive and progress through our day-to-day life. Whether we're working together

to clean the house for Christmas, or troubleshooting a problem in the workplace, or taking part in a club or sport, or sharing resources following a natural disaster, mutuality happens constantly, informally and often without recognition. This is something that Kramer talks about. In debt the first 5,000 years, he says this is the glue that holds society together, not contracts or power, but solidarity, empathy, and the natural human inclination to care for others. Our world is so divided and yet we still find ways to care. And are there obstacles to that care?

Of course, you know, their various prejudices, propaganda is mindset, social economic systems, and material conditions that limit our practice of mutuality. But these are problems that Anarchy seeks to rectify. Obviously, issues like colonialism and white supremacy have fractured societies along racial lines and created distress and competition where mutuality could flourish. The propaganda perpetuated by states and corporations also limits our capacity to imagine mutuality and create this sense of scarcity in this competitive mindset that creates an unnecessary dichotomy between the success of the individual and success of the collective. Because of the very nature

these hierarchical systems are forcing us into exploitive relationships, things like mutual aid end up being replaced by transactional exchanges. Care and community become commodities. Better human needs become profit-driven markets. And the state takes on a lot of the rule that was formally filled by mutuality. Now, just the idea of disaster response, for example, is dominated by bureaucratic agencies that monopolize and direct the resources that could be used and more effectively used by people addressing their own needs locally. And of course with the implementation of the property regime, with privatization fencing off the commons that once supported communal life, it creates that sort of scarcity that limits our interpersonal practice of neutrality. And when people are

poor when they're struggling to meet their own needs, they often lack the resources or energy to extend help to others. Food and secure families may not have the capacity to engage in community support networks. Or, you know, if you look at how cities often design, they're structured to isolate people. They make it harder people to form bonds of trust. The existence of all these non-places like highways, the absence of third places and the prevalence of suburban sprawl, all make it more difficult for us to form bonds of trust and solidarity. And then, of course, you have the intervention of the state into people's efforts to engage in mutual aid.

You know, the state punishes and criminalizes mutual aid efforts for migrants or for homeless people. You often see the police or border authorities preventing people from helping those people, charging them with criminal penalties just for

trying to help their fellow human. And all these are things that limits the free and full flourishing of mutuality. But we shouldn't look to the limit of mutuality in our current system as an indication of how it might be limited in another system. In fact, we can look at these limits and see what ways mutuality could flourish even further when they no longer exist.

So by taking the time to dismantle prejudices, to challenge propaganda, to build alternatives and to create abundance, we can start to recognize the potential of our mutuality. And so really, getting from point A to point B, it becomes a matter of expanding our solidarity, which would expand our capacity for mutuality to drive our social organizations. Solidarity is about establishing and recognizing the bond between all people, understanding that I sense a game from you doing well and vice versa. Remember that our system incentivizes selfishness that acts to the detriment of others. So anarchy doesn't need perfect people.

It just needs systems that have better incentives. So anarchic systems would incentivize generosity and selflessness, of course, But the real trick is really in creating systems that utilize selfishness to the benefit of others, making it so that even the most self-interested and self-absorbed people are a net positive, or at least a net zero on the impacts of the rest of society, because they will find themselves acting in ways that are generous and that are selfless in order to get the gains that they desire for themselves. You can call it to kind of a selfish selflessness.

Yeah, and it's funny because, like, that's the sort of, justification that capitalism uses that like, oh, if everyone that purely acts in their self-interest, then everything will, like, get better for everyone. You know, but it's effectively just like a coat of paint that's been put on a system that people use their self-interest to make things better for exactly them. Yeah. So clearly the system of capitalism has these systemic incentives and structures that allow for selfishness don't only expand and propagate and be reinforced it also ensures that that impulse, that inclination has an extraordinary impact on the lives of millions of people. An individual selfish person alone cannot do that much to impact others,

but put them in a position of power and all of a sudden their decisions can impact lives of thousands, millions, even billions. So the practice of anarchy is a way of creation of society where no one stands above another and where our lives are built in cooperation instead of domination, reshaping how we practice mutuality by building new habits of cooperation that work without rulers. And that's what social revolution is all about. It's an ongoing and intentional transformation of our society, of our economy and culture and philosophy and technology and relationships and politics. It's the ongoing negation of all forms of authority and prejudice and the ongoing affirmation

of freely associated equals. It is in many ways a reconstitution of our natural initiative or capacity for mutual and our responsibility for ourselves and each other, and that starts here and now, not at some distant point in the future. It won't be easy, but it's necessary to unshackle our mutuality, to create a society where it can flourish. And this is where we get into things like mutual aid.

It's confused with charity very often, but it's a manifestation of our mutuality. It's a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange of services and resources in a society, and so it's not about tit-for-tat payback or measuring each person's contribution. is what's taking responsibility for one another as members of society, and build in social relations that sharpen our ability to collaborate and share. To paraphrase Peter Kropotkin, practice in mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other

into all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectually, and morally. With mutual aid, like I said earlier, it derives its basis from our interdependence, which is another component of mutual neutrality. mutual interdependence is the very basic idea that we rely on each other for various aspects of our lives in every kind of society and in anarchy our mutual interdependence is unrestricted by authority and instead guided by complementarity so we are all approached and appreciated as unique equals cooperating on that basis mutual responsibility is another manifestation of mutuality and it's the idea that in the absence of legal order

in the absence of authority, when society is no longer guided by laws that are binding and enforceable by some authority, we must be guided instead by responsibility. That actions are pre-authorized or prejudged by external rules, but that each action is undertaken freely and subject to any number of responses, positive and negative.

