It Could Happen Here - Building Resiliency with Margaret Killjoy

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

A discussion with author Margaret Killjoy on how to get involved in your community and first steps to take towards resiliency. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and saying the actual name of the show, which is It Could Happen Here. It's a show about the fact that the society is kind of falling apart or changing, depending on your perspective of things. And people need to prepare for what's coming, which is a world of greater instability and economic collapse and rising authoritarianism and increasing fights in order to reverse and stymie all of those terrible things. And, you know, one of the things I've seen in some early feedback from other stuff I've done on other shows, and also from earlier episodes of this, is people who will go like, hey, everything you're saying about mutual aid is rad, but I live in X town, in whatever state, and there's nothing here. There's not an organized

left. I don't know of any mutual aid groups. How can I get involved or how could I start my own organization and try to get people involved? And then another thing we get asked a lot is like, hey, what you're saying about building resiliency and preparing for difficult times, gardening and whatnot sounds great, but I'm poor as shit and I live in a tiny apartment or whatever. I have no resources or no room, even if you're not, don't have enough money, like I'm in the middle of some horribly dense city. So this week, we're going to be talking around those subjects in a number of different ways. And to kind of kick us off, I've got, of course, Garrison with me.

Woke him up at nine in the morning. How are you doing, Garrison? Ungodly early. Yeah, it's hideous. It's hideous. And then Margaret Killjoy, who's up at a much more reasonable hour because time zones are a wild ass thing. Margaret, how do we introduce you?

You're an author. You're a writer of fiction. You host a podcast called Live Like the World is Dying, right? And you've had me on and you talk about a lot of the same things we talk about in It Could Happen Here. We're actually shamelessly stealing your podcast in order to make it corporate and sold out. How are you doing, Margaret? I'm excited to be part of the corporate sold out. How are you doing, Margaret? I'm excited to be part of the corporate sold out version of my own podcast. And actually very glad that you all do a wider audience thing. But I think that is a decent way to introduce me. I do a lot of different things, and I've been doing also like organizing

and trying to seek radical political change for about 20 years to various degrees of success. Actually, mostly not to any success because we actually still live in maybe a worse society than we were in 2002. 20 years ago. Yeah. I tell people that I dropped out of college to ride freight trains and overthrow the government and I wasn't good at either of those things because i mean you have all your limbs that's true i do have all of my limbs yeah yeah um and i'm not in prison and you're not in prison um which is really all anyone can ask of the universe um so you have started a number of organizations in your career as an activist and kind of that hat. And I guess let's start with like, yeah, somebody who lives in a place,

there's no kind of really, really organized left. There's probably not in a lot of these places, much of even like a Democratic Party. There's certainly not mutual aid efforts. And I do think that there's a, well, mutual aid as a concept is pretty firmly rooted in anarchism. There's mutual aid kind of organizations that are not particularly leftist, or at least people doing stuff like that. Like, I think a good recent example would be the Cajun Navy, who did a lot of rescues after the most recent set of hurricanes, where certainly not a left or an anarchist organization, but a lot of what they're doing is um is is a community aiding itself um so i don't know where do we where do you want to start here well i guess i mean specifically in disaster times you don't necessarily work with the people that you would assume that you're expecting to work with and you know one of the one of the stories that really sticks with me

is like a friend of mine who's this you riding anarchist covered in tattoos and all of that. And during flood relief in eastern North Carolina was flying into storms and small planes with libertarians. Because the people who are willing to fly small planes into storms and own planes tend to be the more libertarian side of things. And so here's anarchists and libertarians working together to get people what they need. And one of the things that I try, because this is one of the biggest questions, I think that the left faces, and you know, people trying to make the world better faces is how do we get people involved? And also, how do people get involved if no one's helping them get involved. And I don't have all the answers about it, but it's something that I think about obsessively a lot. And one of the things

that I really try and focus on with people is people say, well, I want to be prepared. And you talk about community being a very important part of preparedness, but I don't feel like I have a community because we live in a very isolated society. And one of the main things I try and remind people though, is that in the same way that property relations break down, like someone's like, oh, I don't have any stuff. And if the apocalypse comes, what will I do? And like, well, kind of the answer is that like, once property relations break down, there's a lot of stuff and it's very available. There will be much stuff around. Yeah, like warehouses exist full of stuff. Yeah. And yeah, Amazon warehouses exist full of stuff. Yeah. Amazon warehouses are going to become like fun boxes.

