It Could Happen Here - Collective Media in the Second Trump Era

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Mia chats with Shuli Branson, Carla Joy Bergman, and Vicky Osterweil of the Collective of Anarchist Writers (CAW) about their new project, media between upheavals, and writing as a collective practice. https://www.cawshinythings.com/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-launch-cawSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I don't know, you listen to the show, right? You're listening at like some point in the future. You probably know the things falling apart, putting back together again, intro. I don't have to do it. We are doing something that we have done before and I guess we'll continue to do which is talking to other anarchist media projects about their work and how things are going and yeah, the general why, how, what of it all. And today we're talking with the collective anarchist writers and very specifically, we're talking to Shuli Branson, who is a writer, translator, and teacher

currently living in so-called New York. Carla Joy Bergman, who lives across the border in Canada and is a mom, writer, artist, and loves crows. Very important, we'll be coming back to that in a second. And Vicky Osterweil, who is a worker, writer, and agitator based in Philadelphia. And all three of you, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having us.

Hi. Thanks so much for having us. Thanks for having us. Love your project. Also, just wanted to give a shout out to our fourth member, Danny Berleson, who's not here today because she's working, paid work, who just rounds us out so beautifully and wanted to say her name. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. And partly I'm excited to talk about it because, so the acronym for this is C.A.W.

And there's a whole crow theme going on and we love a crow here in Portland. It is maybe our big thing. Yeah, I'm in Vancouver. Well, I was in Vancouver. I'd stuff from there, but Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it really came together around the crow highway. Thousands and thousands of crows. The combination of enjoying shiny things.

I think the crow is what ultimately sealed the project for us, honestly. I think they're all factors for all of us. Hell yeah. So. Yeah. Yep. yep. And that they're a collective and have meetings often throughout the day. No, a collective called a murder, which is also pretty badass.

Yeah, there's a huge thing in Portland here where we have the mega murder. So every morning, all the crows sort of fly off into their different like little murders and they go they you know they go out and hang out in the city and then At around sunset every day all of the crows fly back into the city They have their like giant mega murder meeting as thousands and thousands of them You know you look up and you just see them like the herds like the murders the crow is flying past and if you there's specific spots in Portland where you can just go see all of

the all the crows flying past and if you there's specific spots in Portland where you can just go see all of the all the crows hanging out and you know doing doing whatever the things crows do when literally an entire city's where the crows gather together every night. Oh no it's a spokes council. It's not a spokes council though because all of them are there. Oh right true. I feel like that's an assembly. It's more assembly yeah. Yeah in Vancouver all of them are there. So I feel like that's an assembly. It's more assembly. Yeah. Yeah.

In Vancouver, it's called, it's called the Crow Highway. Yeah. Hell yeah. Because it's so massive and goes forever and ever and ever. So there's a brief story on crows and resistance. A really incredible story in Vancouver when a park was a colonial person created a park in the downtown, which was like displaced a lot of indigenous people in their homes and designed this park that

was filled with crows as well. They also brought in animals from Europe as well to make it pretty and the crows made it really hard for these animals. And so the city of Vancouver for 50 years, from 1900 to 1950, gave free range to the Vancouver gun people to go into the park and shoot crows every day. Oh my God. And when I see like the amount of crows that are still alive,

it's just a metaphor for indigenous resilience, you know? Like it's just so powerful. So it's another reason why I'm like interested in them and in terms of where I was like living. As I've been gathering images for our project, I've been specifically trying to find images of crows attacking people, because I think that's good. So it's like, you know, the follow-up to what you were saying, Carla, is the crows attacking people because I think that's It's like, you know the follow-up to what you were saying Carla is the the crows revenge. Yes

Yeah, one of the things that you know You kind of have to do here in Portland is you have to kind of like negotiate with the crows You have to let you leave them like peace offerings and you sort of you know You when your friends come you let you introduce them to the crows so the crows know that you're okay. It's very sweet. Shiny things. Yeah. We love a crow-based society. And speaking of a crow-based society, yeah, do you want to, I guess, give a brief sort

of overview of what C.A.W. is before we get sort of more into it? Yeah. I'm happy to take a spin at that. This is Vicki, by the way. Yeah. So C.A.W. is sort of like, I mean, it's an anarchist journal of arts and culture that is a collective of anarchist writers. It's also a Corvid appreciation working group.