If he curious about this idea of legal order and permission, prohibition, and mutual responsibility, I recommend Sean Wilbur's a new glossary on the Libertarian Labyrinth, as it offers the exploration of that concept and a lot more to synthetic anarchism. So anarchy demands a high degree of self-awareness, care, and reciprocity from individuals and communities, not through coercion or enforcement, but through voluntary, continuous, and conscious negotiation, incentivized by the nature of the system itself, with its basis in cooperation,

and the desire to prevent a necessary conflict. In hierarchical systems, humans of justice often escalates conflict. Imprisonment, for example, tends to breed resentment and resistance and further criminalization. In anarchy, the absence of pre-authorized retaliation

encourages us to find that dialogue and to create restorative practices. If a conflict arises over a resource, people have an interest in reaching a resolution benefits both, rather than escalating things and prolonged disputes. So such as society will necessarily require responsibility. They're both responsibility for the environment and responsibility for other people.

You know, if you are costing the ecosystem, its resources, it can't just offload that cost onto everybody else, as it's common in capital systems. You have to be in dialogue with other people to ensure your actions are balanced by replenishing the resource, by mitigating harm or by securing some kind of collective agreement. And if somebody is creating a disruptive situation, if they're blasting loud music at night, we cannot rely on an external authority to mediate,

but we have to mediate in some way. We have to find ways to ensure that they bear the costs of disturbing others, whether it involves apologising or making amends or addressing their behavior, or if they don't want to take on other people facing other consequences as necessary. So social revolution really aims to prepare us for that responsibility.

It's, as Wilbur describes, a basic principle for encountering, recognising, and engaging with others. It's our beefed up an extremely demanding version of the golden rule. The organic emergence of this responsibility and the incentives of this system could create a sort of a mutual understanding, which is another aspect of neutrality. as people will necessarily form norms of behaviour that will guide the interactions between them, they'll facilitate consultation and negotiation, to restrain the escalation of conflict, and will maintain the viability of shared commons and libraries of things. And similarly, our desire to prevent the escalation of conflict, to prevent threat to our being, and to prevent threats to our social harmony or society's integrity,

would thus develop a sense of mutual defence. It's in all of our interests to minimize the potential harm of our actions, to practically seek out solutions to potential and actual conflict, to ensure that we won't get flack and pushback and negative consequences to the things that we do and threats to the sustainability of our society and our lives. And for yet another manifestation of mutuality, we come to the idea of mutual interests, which are what make free association as the basis of anarchic social organization possible. Free association is the founding principle of anarchic social organization, and it refers to the ability of

each person to move around to associate and disassociate with others as they so choose, without being subject to authority. Free association is free from the impositions of wage labor, from the boundaries of citizenship, and from all other hierarchical relationships. This is different from the sort of liberal idea of freedom of association, where under capitalism, that freedom of association is the freedom that comes with signing contracts. and control and private property. So being free from authority,

we still have to do what we have to do, because we're still mutually interdependent, but that free association empowers people to connect with others and to form groups based around shared interests or desired actions to pursue those interests or actions. So our interests might be as broad as wanting to eat, or as niche as wanting to maintain the traditional Japanese art of wood joinery, or they might span the globe,

or they'll be unique to a particular interest. such as those who are interested in maintain the cleanliness of a local rival. So groups don't just exist for the sake of existing. They don't exist to perpetuate their own existence. They exist with a particular goal in mind, whether that is maintain roads, producing and distributing food or building housing. And then such groups may exist for a long time

or they may dissolve frequently. They may split or they may emerge, they may overlap or come into conflict, and the spaces where they interact could be called spaces of encounter it can place in factories or in gardens, specifically tailored online platforms, or some sort of community centre. So free association may occur on the level of networks of individuals or federations of groups. But I need to explain the commune and the federation, because those are things that can be interpreted in a few different ways.

You know, federations, people who might think of government, communes, people might think of, well, local government or counties or something of that nature. Yeah, hippie cult That too So, Anarchy is about finding ways to cooperate in ways that are not bound by the traditional boundaries of authority And that includes the traditional boundaries of shared territory The anarchist commune has been confused very often With things like intentional communities or administrative divisions

But if we're going by Kropotkin's description in Words of a Rebel Chapters 10 to 11 He makes it clear that commune describes any group formed on the basis of free association. In fact, he juxtaposes the free commune with traditional conceptions to the commune. He says for us, quote, commune no longer means a territorial agglomeration. It is rather a generic name,

a synonym for the grouping of equals which knows neither frontiers nor walls. The social communal soon ceased to be a clearly defined entity. Each group in the commune will necessarily be drawn towards similar groups and other communes. They will come together and the links that federate them will be as solid, as those that attach them to their fellow citizens, and in this way, there will emerge a commune of interests whose members are scattered in a thousand towns of villages. Each individual find the full satisfaction of his needs only by grouping with other individuals who have the same tastes, but inhabit a hundred other communes.

End quote. So Capokin's commune is essentially a fluid collective of individuals and groups, wherever they find themselves coming together of their own volition and according to their shared interests, projects and activities without being bound to territorial designations. So don't expect to see a bunch of mini-governments all over Anarchy, bunch of mini-community all over Anarchy. Because an abstract group in the community may not even necessarily share many real interests in common.

And so trying to put them all into one body, one polity that is responsible for identifying and enacting their will, it tends to be dominated by the group's most dominant voices. It tends to subordinate individuals to the ones. will of a nebulous collective, a nebulous majority. As the alternative to this sort of polity form, as Willow describes it, is the federative principle, understood in its most radical anarchic senses. So not in the sense of networking conventional static policies like a confederation of city-states, but instead bringing together the information and perspectives necessary to facilitate the dynamic process of free association.