Yeah, exactly. Slash fortified outposts, allegedly. Yeah. And community is the same way. Not that you would go raid community, but instead that... Some people will. Yeah, it's true. But you can create community in times of crisis in a way that's

actually harder to do when the existing social order exists. And, and the, the, the thing I always say uses my, my dumb example of this about how people come together during times of crisis is, you know, when I'm waiting for the bus and, you know, some city or something, and no one talks to each other, if you don't know each other until the bus is like five minutes late. And then everyone is comparing notes about where they think they saw the bus last and everyone's friends and sharing snacks and things you know so on some ways i'm like be optimistic if you don't already know a community yeah and i think there's also things

you can do that don't necessarily cost a lot of money to both kind of build resiliency and kind of community connections now one of those things i've had a lot of money to both kind of build resiliency and kind of community connections. Now, one of those things, I've had a lot of friends in different cities work for, there will be different farming co-ops, right? And generally the arrangement is you volunteer some sort of time helping them with, you know, there's a lot of shit work on farms. And in return, you generally get some amount of produce or whatever. But really what you're getting is practical experience, growing food, and you're meeting the kind of people who are interested in growing their own food. And,

you know, those kind of connections can be really helpful when things get worse. And so I think it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't have to cost much to try building community now, or to at least try putting yourself in some of the spaces where the kind of people you might want to be in the kind of people you, you might want to know when things get worse might be. Yeah. And there's a lot of, um,

there's a lot of like opportunities. The world kind of wants you to volunteer. You know, there's all of these things that if you reach out to people and you're like hey i don't have any connections but i'm interested in volunteering there are types of organizations that do interesting things that are open to that you know i kind of maybe it's terrible but whenever my friends especially my friends who are in their 20s or something who we don't really feel kind of lost and without direction for a while i'm like like, yeah, go sit in a tree, like go join direct action

environmentalist groups that are desperate for people to come live their lives in this like self sustaining community that is incredibly traumatic and hard to do. And I don't necessarily recommend this to everybody. But you know, it's a thing that you can do is that you can go participate in different movements, some of which do want strangers you know some of which don't right um you can't show up to everything and be like why aren't you including me you're a bunch of assholes yeah and um i don't know so when when it comes to actually like trying to start something um like going out and accepting, okay, there's not,

maybe I can't leave my family behind and go do a tree sit, but I would like to start a community engaging in something direct. Maybe that's not illegal direct action. Maybe it is. It's none of my business. How do you recommend people

just kind of start organizations, find people, avoid pitfalls? Like, you know, if you've got to make your own mutual aid group because there's not one in your town and you want to, I mean, people have expressed a desire to understand how to do that. So I'm, you know, I'm not an organizer. I'm barely a journalist. I am curious for your thoughts on that. Well, okay. So my own caveat is I'm no longer an I am curious for your thoughts on that well okay so my own caveat is I'm no longer an organizer I spent much of my 20s being part of organizations and then I finally

realized that I can just kind of do whatever I want and then figure out how to plug that into other people's things but I will say the main way I've heard this expressed and I believe in is that we should do if you want to start getting involved is you think about what you're good at and or you think about what you want to be good at. And then you think about the problems that you're facing.

And then you think about how to apply what you're good at to the problems that you're facing. So if you're sitting there and you're like, well, I'm a really good illustrator, right? I'm not. I'm a terrible illustrator. But let's say you're a good illustrator. I'm a terrible illustrator, but let's say you're a good illustrator. And then you could basically reach out to organizations that maybe aren't even close and be like, hey, I'm an illustrator. Is there anything I can do for you all?