There's a lot of different acronyms for it. And what we are doing is we are bringing all four, at first just all four of our efforts together. So a lot of us work on separate podcasts. We have pedagogical tasks. We have many activist projects that center around culture. You know, I have a newsletter, she really has a Patreon, Carla has a newsletter, Danny has also has like an email list. There's all these different projects. And we realized that like, for all of our

talk about mutual aid and working collectively, when it comes to writing and creativity, the market has been so fractured and so alienated and sort of so turned into like, everyone has an individual newsletter that they're competing with one another, you know, even though they don't want to be like they want to be, but that's sort of ultimately what's happening is that there's limited sort of customers. And there's also this other trend going on right now, um, of this really exciting kind of worker owned journals, a lot of them local

journalism. There's some in New York and Chicago and there's one in Asheville and all over the country, as well as like on special topics. So like Aftermath, which like does, I think, the video games and there's 404 Media who does tech. There's just like all these different sort of sites doing this sort of thing. And I think in some ways, all of us are sort of collectively reinventing the newspapers that have been sort of stolen and destroyed by stolen and destroyed by capital in a big way.

So there's two goals that we have, and I think Carla speaks really eloquently to some of this, but one of which is to make writing radical culture work, beautiful, joyful, fun, and also critical movement work to make it sustainable for us and for anyone else who wants to share in this project who we can expand towards, but also to make it sustainable for us and for anyone else who wants to share in this project who we can sort of expand towards, but also to make it easier for people who are reading to have access to these things, like in one place instead of having to, you know, decide who they care for and who they like in order to sort of, you know, do that math of like, who can I afford to subscribe to? Like I personally, I don't know if this is true for everyone else, but personally, I

usually have about two or three people I can afford to subscribe to a month and they switch it out just like on a very arbitrary basis, you know, or something like that. That was very technical and financially focused. But what we're really excited to do mostly is support each other's work because I think we all really love and admire each other's work and have for a long time. And this is just this really exciting opportunity. Instead of my writing just being for me, it's for Shuli and Carla and Danny now. And that just makes it feel more inspiring and exciting as well as a collective process. Yeah. I mean, connected to the financial aspect, but I think when we were initially discussing this, the experience of being a writer is trying to find outlets for your writing. And if you're trying to get paid for that, you have to sell it to people.

Right. And so it's very hard to get paid at all for writing and it's very hard to place your writing in venues that publish it, especially if you're coming from an anarchist angle, because people do not really want to publish things that come to anarchist conclusions. Like they want you to do all the analysis and whatever, but they don't want you to think about what an action is like. So you could write for some of the so-called lefty socialist whatever rags, but they won't feature anarchists. They basically even just act as if anarchism doesn't exist, never existed. they erase the whole history of it, the only

serious kind of political forces, some kind of democratic socialism. So to us, we wanted to create a place where we can do the writing we want to do without having to make compromises in what we want to say just to get published. Because that game of shopping your stuff around is it's demeaning It's totally time-consuming it distracts you from actually doing the work So we were like let's band together instead of each of us going off wasting our time Trying to to write yeah And I think one of the other issues with this too also is like the pay is just so bad

like even though like almost especially the leftist groups like pages so rancid and all of the combinations of those things make it really, really hard to just sort of be an independent writer. And also, okay, jumping back a second to their racing anarchism exists. This is why I the one that makes me always lose my mind is like, I'm specifically going to name Jacobin here because I don't like them. But like one of the things that Jockabin will do is they'll be covering a strike that is organized by the IWW. It is an IWW union that they will have pictures of the strike where there are a bunch of people holding IWW banners and they will never mention that it was the IWW who organized the strike.