We can look to Antonymes of Democracy, another bit of writing by Wilbur, which further explains how the federative organization is the process by which we identify specific social selves as an interest or needs and establish their involvement in large-scale collectivities that are formed on the basis of those conversion interests. So these collectivities might exist on sort of a consultative basis as they seek out and disseminate information or advice that relates to interests, but the recognition. were relevant of expertise. So there might be such associations based on armed defense or co-housing construction or agroforestry. There might be consultative associations with a journalistic focus or with a rewilding focus or an accessibility focus. And they may exist on any scale depending on the specificity of the information needed. From as locals and apartment building to as far-reaching as a continent or even the entire globe. consultative associations could create blueprints, they could document a viable labour and expertise,

they can source resources and they can share feedback, also that interested and affected individuals and groups can easily access everything they need to make informed decisions. So in Anarchy, we'll see a variety of individuals grouping together and interacting in ways that are perhaps illegible from a top-down view of society, but in ways that work to accomplish their goals, resolve their conflicts and maintain social harmony. It can be difficult to imagine this possibility due to how thoroughly our disempowerment and domestication has been. You know, we live under a global order that seems to deny any alternatives

and extols its understanding of human nature as the only valid interpretation. The propaganda of our education, our mass media, and our inherited understanding as subjects and hierarchical society has limited our consciousness of our situation, and thus our drives and powers to transform our situation. There are those of us who can overcome this through theoretical and historical study, but there are others who can only overcome this condition through demonstration. Some are not convinced by intellectual anarchist arguments.

They have to be transformed through experiences. So to borrow the terminology of innovation adoption, it is up to us early adopters, those who are into the revolution before it becomes cool, to convince the majority of the possibility of freedom by example. And furthermore, as William Gillis wrote in the distinct radicalism of anarchism, quote, To reach a moment where we sit back, entirely satisfied,

would be to abandon anarchism. To the radical, there is no litmus for due diligence, no final finish line, no moment where we pat ourselves on the back. The vigilance of the radical is never satiated, end quote. And that's it for me today. We'll get more into revolution, powers, drives, and consciousness,

and more in future episodes. In the meantime, you can check out my channel, Andrew Zum, on YouTube. I took about things like this all the time. I've been Andrew Sage. This is what could happen here. All power to all the people. Peace.

Welcome to executive dysfunction, a podcast that if you... E.D. It's... Electoral dysfunction. Electile disbomption. Executive disorder. Jesus.

Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. It's not about Dick Stub. sponsored by Hems. Not yet.

Hopefully one day. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans, who never knows the title of the podcast that he's on. In my defense,

I'm on a lot of podcasts. I was going to say, just because Robert Evans lives in like a constant podcast. This episode, we are covering the week of February 12 to February 19. Let's start with a brief Eric Adams update, or as I call it an EU.

That's a Turkish for Eric Adams update. So in response to the calls to drop the Turkish corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, eight top federal prosecutors have resigned in protest. Then we had four deputy mayors leave office. The New York governor is now considering a removal Adams from office, which somehow is something that the governor of New York has power to do, by the way. And also the city council speaker has called on the mayor to resign. There's a judge

doing a hearing on Wednesday, as we are recording this right now, on whether to appoint a special prosecutor to continue prosecuting the charges, despite, you know, Trump's effort to have these charges dropped to help, to help Adams, make sure that ice raids can continue in the city in a very, very clear quid pro quo. So this is a developing story. We will continue on the Eric Adams front as this changes. By the way, people could miss it the first time.

Like a few months ago, we did record an entire episode about the things that he actually did, which are unbelievably funny. So go listen to that. We're not going to talk about them here. But it's very, very funny corruption. Yeah, if you didn't get the turkey joke,

we explain it in detail there. I'm sure people are familiar with the turkey situation in general. All right. Next, on a related note, on Tuesday, President Trump instructed the DOJ to fire all Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys. Now, usually these types of appointments do resign at the end of, like, their president's term. But Trump just immediately going out to fire all of them is new, unique, and noteworthy. And Trump has done some other, other noteworthy things to expand executive power. And for more on that, I will turn to Mia Wong. Oh boy. So yesterday on Tuesday the 18th, Trump signed an executive order that effectively is just him saying the words, I am the law over and over again. The actual sort of content of the executive order is convoluted. But basically what he's saying is that like the presidency and like him specifically is in control of all government agencies. And this is an end to a very, very longstanding practice of, well,

Well, okay, an attempt to end a long-standing practice of there being like independent regulatory agencies, which were set up by Congress. And what Trump is doing here is claiming that, you know, this is the thing called the Unitary Executive Theory. There's a whole history of this Republican Party. This is the most unhinged unhinged unitary executive theory thing we've ever seen, where he is just straight up claiming that he should be able to run all these things that none of these independent regulatory agencies.

And this includes stuff like the FCC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, stuff like that, actually all just directly answer to him and not to, you know, Congress or as, you know, functioned as independent bodies like they were set up to be by acts of Congress. It states that everyone's legal opinions that come out of these things, like have to agree with legal opinions of the presidency. And it basically sets up a reporting thing where all of these things have to, like, report any major policy decisions that they're going to make to Russell Vatt, who's like one of the co-authors of Project 2025, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So in some sense, it's a codification of the stuff he's already been trying to do. Yeah, ever since basically he got inaugurated again. They've been trying to push

for this complete unitary executive power as like running the entire executive branch, but all of these agencies that they went to rope under the authority of the executive branch. Yeah, and there's a number

of sort of alarming things about this. One, this is a, like, even by the standards of like, peak war on terror Bush administration shit where they're just like grabbing people off the streets. Like this is a unprecedented sort of seizure of executive power. Two, and I think this is also worth noting in the context of a bunch of the shit he's been saying over the past week. Like last week he had the he who saves his country does not violate any law, which is like, I think a fake Napoleon quote. It's a fake Napoleon quote from a movie made in the 1970s in the Soviet Union.