But if what you want to do is start an organization locally, it's okay to start small and build up. It's okay to, you know, it's kind of a, if you build it, they will come kind of thing in general. Like if you start, if you figure out what you need to do, you know, we want to distribute supplies, right? Then you just do it. Like you just, um, even if you start by yourself or ideally you kind of start with yourself and a couple of friends that you drag into it. And then you, you see what gets inertia, like rather than like forcing, rather than starting off, don't start off by writing your bylaws. Um, you know, maybe start with an idea of like, if you have a cool name that you want to use, like,

sometimes that's great to like, start with like a hook and like starting a band or something, you know, you'd start with like the thing that brings everyone together, which is sometimes a clever name, but, but mostly you just start by doing it. And, um, you know, one of the, one of the ways that's longest standing that people can get involved with locally or start locally. And there's a lot of resources about how to do it is, uh, is food, not bombs, food, not bombs is a mutual aid project that's existed. And I wish I knew off the top of my head since when I want to say the late seventies, but I really couldn't tell you. And it's just food. It's just organizing food to give to people in public and it's actually wild

how illegal it is in some places like people get arrested for food and bombs all the time in florida and a couple other places but yeah we talked about them in the first part of the season because there have been a couple of point i don't think nationally the fbi has talked about them as a threat but like in the austin field office and i think one or two other places they've been like discussed as a terrorist threat for yeah handing out food i've had like helicopters flying overhead and like rioters around the corner and stuff for for handing out food with food not bombs yeah it's uh they missed the second half of the name i guess i don't know i don't know i think maybe if we were to create bombs not food we we might not get as much police attention but that's just a theory yeah well what

everyone says is that we need food and no one says this no one would ever say this no one would ever believe this but we need food and bombs um you know food and bombs yeah bombs for some food for others we don't judge we provide explosives and we provide food yeah okay so if you can, I think if you can, you start by working, you figure out what you're good at. You find a group of people that are interested in accomplishing the same thing who maybe have similar skill sets or different skill sets and you figure out what you can do and you start doing it and you organize calling people and being like, Hey, will you donate to us or getting all your friends together to give you stuff to redistribute or whatever,

right? Putting out calls on social media for things to redistribute. You know, most structures start grassroots and most of the time they kind of tend to do best when they're grassroots instead of becoming a little more codified. So if possible, do that. But if you're just you, sometimes tying into existing organizations is a thing worth doing. And if there's nothing locally, you can look at things a little further away, or you can look at things that are on maybe on a national level.

But there's a lot of dangers in joining existing organizations and structures. And I guess I would say there's like three types of danger. And one is that you talk about all the time. And thanks for bringing into the leftist vocabulary the word grifter. I never heard anyone use the word grifter until your podcast. It's the most important word in American English, for sure. We live in a fucking grifter republic. It's incredible. And we always have. This isn't new. Yeah. But we need more words because we also need the word for people who are looking for useful idiots. And there's a lot of social movements.

And not to be like, I support the left. I think that what we're attempting to do is very worthwhile. And I like us more than the other side by a fair amount. But there's a lot of things that, there's a lot of problems with the left. And one of them is that people are looking either to just have you as a body with no decision-making power and no autonomy which doesn't actually build a better world because you're just yep stop being a cog in their machine and become a cog in our machine right and then there's also people who are kind of um looking for useful idiots cannon fodder

like people to hang around while they while they do stuff you know, and I don't want to go too hard. Bodies to stand out in front of cop shops sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And even like, you know, even like movements that I really care about that might do a lot of like nonviolent civil disobedience, although I don't, I'm not particularly, I'm not a pacifist personally, but you know, it's a very useful strategy, nonviolent civil disobedience. But sometimes they're like, Oh, you're young and new lock yourself to this thing, get arrested.

And I would definitely say to people, don't get arrested on purpose at your first actions. Like don't be anyone else's cannon fodder until you feel like you are part of the decision-making and part of like, like you really matter. And like, then, then don't do dangerous things for other people's projects. Like the, the shit that States do that's so messed up is, is turn human bodies into resources that then get sacrificed for unclear

ends. And unless you feel like you have some sort of, like, there are times where being arrested is necessary and helpful, but unless you feel you fully understand not just why you're doing it,

but also that, like, you're not being told to do it. You have autonomy. Like, I'm going to do this thing that I know will end in my arrest because I, like, I don't know.