So like, yeah, there is this real sort of conspiracy of silence, I guess, about about our politics and the stuff that we do in the world. It's so glaring. Jacobin is definitely a big culprit. And then the podcast associated with the dig, like they will specifically be talking about history where anarchists have been very involved and they just will not mention them. I'm like, and they sometimes there's really good history and analysis on that podcast, but this is a mission that they clearly are choosing. Yeah, and I think self-organization is effectively the only way out of this, because otherwise you just sort of have to deal with all the media gatekeepers, like sitting there in front of you with a stick going, no anarchism, bonk.

Yeah, and even the projects that have sustained, that have survived, which are all really awesome and exciting. Very few of them have offered real sustainability on a professional level. I've been publishing quote unquote professionally for 15 years, and I'm the newest writer on the scene from our crew basically. We're incredibly experienced and all of us have books out, all of us have edited volumes,

all of us have podcasts and are people who I really respect, whose names I think are big and important in the world of theory and activism, and in the Anglophone world especially. None of us can sustain ourselves as writers as such because of the way that, just both politically but also just the way the market has come down. Yeah. And it just feels like something we could apply our politics to solving as a workplace issue rather than just sort of as like a, you know, are you committed enough to sacrifice

all your time issue? And so hopefully like that will also function to make more work available to produce and to platform and to, yeah, to sort more work available to produce and to platform and to yeah, to sort of work as an example simultaneously. Unfortunately, speaking of speaking of sustaining work as a platform, unfortunately, the way we are sustained here is with these ads. So hold on. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid.

Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandi B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences. Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open

dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern-day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shape-shifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors I know you. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And we are back. And this, I guess, brings us to the kind of work that's happening here. I was very excited because one of the things you all have done is an interview with Rawool Zabecki, who is the author of like, one of my favorite quotes of all time. I think I've done is an interview with Rawool Zabecki, who is the author of like one of my favorite quotes of all time. I think I've said on this show like multiple times.

I really ran into in a sort of completely unrelated book called Rhythms of the Pachacuti, which is about the sort of the water and gas wars in Bolivia. I talked about this book on the show like all the time. This quote goes roughly like struggle illuminates the divisions of a society, like lightning illuminates the sky. And I love it. It's like, it's the best explanation of what happened during 2020 that I've ever seen. And this is sort of what's happening, like, right now, too, is like, you have these sort of flashpoint moments where, you know, suddenly, like, all of how society works very briefly becomes visible, and you have this sort of moment when you're illuminated by it to act and so I'm I don't know I'm really excited that you are talking to him and yeah you talked bigger about more about what's been

going on and what's to come. I'm sure thanks that was a highlight definitely this year was talking to Raul obviously you know a podcast go we talked for quite a bit longer than what was on the show. And I think like reading his newest book that was translated and then doing that show with him, it was completely connected to me like reaching out to Shuli about doing KA because there was a way that we that he talked about this whole idea of disappearing symmetries that the Zapatistas are working on, like this idea of really, truly looking at all the fault lines within we're horizontality or autonomy

that we don't actually enact in our day-to-day lives. And so I really started to reflect on my own life that way. And not so much Vicky at this point yet, but like, Shuli and Dani, both of of them, we're blurbing each other's books and supporting each other, connecting to publishers or trying to connect each other to publishers. Yeah. Just trying to disrupt a competitive nature that's running underneath,

even when we're all really committed to not being competitive, but it is. So all of this to say that for me, like collaboration is at the heart of what we're doing here in a deep, deep way. And for me, collaboration just means that when something is created that wouldn't be created otherwise without this collaboration. So I'm just really excited to see what sparks and comes up individually, but also like with each other and even like through collaborations, like the show with Raoul and like how that

spreads seeds and ideas. Yeah, so like for myself, I'm going to definitely focus on collaboration in a deep way. I don't think I'll write very much solo stuff for the, for Ka. I think it will always be in conversation with others and just trying to double down on on doing it together instead of individual pursuits. Yeah, and that's something I think is useful for everyone listening to this is that like, it's a lot easier to develop better ideas. And, you know, it makes your writing more clear. It makes the way that you, you know know Just the way you act in the world a lot more clear when you're working with other people and it's you know

It's it's the process by which the best stuff gets created Yeah, I mean I think that's really like true And I think like I have for a long time now sort of accepted that writing is never gonna Support or sustain me and all I needed was a push from a few other people to be like, wait, what if we actually tried to do it collectively? To be like, oh yeah, I could actually try that. I don't have to just accept that I'll always have a full-time job plus whatever writing, whatever hours I can steal.