I believe the name of the movie was water. Is that rules? It's famous because they had some massive thousands and thousands of actual soldiers, like, setpiece battles. But yeah, that's where the quote, I think the quote may have another origin, but that's the famous origin. It probably was never said by Napoleon. Well, and earlier today, the official White House account tweeted about abolishing the New York City congestion pricing with basically like a magazine cover style image of Trump wearing a crown with text that reads, Long live the king. Yeah, and again, that was the official Twitter account of the White House.

Which has also been doing some like unhinged posting, including like ASMR deportation videos. Yeah. It's like really dark stuff, like viscerally upsetting. Yeah, it is like the opening credits of a disaster movie, the White House Twitter feed right now. Yeah, it's the stuff like you used to not be able to talk about being a king in American politics. Yeah. Pretty recently. That's kind of the whole point of this country.

There's a state where the whole motto is Sixth Imper Tyrannis. And the unit of the United States military. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So I want to come back on to the thing for a second, talk about one of the things that probably will be the crucial legal fight, which is that he's claiming the ability to be the person who interprets the law.

And, you know, there's a whole bunch of sort of legal fuzziness about that and about to what extent these things are supposed to be. independent, but probably isn't the culmination of his attempt to literally, like, rule the entire country by executive fiat, but this is like, it's just a big step. Yeah, this is, this is a massive step towards that. And I think, you know, and again, this is one of these things where we literally have no idea what consequences of this will be, because like, we are, we are so far into the great beyond that shit is happening that a year ago, if you proposed it, everyone would have thought you were completely out of your mind. Yeah. Well, and this is stuff that, that, like,

Robert's been talking about for a long time. There's been a lot of people talking about the heritage foundations push for the unitary executive theory, stuff that Curtis Gervant's been talking about. Like my article last week on Shatterzone kind of underlines where they are going with this. And yeah, like the consequences are so vast and unknowable because we've never had an executive that is kind of this successfully or like this focused in his attempts to, because he's like total executive control. over the entirety of the federal government. Yeah. Yeah, and I want to end with, like, one of the other really chilling parts of this,

which is that if you read the executive order, the underlying logic of it is that, like, the president is, like, the physical manifestation of the will of the people. Yeah, it's just the fewer principle. Yeah, yeah, never been done before. Like, that and also specifically, then Napoleon quote about, like,

he says the country is not violent any law. Like, that is literally the legal principle that Karl Schmidt developed, like, specifically to put Hitler in power as the furor. So, this is great. I mean, and Musk and Trump have been saying stuff akin to that in interviews, like being asked, like, how is Doge allowed to do this sort of stuff? Musk and Trump have been saying, well, the people voted for this. Like, we are, we are enabling the will of the people. Even if that, like, you know, goes past, like, our technical authority, it's what the people wanted.

So we're going to remove all these bureaucrats that ordinarily would try to stop us because we have, like, the consent of the government. The mandate of heaven. Even if that just completely bypasses Congress, even if that denies the courts, which we'll talk about more later, they are willing to go as far as they can't. Yeah, and no one stopped them yet, right? I mean, some of the courts are trying, but trying isn't good enough. They seem to be an open violation of that, though. Yeah. Like, they were told to keep paying USAID stuff, and they just said they won't.

More on that later. Let's touch on immigration with James, and then we will have a quick break. Yeah, perfect. Okay, so what I want to talk about is this, it was first reported by the New York Times. I've since confirmed it with sources on the ground in Panama. The Trump administration is detaining migrants that it can't deport to their home countries in Panama currently. So currently these are places where the U.S. doesn't have good relations with their government, right? There'll be Afghans, there'll be Iranians, people like that.

The U.S. seems to have found a way to deport Venezuelans using an airline that was sanctioned until the day it apparently landed at the U.S. military base to take Venezuela and people back to Venezuela. If you want to hear about people leaving Iran and why they're leaving Iran, you can listen to my episodes I did in the Dalian Gap. It came out late October and November of last year. But right now, they're being kind of carrailed in a hotel in Panama City, from what I've heard. And just this morning, the transport to San Vicente began. So the New York Times kind of mischaracterizes the detention center at San Vicente. I'm guessing it's because they haven't been there, and I have.

They called it like a detention center that's being built, quote, close to the jungle. It looks close to the jungle if you're looking on Google Maps, I suppose. It's off the Pan American Highway, actually. You literally take a dirt road off the Pan American Highway, and you come across this huge prison facility. It's all big, modern white buildings. The old facility that was there burned down, and it's been rebuilt. Largely, I'm guessing with money from when the Biden administration was funding deportations

from Panama in 2024. It's a vast detention facility. At the time when I went there, my fixer, Daddy, and Ella, and I weren't allowed to access the facility. But it was very clearly, like, too big for what its stated purpose was. It stated purpose was people who had warrants

for their arrest and had been found to have warrants for their arrest when they entered Panama and were being deported back to the countries where they had warrants. I've spoken to half a dozen to a dozen people who were detained there. And I just got one quotation to read, and then we can talk about this.

They treated us very badly, verbally and psychologically. We all had to do our business in the same cell. They threw food on the floor for us to eat. And we were all in handcuffs. Jesus Christ. So is this a result of like Rubio's negotiations with Panama? Like how is this like logistically operating in terms of like the U.S. dropping people into a totally different country that like they also just don't have

citizenship to? Yeah. So the legality of taking someone to a third country is a little unclear, right? Of course, the United States has done this, well, Guantanamo Bay is technically American soil, I guess. But they've also, they've done it in other places around the world that are not Guantanamo Bay throughout the war on terror. This is not the same as the El Salvador plan. The United States Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary for Homeland Security, attended the inauguration of the new Panamanian president. Like, DHS and the Panamanian executive have a very close relationship.