That's probably, like, I think most people in that position know this, but I definitely have encountered some uncomfortable situations in the past. I'm sure similar to the ones you have where it did seem like people were kind of being pushed to take that risk for reasons they didn't fully understand or in a situation they didn't fully grok you know yeah which which gets at one of the things that when i talk about how i think this is the biggest problem we've not not the cannon fodder issue but the getting people involved is the biggest issue i think we currently face because there's so many people who want to be involved right now because

the world is even worse than usual and yeah um and it's hitting groups of people who want to be involved right now because the world is even worse than usual. And, um, and it's hitting groups of people who haven't been hit by it before. And people are often also looking for a sense of community. And there's a thing that people, we don't talk about enough when people are getting involved. There's two different reasons people get involved and both are entirely valid. And one is to fix things. And another is to find, to break out of the isolation that they live in, in their daily lives. Um, and we need to be aware of that when we talk about how to onboard people. And we need to be aware about that. If you are getting involved, you should think about your own desires. Are you looking for community? And

desires? Are you looking for community? And if so, you can find it within radical action, right? But if you are doing that, then you especially need to be on guard against peer pressure because it's a really easy way to feel like you're involved with things is to go hang out with people who are all doing a really scary thing. And that's beautiful and i absolutely did that when i when i first got involved in anarchism i i in politics in general i i i joined in headfirst and uh you know spent a night in jail within the first couple months and i don't have any particular regrets about that and i found community in a way that i had never had in my life because of how isolated our society is but that's not the only reason to go do these things. Yeah. And that is, I mean, I think a lot of people experienced that last year during the George Floyd protests is the kind of, I mean,

it's a thing we've talked about in the first season of It Could Happen Here that times like that, this war does this too, can actually provide meaning that people people have lacked and a lot of it is that community that like community of sufferers the trauma bonding um that feels like the most important thing even because maybe it is the most important thing you've ever done i think in a lot of cases it is um but that's also mind altering and it um it it can lead to situations that are not entirely dissimilar to cults. I'm not saying that they are cults because cults are, number one,

with a cult there's generally going to be like a leader and such. But like there are things that happen that draw people into cults that are just human things. There are aspects in some cases, as I've said before, of like a good party. But there are cult-like aspects to the kind of groups that form in these traumatic situations that can lead people to start making really poor decisions um and and so you have to really you always have to be kind of analyzing not just what you're doing but what's going on in your own head in the head of the people heads of the people around you um

that's that's just always important. But I think particularly when you're trying to do something new and different and in a lot of ways bigger than anything you've done before. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

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and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know. Do you have any specific advice for like kind of avoiding the cults of personality that sometimes form in new organizations? Yeah. So you have both informal and formal structures can both cause problems with cult of personality. There are these brilliant essays that I haven't read in like 20 years that come from the feminist movement. And one of them is called the tyranny of structuralist.

And as best as I remember it, these are very short essays. As best I remember it, the tyranny of structuralist says, if you don't have a formal structure in your organization, you're going to have this informal leader who basically tells everyone what to do. And that's a problem. And, and there's a very important piece. And I believe it comes from a Marxist feminist perspective, but I'm not a very important piece. And I believe it comes from a Marxist feminist perspective, but I'm not a hundred percent certain.

And then there was an anarchist feminist response around the same time. Maybe I'm not sure called the tyranny of tyranny. That was like, yes, that's true. And also when you have a formal structure and put someone in charge, they're in charge and that has other problems too. And I think that it just, we have to be aware of both of these things that, um, you know,

the, the fact that most movements are very decentralized and grassroots has, has huge advantages, right? But it does have problems of causing informal cults of personality. Um, uh, podcasting is a big part of this problem.

Um, and actually I really appreciate that you're not an organizer, like frankly, and it's part of why I'm not an organizer on some level is because, um, when people read the books that someone writes or listen to someone's voice all the time, it is very influential, right? And being aware of that and therefore not exerting that power is a very good thing. And, but there's, okay, so the other thing, like when I worry about like people getting involved with like, don't get peer pressured into stuff when you first join, there's also this thing that is, needs to be talked about. And maybe you all have talked about this some previously, but entrapment. Entrapment is a huge problem. And specifically, the feds tend to look for young idealist activists who can be peer pressured into actions that they may or may not have otherwise ideologically agreed with, like, hey, let's go blow up a bridge or let's go blow up a dam. And, and this doesn't just happen to the left it happens um i mean oh yeah