With great difficulty, put out some writing sometimes and then always feel guilty when I'm not putting out enough to sustain myself. That whole process, I think a lot out enough to sustain myself like that whole process. I think a lot of creatives right now know that struggle of having gigs and work and lots of other important things to do and accepting that that's the conditions. And I think what's so inspiring about, because Carla, as Carla was just mentioning, they sort of brought, I'm the last one on the crew and I was sort of the closer or whatever.

But I think like, I don't know what that means genuinely. But I was brought in and I think just having them propose it already, just as a project that we've been thinking of has changed the way I've been thinking about what is possible with the writing I'm already doing. Then so I think just to underline that point and go on and on and on. Collaboration is really important and supporting one another is so, is so powerful. Yeah. When Carla and I initially had like the seed conversation of this, like Carla said something about collectivizing as writers. Like we talked about it with all these other

other workplaces and industries and whatever. And it was like, like when, when she said that I was like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. We're off here doing our own thing. And as Vicki said, you do it sort of with the knowledge that it's not sustainable, you steal your time to do it. Even the supposed jobs that are there to enable you to write,

actually make you do all this other work. So like the time for writing is always like endlessly deferred. And, you know, we have that image also like of the patron or something, or like Virginia Woolf says, you need like money enough to have a room of one's own. But if we put ourselves together in this way, then we are trying to, yeah, I don't know, create more time for ourselves to write. And then like going back to something Vicky said earlier about like reinventing the newspaper,

there was a time in anarchism where like, I think we talked about this amongst ourselves, like where like every block had like a Yiddish anarchist newspaper, right? It wasn't like you had one newspaper telling all the anarchists what to think. It was like, it was hyper local in a way, and there was so many voices.

And so I think that's another thing that we want to do is like help for that proliferation because in the sort of spirit of collaboration, the reason to write as an anarchist for me is to have conversations, to produce the possibility for people to like receive it and then contact me and I get into conversations with people and learn things from them.

Yeah, and I think there's an angle there too, where like, I think we're kind of, okay, so I was a tiny baby when all this was happening. So I'm gonna have to rely on y'all for this. But like, you know, one of the things I get from sort of reading the record about like, the older anarchist movement, I mean, when I say older, I mean like, anti-g anti anti globalization era stuff was like

there were there seemed like there was a lot more of a kind of like anarchist media sphere. Are you talking about like the late 90s? Yeah, like, like, like to the 2000s, to some extent, like Battle Seattle. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was like the, you know, the birth of anarchy again, right? Yeah, I was definitely around. I'm in my late fifties, but the same struggle was there like that. Yeah.

That we're swimming in liberalism and like that socialist worker, like capturing of the movement was just as powerful then. And it was, you saw it at all the rallies and stuff and, you know, immediately anarchism was marginalized and pushed off as irrelevant and not practical for the revolution. And this is why it's splintered off in all these kind of sectarian movements. That's my take anyway. I think that's-

No, it makes sense. It makes sense. I mean, I've hashed this out with so many older anarchists that I was part of Institute for Anarchist Studies. Like, we've talked about this a lot, this phenomena, or with Scott Crowe, and you can just see the direct line of where it went into sectarianism from this sort of rebirth. Sorry, I went off on a different thing instead of like journals and media, but yes.