Got it. the US was funding deportations for Panama under Biden. They claimed that these were only people who had warrant for their arrest in the countries they were being deported back to. When I spoke to those people, like, I was there when they literally took the families apart, right? Put the people in a truck, sent them off to San Vicente and deported them. And these guys, if they had warrants for their arrest, it seems very odd because when they arrived back in Colombia, they were not detained or arrested. And like, if you have a warrant for someone and they get handed to you, that's when you're going to detain them, right? and none of them were detained.

They've just released back to their day-to-day life in Colombia. So, like, there was definitely precedent for this set by the Biden administration, but what's happening now is a degree worse, right? Taking people, I don't know what the long-term plan for these Afghan and Iranian people is, right? Were they going to live in San Vicente? Like, whose custody are they in? Yeah, like, it's just like a DHS black site? Like, is it a...

Yeah, no, absolutely. Are they on U.S. soil in San Vicente? Certainly when I was there, it was secured. exclusively by Panamanian authorities, not by U.S. authorities. So, like, the legal process, I'm guessing, like, I don't know if there is one beyond, like, we can't deport these people back to their countries. We want to, number needs to go up, right? There's been reporting that Donald Trump is upset that his deportation numbers haven't hit the numbers that Biden did. Yeah. And so they're doing things like this, which appears to be

move fast and break things, I guess. Like, I don't really know how to describe it. I mean, it's the entire motto of the new Trump term in general, and things are being broken. Yes, they are, yeah, including lots of human rights conventions. As we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon, I just heard from a friend in Panama that 300 people were transferred to San Vicente, and it looks like 179 of them have no sort of clear path to be deported back to their home countries, no accepted place to send them. So those are the people who seem to be in legal limbo right now in the... Panama and San Vicente for a matter of time that we don't know in a status that we don't yet

know or isn't clear. But yeah, this is pretty bad. Like I say, I've been on the ground. I don't have many other reporters who have been on the ground in San Vicente. We're very well sourced in Panama and among the migrant community. So we're going to continue reporting on this. I've already sent some requests for comment out. So I would expect us to have something out on this in the next couple of weeks, hopefully. All right. Let's go on a quick ad break and come back to talk about RFK Jr. Okay, we are back. I think to take off my plate carrier.

It's crushing me with it. As James takes off his plate carrier that he's wearing for some reason. It's company policy that we all wear body armor while recording because of an accident that occurred several weeks ago. We don't need to get into it.

Garrison, please, continue. If Garrison say something rude or offensive when I had to take my headphones off to take on my plate carrier? Yes. So last week, so last week, RFK Jr. was confirmed

as Secretary of Health and human services. This is one I thought there might be a slightly more pushback on, but oh, oh, how naive I was. Oh, yeah, no, they are beaten into a corner. No, I didn't put that much of a fight. On February 13th, Trump signed an executive order establishing a commission to make America healthy again. In the third paragraph, the order states, quote unquote, concern over the quote unquote

staggering increase of autism. And the next paragraph takes aim at ADHD medication. Not great. Not ideal. And the order continues to be pretty bad. I will do a direct quote here. Quote, this poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. To fully address the growing health crisis in America,

we must redirect our national focus in the public and private sectors towards understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, and effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety, unquote. Fresh thinking. Yeah, like, one of the, like, types of guys who I've run into when I'm out in the mountains

is people who, like, have very reasonably assessed that people in the United States don't have access to the healthiest food, especially if they don't have a lot of money and that that is impacting their health, right? That's a fair enough assessment. Sure. To go from that to like, and I just want someone who will do something about it, so I guess this RFK guy is okay.

No. No. Everything in this order has the most, like, dog-whistly language. Oh, yeah. That not only, like, directly targets life-saving medication, but it could also be used to target, like, vaccines. And, like, it's really worrying.

And there's a measles outbreak right now, right? In Laredo, like in Texas. 300 people last I checked in Laredo, around Laredo, yeah. There's been an increasing number of measles outbreaks the past like five years in this country. Yeah. If you're not aware of how devastating measles outbreaks can be, I'd really encourage you to look into the outbreak in Samoa and the absolutely heartbreaking consequences of that. Yeah, which RFK Jr. helped the cause by pushing a shitload of anti-vaccine propaganda here,

something like 80 people died, most of them children. Jesus. Yeah, they ran out of child-sized coffins and had to ask for people to send more. Well, which leads to a separate problem, but, you know, if you go to childcoffins.com and put in the promo code, it could happen here. Anyway, 10% off. Yeah, RFK gets you 20% off. It's a good business to be in. Speaking of, Section 2 of the order calls to, quote, unquote, aggressively combat critical health challenges, such as, quote, the rising rates of mental health disorders and diabetes.

So, RFK has made a number of statements that are worrying. which is just a blanket statement that I can make, but specifically talking about how to treat diabetes with like, you know, lifestyle changes and like changing your diet habits and like a whole bunch of extremely worrying stuff. Section 5 of the order states that with 100 days, this new commission made up of the heads of 13 various agencies

and chaired by RFK Jr. Is supposed to submit their findings that, quote, assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures posed to children, and assess the prevalence of, and threat posed by the prescription

of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs, unquote. The idea that we're going to be trying to take away people's antipsychotics while also making handguns

more available across the country. Yes, more children with handguns, less children on antipsychotics. But like this is this is targeting like depression medication, mood stabilizers, meds for ADHD, like antipsychotics. And then also, you know, lines about certain chemicals absolutely being like an anti-vaccine dog whistle. Also, also we have to mention to the diabetes part of this. Yeah.

Where that is an unbelievably alarming thing for him. to be saying? Yeah, it's pretty bad. Because like, the thing about diabetes is you don't have, your body can't, like, literally can't physically fucking process shit. You can't actually solve that with exercise. Like, yeah, and like, I'll just say, like, I've worked in diabetes education in the past, right, and in various, like, non-profit capacities, not that kind of doctor.