all around uh yeah for sure like there's that case of the guys who were trying to kidnap the governor of uh was it michigan a lot of that was informants who were there's a lot of there's you can debate heavily whether or not it it was entrapment. Obviously, what we might consider entrapment morally often isn't entrapment legally because the FBI does know where the lines are legally. But that doesn't mean it isn't morally entrapment. Right. And they do that a lot and they usually succeed. Well, they may not usually succeed at the – they usually succeed at the case and entrapment defenses are, are hard to succeed with. And so really just like,

and thinking about, I think developing your own moral compass and sticking to it is one of the single most important things that a new activist can, can do and not to be afraid of radical action necessarily like militant action, but, but be wary of it. But then again, I mean, in terms of like being wary of what the other thing to avoid doing is like accusing each other, like Fed jacketing, like being like, oh, well, that person's doing the same thing a Fed might do, like wink, wink. You know, it's a really complicated and annoying game to play.

And if you're just getting involved, you're going to have to learn how to get it. Play this game of not Fed jacketing and also not falling into stuff. And it's annoying because you probably have to kind of learn some of this stuff, even if all you want to do is give away blankets. you want to do is give away blankets. You know, if you want to tie what you're doing to a larger ideological structure, then it's going to come up that you need to be aware of how repression applies to that larger ideological structure. Yeah, like all this is very useful, specifically, if you're trying to find something kind of preexisting or, you know, looking, you know, or, you know, starting something in a bigger city where you have like connections can be made to other existing organizations.

And I'm trying to think, you know, there's a lot of people who live in more like rural areas. It's not much of like a liberal or like, you know, especially leftist kind of subculture. How would, how would you recommend people who live in those kinds of scenarios try to start building this community when say like they only have like a few friends? What, what steps do you think people can take if they have more, you know, a secluded setup? So it is harder. and i live in a red area close to a blue area right and i do most of my organizing and as much as i do organizing within the the nearby small hippie city uh even though

theoretically the thing that i care the most about is connections to my immediate neighbors right um that is harder and it is harder for a lot of different reasons especially if you have um cultural differences between you and the people that you're around. Right. Like I'm a trans woman and I live around a lot like farms and stuff. Right. And and previously this wasn't a problem before Trump. This kind of just wasn't a problem after Trump. Now, all of a sudden, the fact that I'm trans is like an attack against people in a way that it never used to be. And and so now they all have an opinion about the fact that I'm trans is like an attack against people in a way that it never used to be. And, and so now they, they all have an opinion about the fact that I'm wearing a dress, but still at the end of the day, I would say that most of the people that I'm around

are actually totally chill. Like there's a vocal minority of really horrid people, right? Um, but even the people who might be, and might have even like voted for Trump or whatever, are not necessarily at least along my own identity lines. I'm also white, are not necessarily going to give me shit. And you know, I can go talk to them in a dress and they might be sort of confused and they might not be. But if you have more culturally in common with the people around you, then there is a lot of room that you can start working on from there. And this actually ties into something that I think applies to people across the board, which is we have this, especially new activists, but also including people who've been in it for a long time, have this like real arrogance about the fact that we're like, right.

And when you want to change the world, you need a certain amount of arrogance. You need a certain amount of like, I mean, I literally believe we need to not have a government or capitalism. And these are very major changes to our existing structure. There's a huge amount of arrogance to that. Although not having a government is slightly less of a major change now than it was a couple years ago. That's true. And also, like something I sometimes, actually, it's funny, I used to have it more in common with these neighbors, but then all the libertarians went, goddamn, authoritarian. Yeah, that bummed the fuck out of me yeah there's there's some good ones still there's like again there's the there's the

there's the taking your private plane into a disaster area libertarians and god bless them totally and you know they're like they just don't want their you know it's like my my dad is sort of on the libertarian side of things and keeps 20 bills in the visor of his truck to give to people flying signs. And he just doesn't want the government redistributing his money. He doesn't mind redistributing his money. Yeah. And I'm like, all right.