But I have seen the people who have died because they have been subjected to this kind of bullshit. Like, I know the people who have lost children and loved ones because of this. And it is heart. to think that somebody, normally it's somebody trying to make money, would lie to someone about their health. And the people who are most vulnerable to this are the people who are also already struggling to access healthcare and access medications.

And it is disgusting to see the government pushing this. On Tuesday, RFK Jr. made his first official statement since being confirmed, promising that, quote, nothing is going to be off limits, unquote, in his quest to make America healthy again, telling health and human services staffers, quote, some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinized, unquote.

And then, according to Politico, R.K. Jr. suggests that he would direct HHS to investigate anti-depression drugs, ultra-processed food, electromagnetic radiation, and the herbicide glyphate. So that seems to be some of their first targets. Ah, 4G, 5G cell tower

shit. Great. Great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, no. I am excited for people to both not have food and also not have Adderall. That's really going to make quite an interesting mob. Our economy is going to crash. If they remove Adderall, this whole country is going to cave. No, we are going to see stockbrokers leaping out of windows at rates unheard of.

That stuff. Either that or we are simply going to move to an economy. that is entirely based on the consumption of cocaine and meth. Like, one of these things is going to happen. That's true. Adderall is going to be worth more by weight than gold. People, Vivans will be the new legal currency. I'm going to start storing them like peppercorns.

I bought a house with two months of Vyvans. Yeah. Lastly, before we go on break, Borders are Tom Homan has been on a crusade against AOC and others for holding know-your-rights trainings, specifically informing constituents, including legal citizens who are being harassed by ICE, that you do not need to open the door, if ICE knocks on your door, you can ask them to leave, you can stay silent, you don't need to share personal information, you have the right to speak with an attorney, and you do not need to sign

anything or hand over any documents. So there's been, you know, like webinars and trainings informing people of their rights, and this is really upset Bordersar Tom Homan, who last week went on Fox News to accuse AOC of impediment, which is not a real word. And he announced that he has directed or has asked the DOJ and the Deputy Attorney General to investigate AOC for interfering with ICE actions by simply educating people about their rights. I have a clip here. I'm going to play in the podcast with Homan on Sean Hannity. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting lawbreaking? Would it have to have direct him by her and helping people to evade ICE?

That's exactly the question I posed to the Deputy Attorney General. I asked them to look into it. I know I threw in my career, someone steps in front and between you and the first year arrest and they're repeating. Yeah, that's a violation. But at what point do you cross the line on saying you're educating people versus you're teaching him how to evade ICE arrest? So I've asked that question to the Department of Justice for clear guidance so I can

share that with the officers of ICE. So we're looking for that clear direction so we can start taking action on people who want to who want to help educate these people to evade ICE. So hopefully any day now we get that guidance sent out to the field. Let's turn this over to discussion. James, I'm sure you have some thoughts on this. Yeah, this is kind of foundational to the Constitution, right? It's access to an attorney, the right to an attorney.

And it's, again, something that like even under Biden, the DHS, have been taking a swing at. Specifically, we've done an episode last year about transferring detained people in ICE custody away from their attorneys, right? In most cases, it was people from California, specifically San Diego County, because San Diego County had a program that funded some attorney access and moving them to Texas. So, like, you're either going to bleed that program dry, flying attorneys to Texas, or have them do it over a phone call. But a lot of these people who are detained because they come from dictatorial countries don't feel like phone calls are secure. And so they're not really going to feel comfortable talking to their attorney on a phone call.

We've done a whole episode about that. You can go back and listen to it. And like, this is very basic Fourth Amendment stuff. And this applies to you whether or not you are a citizen. This applies to you if you are in this country. Yeah, you have these rights. And it is within ICE's and, and Tom Homan's interests to make people not realize that they actually do have rights, regardless of their immigration status. Yeah, absolutely. Like, they're not going to tell me necessarily right the what rights you have. No. They're not going to tell you they don't have the right to enter your house. Police want to enter your home. And if you open the door, they will. But you do not need to

open the door. And this is like very basic stuff of informing people really getting on Tom homin's nerve. He's been on news like five times the past week to specifically complain about AOC. He really wants her to get arrested for this thing that's not a crime. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what they're going for throughout, right? But like I know, for instance, in California, lots of universities have these like know your rights cards accessible that you can have them in your lectures and give them out your students. They can take them regardless of citizenship status, which is generally the way to approach this, right, with an agnostic approach to citizenship. You don't certainly want to be holding a, if you're undocumented, come to this thing at this time

and we'll give you a know-your-right session. Like, that is not a smart way to approach this. But yeah, like immigration agnostic, know-your-right trainings, they're kind of foundational to to like constitutional rights, that they're pretty much front and center of things you're allowed. Do you know what else is front and center? Advertisements. That's right. It's in there.

Article 22. It's like they can't put the soldiers in your bedroom unless they're sponsored by... I mean, look, depending on the soldier. All right, we are back. Mia, it's time for tariff talk. Yeah, time for tariff talk. Dan, I'll insert a little

musical jingle here for tariff talk. Dan, I'll have not been an editor on this podcast. for years, but sure. Tariff talk. Tariff talk. Talk with Mia Wong. There we go. I thought Garrison said turf talk in a Canadian way.

Very different podcast. Much more cursing. Why not? Mia. Mia. Tariff talk. Okay. Okay.

I got a through line, which is that Trump is announcing that he's going to maybe sign an executive order to put into effect more tariffs. One of those is pharmaceuticals, which would actually would actually like possibly impact

your healthcare so there's my tie-in but the main things it's auto imports like computer chips and pharmaceuticals are supposed to get we think in April

like a 25% tariff it's again unclear whether these will go into effect but I think it's worth noting this because and this is something I haven't seen anyone

put together for reasons that are absolutely baffling to me but I actually think that a big part of the pharmaceutical like tariff threat here

is specifically to threaten Denmark into selling Greenland because one of Denmark's largest companies is Novo Nordisk who would get absolutely colossally fucked by this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so we sort of have to look

at all of these in the context of like what kinds of negotiations are going on. The Chips one is pretty obviously like a China, Taiwan one although the cars, the auto import one I think is pretty specifically,

it's all auto imports. I think it's pretty specifically targeted at Mexico because there's a whole bunch of U.S. auto, like, full car imports from Mexico. But, yeah, 25% tariffs. We'll see exactly what happens with this

round of negotiations, but who knows, they might go into effect. This might also be part of the push to the U.S. to seize Greenland. This is also less of a Trump thing, but I think it's worth noting the sort of seriousness that both, the kind of

the people around Trump and also, like, the media in Canada is taking, like, a potential U.S. attempt to just like seize Canada. Oh, yeah. Like, they might really do that. Oddly enough, this push from Trump might actually help catalyze the anti-conservative movement in Canada, which has kind of been trending conservative the past 10 years. Yeah, yeah.

And Trump's actions have really upset the country, even the conservative factions. Yeah. You are seeing support for the liberals swell, which has been like in like rapid decline for the past five years. So it's actually causing a pretty big shakeup in Canadian. in politics right now, which I'm sure I'll do an episode on in the future. There's even, I don't know if it'll, it's going, things are going to change enough to have a big influence. They probably won't on the next German election, but AFD saw its first drop

in support in a while after J.D. Vance endorsed them. It's so funny. Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, still doesn't have any juice. Quick, send him to the UK. We could kill reform now. Send him to the UK.

Yeah. God, I would love to see that. I wish. To get back on the War on Woke Front, I like to talk about attempts to purge DEI gone wrong, specifically in OSHA, who has now trashed workplace safety guidelines by banning and removing like 18 workplace like training and safety publications per popular info. Now, some of these documents have been removed for just containing the word like gender. Oh, wow.

Like in one case about how patients might need different treatments based on their gender or age, This list of banned documents also includes a document from 2009 that instructs employers on how to quote unquote protect their EMS responders from becoming additional victims while on the front line of medical response. The alleged reason for removal is because the document contains a sentence about how EMT workers work under quote unquote diverse conditions. Wow.

And that EMT agencies have a quote, diversity of state-specific certification, training, and regulatory requirements, unquote. There was also a special education program dedicated to helping young adult special ed kids transition into the workforce that got cut, and the suspicion is because it was a child program that included the word transition. Like, we're not going to know for a while the precise reason, but all of this lines up pretty well. Well, I mean, I'm sure it would also be removing programs with the word disability, frankly. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, and they're doing that elsewhere, too.

I just, yeah. And this is affecting a huge number of agencies, right? Like, we could do, I mean, we probably will do whole episodes on this. I've been collecting a whole bunch of resources in a document called The War on Woke, which eventually I will turn into an episode. This is manifested in other ways as well. There's now disclaimers on the Target HIV and the CDC website, which now reads, the CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's executive orders.

And specifically on pages related to sexual health, there is a, big like a top banner reading quote per a court order hHS is required to restore this website as of 1159 p.m. February 14, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation and to women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This is a lot of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration

and this department rejects it." Unquote. So even though they've been ordered to have these web pages is still online, they are basically defacing the web pages with these with these notes from the Trump team. Yeah. That also, by the way, and the extent to which this matters is basically zero because they don't give a sure what the court say, but like that's also a violation of the court order. Pretty much. They did not put up the website as it was at the time when it was specified for. They have put new bullshit into it. Like, but speaking of violating court orders,

the Trump administration told a judge in a Tuesday court filing that it will not comply with the TRO directing USAID and the state department to resume foreign aid funding, stating that, quote, USAID intends to terminate instruments that the administrator determines are inconsistent with the national interests or USAID's mission. And it tries to argue that this is like in line with USAID. you know, lawful ability to operate. So they are just like blatantly, blatantly defying a judge's order as we've talked about how they seem to be wanting to and continuing to do for the past like

four weeks. Yeah. More on more on that in the weeks to come as this situation, you know, escalates through different appeals courts and, you know, will eventually probably reach some kind of final showdown with the Supreme Court. Now, long-time social security official, Michelle King, has quit the agency amid fights to prevent Doge from accessing sensitive information. The Washington Post quoted Martin O'Malley, the Social Security Commissioner under the Biden administration, and a former Maryland governor, as saying, quote, at this rate, they will break it, and they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits, unquote. Social Security is just one of the agencies that Doge is either gutting or has already gutted,

and it's leading to kind of a mass resignation, not only of, like, you know, probationary employees and, like, deferred resignation, like, letter employees, right? everyone who's receiving that fork in the road email, but also just like top-ranking, like, officials who've been doing this their whole lives who are quitting because now it's impossible for them to, like, do their job with Musk's Doge basically running all of these departments and determining who can be hired, who should be fired.

In late January, David Leibrick, the highest-ranking civil servant at the Treasury Department, was put on leave and then quit his job after trying to stop Doge from accessing data at the Bureau of Fiscal Service. the head of the FDA's food division, Jim Jones, resigned last Monday, citing Doge as inhibiting his ability to run the department.