I don't have any real objection to that. He's also no long. Anyway, if you come at people with this attitude of like, I'm right and you're wrong, the kind of people that you can get to join your side by saying I'm right and you're wrong are not the people you want. You want people who challenge authority,

including the authority of people who claim there shouldn't be authority. And so just actually listening to people and like hearing people out and when possible, avoiding drawing lines between people is one of the main ways to connect with people across either cultural divides or especially political divides and this can't always happen right like I walk down the street in a dress and someone like calls me a bad word like I'm not going to be like I understand why you think to call me that and I understand how like me dressed this way kind of challenges your sense

of masculinity that you've been brought up into as the only way that you can hold yourself strong in a very hard world no i don't do that i um scream fuck you and chase them um i would never chase anyone with a knife i think that's not legal so i wouldn't do that. But, you know, that might work. And, you know, like, fuck those people. I don't care what they have to say. No, of course not. reaching out and talking to people who, you know, don't agree with you, aren't, aren't on your side ideologically. There's folks who will kind of assume like, oh, so you're saying I should like try to be friendly with people who want to murder me. Like, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying like as a trans person or a black person, you should go talk to, um, a militant anti-LGBT

activist or a fucking Klansman or something. I'm saying that like, that's not within the broad, I'm saying what you need to recognize, but what I think is important to recognize, especially if you're, when we talk about like post, you know, collapse or whatever, is that within broad political tendencies.

So I'm not talking about like fascist or whatever, but I'm talking about like liberal, conservative, progressive, very broad political tendencies. You have roughly the same percentage of people who are shit so in an anarchist group the amount of people who are shitty is going to be similar to the amount of the general population that are shitty it's the same with every political tendency

but the corollary to that is again within broad tendencies you'll find roughly the same amount of people who are basically rad and maybe yeah, there's some, their brain got poisoned with disinfo and they believe some stupid shit and they vote like an asshole. But, you know, they'll stop their car if they see someone in an accident and they keep a fucking medical kit in their bag. And, you know, it's the shit that, you know,

I talk a lot about the stabbing on the Portland Max train. Well, the two people who died who died confronting that, uh, asshole, um, were a Republican retired veteran and a far left, uh, social justice activist. And they both, you know, put their bodies on the lines. I think that like, when we talk about like being willing to kind of talk with people who are, who are not on the same ideological boat as you that's that's what i mean not you should make nice with the people who want to exterminate you like fuck those people yeah because the thing you're looking for the thing i'm looking for is the republican who's going to hopefully instead of dying a saw alongside me successfully defeat the you know

actual far-right person but yeah yeah yeah, no, totally. And, and I think that that actually is part of the, it's not always the answer for every person who's isolated, right? Everyone who's socially isolated, but it is part of it. If you're trying to organize with people where you say you're the only leftist or the only anarchist in your area, then maybe you don't start. And this is actually funny. I'm very into being very public about my political ideology so that people know what biases I'm coming into things with. But maybe you don't start your rural mutual aid project calling it the rural mutual aid project, or maybe you do, or maybe you just start doing it and you find people who are willing to have the same goals and means as you. And I think you you can do alongside of that you can also just be

really public about what you believe i mean you know um again as an anarchist i end up working with like church groups and things that i i don't necessarily agree with on a lot of i a lot of things but they're not mad when i'm like oh i'm an anarchist they're just like huh okay i'm a church person or what you know and like okay i'm not i don't expect different of them and they don't expect different of me and we we know what we have in common and what we don't to a certain degree and then we work on what we have in common and so airing and so this is both true if you're within the movement and you're hoping to try and solve this problem for other people but i also think it's going to be true for people who are trying to build things in areas

where they don't have, where they don't feel like they're part of something larger. Is erring on the side of inclusion versus exclusion? And not, and like you're talking about, it's about erring on the side of not always include everyone. Not always committing to a hard and fast rule. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. Be, be open to the fact that people can surprise you in ways that aren't terrifying yeah also because you get terrified enough by enough like people who you think are on your side that you're like oh yeah i'm sad y'all don't do the um the ad pivots in this show because oh yeah no you can do it we can do it we can do it we can edit it we can cut it in during one of the long awkward pauses go for it okay and we'll keep all this up cut it in during one of the long, awkward pauses. Go for it. Okay. And we'll keep all this up to it in, but we'll actually cut the actual edit so you'll hear it.