And at least four deadly plane crashes have happened this past month. Actually, five now, considering one this morning. And then there's also that whole upside-down Delta flight from Minneapolis to Toronto. And this is all happening, amidst the Trump admins mass firing of several hundred probationary employees at the FAA and already understaffed agency. and this past Monday, a team from SpaceX arrived at the air traffic control headquarters in Virginia

to begin the process of overhauling the control system. Great. Cool. Luckily, SpaceX has had no notable incidents, and so I'm sure that will be fine. No, they didn't just hide a rocket going off. There's good news. There is good news on this front, which is that. President Trump is very, very mad that his new Boeing plane is, like, his personal plane for, like,

I think it's, I think it's like another Air Force one or something, isn't coming fast enough. so he's he's now encouraging them to like do a rush job on it and like let people in and don't have the right security clearances. So, so this whole thing may resolve itself. Critical support to Boeing. On critical support. I'm going to Boeing, you motherfuckers. You have one job that is to produce an airplane at your normal quality and standards. Similar to that on February 13th, an Air Force plane carrying Secretary of State Mark Rubio was forced to turn around on route from Washington to Munich after the aircraft, a convert. Boeing 757 experienced a mechanical issue 90 minutes into the flight. So they were forced to turn around. So again, critical support to Boeing. I only wish them the best in securing more and more government contracts. Absolutely. You know, I think we, well, actually, we should probably

call it as an episode before I make any more jokes about air travel. Which is increasingly scary. I flew so much last year and I am less willing to now. I do not. want to now. That said, it is worth noting. I think there's two things that are worth noting. One is most of what people are pointing out as like scary crashes are crashes that the same number happened to this point last year when it comes to like small aircraft. Yeah. Those are much more dangerous than cars, like tiny personal aircraft, which is why I always enjoy it CES when they try to sell, uh, uh, flying cars, even less regulated flying cars. Oh yeah. But I also think from a political standpoint? No, we should actually, absolutely every single plane crash, even if it's, you know, a tiny

plane crashing and not tied to the greater shit with the FAA, all of them should go on Trump's head. It's not about what's true. It's about what you can use to make political hay. And this is something that you can hurt Republicans with. Every time someone dies in a plane crash, lay it at their feet, right? Like, what do you get from being honest? And it has been one of the more deadly months in aviation history. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Specifically for like American soil. They're definitely going to get people killed, but like the way that you do that is not wait until, okay, this is finally the one that it's fair to attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You make it every time this gets in the news, you make it on their head, you know? It's certainly not helping, right? That like the FAA was already understaffed. Like, as you said, people were already dying in plane crashes. Taking stuff away from the FAA is not helping. Like, we can't isolate that from every crash that happens. And like, it's not just that. It's also like the continued hiring freeze.

Largely air traffic control operators have not been affected by the firings. Other support staff have, which are still just as crucial. But it's also preventing them from hiring more air traffic controllers, which they need to because it's so understaff, which actually does lead to an increase of these like small plane collisions. And this is like a similar pattern across all departments, though. The USDA announced on Tuesday that over the weekend they accidentally fired several agency employees who are working on the bird flu response as a result of the Trump-Douge mass firings. And now, and now USDA is trying to rehire them.

Have we explained the provisional employee firing thing that they're doing for all of these on here yet? You should explain what a probational employee is. Well, yeah, it's employees that have been hired for less than a year and have different protections than other career employees. Yeah. And part of Doge's campaign to do like massive, massive layoffs across all government sectors is by targeting, first of all, probationary employees because they're easiest to fire

and then move on to career employees. And like this is just like the first batch of mass layoffs because they're the easiest to do. They don't have like union negotiations. They can't appeal the firing. So this is like the first step in a larger series of events that will lead to, you know, a severely reduced government workforce. And like this situation with the USDA is a very similar to the situation with the nuclear strategy employees who the government is struggling to rehire because they lost contact information

with them after firing them. They fired the nuke police. They fired the guys whose job is to transport and make sure no one steals nuclear weapons. The one kind of cop we can all agree we need as long as we keep having those things. This is one of these things where it's like, Like I've been saying not even really as a joke that millions of people are going to die from this, but like, yeah. Like if these people are not stopped. Oh, we'll have a broken arrow. We are like two months into this. This is the second time they have tried to fire the Duke police and they actually succeeded this time, right?

Like millions of people are going to die. And they lost their phone number? They can't even call them back. Like, they don't have the numbers of the security. Like, these people must be stopped from doing this or we are going to. to see a cataclysm that is going to make the fucking pandemic look like a fucking joke. Like, we're all going to look fondly back on, like, the year we spent in lockdown and the million who died as, like, the fucking, like, smoking remains of seven American cities.

I have an episode on this that I'll put out at some point, but I, you're getting to a thing that I've been worried about for a while, Mia, which is we are every day getting closer and closer to a nuclear January 6th. And what I mean by that is an incident in which a nuclear weapon gets, either gets utilized or gets out of the control of its proper handlers in a way that is dumb in the same way January 6th. So I'm not talking about you have like an actual military conflict between Russia and the United States. I'm talking about something really fucking stupid. Like I'm talking about something incomprehensibly silly. And yeah, millions of people will at least potentially die.

Well, what another uplifting episode of It Could Happen here. It could happen here. Stop them now. They're weak right now. Before they do this. They could only get stronger. Yeah, well, until someone else gets a nuke, then ten old pets are off. Like I said, if you are someone who has been fired from the federal government

or transporting a nuke, I have a large backyard. And Cool Zone would love to become a nuclear power. Also, unrelated. We have a tip email. James, we want to talk about. For legal reasons, this is a joke. We can not want any nukes. It is CoolZone Tips at Proton.me.

You can contact us there. It is Proton mail is encrypted. That only means that the mail is encrypted if you send from a Proton email address to a proton email address. None of that means that you had necessarily 100% secure. But it's the best option that we have for right now.

If you'd like to reach out to us, please feel free to do so. Cool Zone Tips at Proton. dot me. Mm-hmm. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday

with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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