It's like Finnegan's Wake. You're going to hear it out of order. Okay. And hopefully you all will be able to figure out the second half of it. But the first half is anyone who claims to have all the answers is selling you something. Oh, uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, oh, you know who else is selling you something oh uh-huh yeah oh oh you know who else is selling

you something is it the ads services here go listen to the geico geico or or jesus we've had some bad ones lately um there's that sos cuba show that sounds we're rough uh there was that one that was just like god it was just like they're selling the concept of jesus we are sponsored by god i think i've gotten like walmart and mcdonald's on your show before well remember that's the people's food oh yeah organize actually try to organize around the walmart that could be very useful. So anyway, here's ads. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job

is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu,

aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If someone is trying to start something new inside one of these more secluded areas and like they have decided like yeah i'm willing to do something i'm willing to actually just like start it how how would you

recommend they try to figure out what some of the like biggest needs of the community are that they can actually tackle like how how does someone find out what to do with their mutual aid because they can like commit like yeah i can do something around supplies, something around this, you know, whatever, like how does one try to actually gauge what is important to try to tackle? I guess it depends on whether you feel like you're totally like if in,

in my head, if I'm totally inside a, not necessarily a community, but an area, right. I probably kind of know because I'm also experiencing whatever the thing is, but if I'm, if I'm a little bit detached from it, then I do need to like do kind of, you know,

the sort of traditional method is I think it's called listening projects. I've never actually personally done a listening project. Um, I've been around many people who do where you basically like, I mean, sometimes you go door to door and you're like, Hey, what's up? Like, what do you need? Like what's going on? You know? Um, but like, say for example, in the area that I live, there is a, um, a rural organizing project. It's not the actual rural organizing project, which is a specific structure, but there is a, a rural mutual aid group in the, the largely red area that I live in, uh, that's run by, by leftists. And they, um, I think that largely they they they did a lot of like firewood delivery for example because a lot of the areas around here are heated by wood stoves and you have a lot of poverty in rural areas

and of course poverty looks very different in rural areas versus urban areas and you know one of the advantages of being rural poor there's many disadvantages like lack of access to certain types of services right um but one of of the sometimes advantages of rural poverty, as I understand it, I'm not specifically an expert, is you have space, right? You just don't have stuff or money. And so you can have stuff if people give you stuff. So you can like store your firewood. And then also because it's this very specific, tangible thing, people can get really excited about like, oh, I can chop firewood or maybe even I can't chop firewood because my legs busted. Cause I work in the paper mill or whatever, but I can, but I got a trailer on my

truck, you know? Um, and I can haul that and people get really excited when there's like things that they specifically are good at, especially things that kind of have alienated them from other people that they're good at, that they can then participate in. Which doesn't totally answer your question, but I would say if anyone specifically is in a rural situation and is looking to start a mutual aid group, look at the Rural Organizing Project. I don't believe that they specifically do rural mutual aid organizing, but they talk a lot about what it means to be an organizer within areas that are largely controlled by the far right. But it's not like the people are all far right.

They're just controlled by the far right, you know? Yeah, the people actually there, once you talk to them, might actually be a lot more reasonable than the media influencers who are part of this you know same thing yeah and it is it is one of those things this is a topic we're drifting to but it's when we drift to regularly on this show we're like when i talk with conservatives it's it's not uncommon that i can without especially if i don't start by mentioning anarchy i can get them to agree to a lot of the things i believe, which is like, yeah,

maybe people don't need to be governed. Maybe that like doesn't work out good. Maybe, uh, politicians are corrupt and should have less power. And like, that doesn't mean that you're going to, you're going to get them on the barricades with you.

Um, cause any productive kind of relationship starts from like a, a base of shared, uh, interests. And it, it's not a useless endeavor to engage in kind of trying to subtly, you know, if you if you feel out people around you who are ideologically not particularly similar to you, but also decent people, you can kind of try and work

in some some, some thing you've not just not just some common ground, but you can try and work in some some some thing you've not just not just some common ground but you can try and get them to see that they agree with you one more than they think um and that that has an an effect of changing the way people think about the world it really does yeah and you but you also have to go into it open to yes maybe maybe it's not going to change your opinion about the way the economy should be structured or the way that sure works right but you know you definitely have to go into it with a i can now understand why you drive a big pickup truck that burns a lot of gas or yeah whatever whatever thing you might be coming into it thinking yeah or at least it might help you understand why they believe or do certain things outside of you know, Dave Rubin broke their brain because they got on YouTube at the wrong time.

I don't know. Margaret, did you have anything else you wanted to really get into? I guess one of the other questions that you all brought up was about preparedness, like maybe kind of almost in the inverse situation. Yeah. Where let's say that you live in a small apartment and you want to be prepared. And so in which case, maybe you have better access to community. Maybe you don't, right? A lot of people who live in the city are just as isolated socially as people elsewhere, but at least you kind of have like, there's a little bit more easy access to ways to break out

of certain types of isolation if you put work into it, because there's more likely to be groups around that are, that are public that you can go interface with. But in terms of like actual preparedness, you have the inverse problem, right? Of if you live rural, you might have room to store beans and rice. And if you live in the city, you might not, right? But I, I will say it's the other thing that I find people, the two things that people talk to me about, I think you all run into also, is that people are either, I don't have any community or I don't have any money in space. Yeah. And so if you don't have any money in space, I mean, in some ways it's like, well, maybe your focus isn't like stockpiling stuff. Stockpiling stuff is like the single most overrated part of individual or

community preparedness um i mean i do it but you know that's because i um my brain works that way um but also the level of like stuff that you might be looking for might be a lot less than like like you know it's like prepper media is filled with like here's how to build a bunker under your pool and i'm like what yeah there's there's so many levels i mean don't somebody so many other things that you should be doing before you go to that stage yeah yeah i mean like don't get me wrong if i had a pool i'd be stoked and if i had absolutely bunker under it i'd be even more stoked i'd be so happy yeah but but you know what it's like it's the first five gallon bucket of like dried food you store is far and away more important than the tenth right and like so just having a five gallon jerry can full of water so that you're like you

know what if the water turns off or we have a boil advisory, which happens all the time, I'm good for a couple days. Because most of the time, people think about preparedness as like, I'm preparing for the end times. And usually what it is, is the end times are real slow and chunky and crumbly, so that's the word. And so you're just really looking to smooth out interruptions. And a lot of that can be done very cheaply. And honestly, when you start storing your fifth five gallon jerry can of water, you're not storing it for you anymore. You're storing it for your neighbor. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's good, but not exactly. Not the first step, you know? Yeah. It's better to prepare for if you have like a week's worth of power outages or a week's worth of the water not working. Right. And those are more incremental steps because we're not just going to drop off and have no water forever

starting in a month right probably not but we i mean very likely have there's gonna be there's enough remaining systems that they that they want to fix it you know it's more likely that some some disaster is going to happen then we're going to have, you know, a week worth of stuff gone, you know, and that's the thing that's actually more reasonable to prep for. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, Margaret, where can the good people, and hopefully not the bad people, but statistically some of them will suck, find you. The good people can find me on, I have a podcast called Live Like the World is Dying, which they can listen to you on if they would like. And it's about individual and community preparedness.

I also am on Twitter way too much, at magpiekilljoy, Instagram at margaretkilljoy. My website is birdsbeforethestorm.net or margaretkilljoy.com. And that has like a list of all the books that I have out. And I have a new book, an old book being reissued that is coming out in November from AK press. The book is called a country of ghosts and it's an anarchist utopian book

because I was sick of people being like, but how would an anarchist society work? And I was like, you know what? I wrote a book. Damn straight. It also has a plot. So it's not boring. Oh, wow oh wow fancy getting kind of bougie with

your we do lots if you write a plot you get the wall no plots allowed only post-structural literature well okay so this has actually happened to anarchist fiction writers before um oh i love anarchist so much was this anarchist uh fiction writer um oh i can't remember where from i'm gonna this is terribly embarrassing but he he moved to england um from a colonized african country um what did rodigia become this is the most embarrassing thing I've ever heard. Oh, it became Zimbabwe, right? Okay, yeah. So he was from there, and then everyone, and he moved to London until he realized that there were a bunch of racists,

and he would break shit at awards ceremonies and then go back home. And he was a squatter for a while in the 80s. But he wasn't writing in the proper post-colonial Marxist realist tradition, because instead he was writing post modern fiction which is decadent and terrible yeah so he just like was like i don't care and so he's great that is that is lovely so anyway you love to see it uh that's the episode go out and write post modern

destructural jump on a train that too yeah probably also a bad idea I talked to somebody who lost their legs doing that once anyway episode's over you should probably keep your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me danny trails and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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