No, no, well, this is good too, because like, I think that's the only thing I've been realizing is like people don't, I mean, in my generation too, but like people younger than me don't really know the history of this stuff. Like all the time I have conversations with people where I start talking about like the Oaxaca uprising and they have no idea what I'm talking about. And I'm like, Oh no, we need to like, we need to like resuscitate the history of like the

two thousands because stuff happened there. So I wasn't actually active at that point, but I was like very adjacent to some of that stuff at the moment. Some of that was actually because a lot of what was going on in the alter globalization movement in that period was happening through culture. I think most famously, touring punk bands would also bring zine libraries with them. So they would have someone destroying zines and playing the show.

I got radicalized through punk. I know a lot of people who did. When I finally did, it was after that movement had largely crested. But I think there was a lot of focus on culture and also a critique of culture was also pretty central to how people were thinking and moving. I think the explosion of social media and posting and the quote unquote democratization and leveling of communication capabilities, which in some ways was more real in the early 2010s than it is certainly than it is now.

There wasn't totally a made up narrative, but it was also over relied on. I think people reached for a like, well, anyone who can use these tools to communicate, that's valuable. So critiquing media in general or critiquing capitalist media is beside the point because we can go around it. We can go on Twitter and subvert it and we can do all these, go sideways around it. So I was a participant in Occupy Wall Street in 2011, which people also don't know anything about because he's just being older. But Occupy Wall Street was started by a magazine called Adbusters, which came out of the WTO movement and sort of managed to stick around. And by 2011, when they did that, we thought it was like a joke. It was like, oh, these culture jammers who like

make fun of advertisements, like they started the movement, like that's ridiculous, right? Like, that's silly. And like, this is not to defend Adbusters, I think, whatever. Yeah, there's some issues with them. But yeah, ad busters. I think whatever we, you know. Yeah, there's some issues with them, but they also did think, I don't know. Yeah. But also I think that reaction of like culture jamming is sort of stupid or like, you know, like talking about who wants to talk about culture at this point. I think that that made sense in the context in which we were moving and organizing. But like now, once again, it is clear that by abandoning the cultural sphere in many ways, we have in

fact lost a tremendous amount of ground. So I think it's actually really important to have cultural organizations that aren't just theory, that aren't just news, but that are really talking about art and beauty and excitement and joy and fiction and all these things that we find really important because I think a lot of people think, well, it's a crisis moment, the world's ending, why would you do that? But the world has been ending since 1492, the world worth defending has been ending since then, and it hasn't ended yet. And one of the ways it hasn't ended is by indigenous and black and other marginalized cultures and stories and narratives and works of art has been an important mode of history

and resistance, just as much as organizing and struggle. And yeah, I think we can move some struggle into that terrain right now. And I think there's a lot of craving for it now because I think also for a while things felt really oversaturated. But the last five years, the internet doesn't feel helpful anymore. Everything feels like streaming is a mess. Like everything's a mess. There's no access to culture that feels good. Everyone hates what they're doing. They

know it's exploiting the artists. They know Spotify is giving people pennies and that HBO and all the streaming services support Amazon and they're just miserable, right? And I think there's a real opening and a real desire for something else at this moment, at the same time that things are indeed quite on fire, literally, ecocitally, but also politically. Yes. Speaking of everything being on fire, we need to take an ad break and then we will come back and I think the deliberate political intervention here. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations

get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandi B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys

navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that'll resonate with your experiences, Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation.

Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, 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.

No. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne Tales from the Shadows as part of MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We are back from Capitol Hellscape to mildly less Capitol Hellscape. Yeah, actually, you were going to say? Yeah, I wanted to just build on this culture thing because, you know, when, after October 7th,

when people are getting together to try to figure out how in the United States to do some kind of work in action and support and solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian liberation movement like people were just sort of like what the hell can we even do and one of the things that I would say to people is like just putting up stickers and writing about Gaza on the walls, like in graffiti, has a huge impact. And it's overlooked often, I think, as like something that's effective, but we can see that there has been a giant cultural shift after October 7th in terms of people's awareness of Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and then support for the Palestinians. I think that it has to do really, you know, post October 7th with the fact that this was

like kind of plastered everywhere. And so it's easy to kind of think that that isn't action. But to me, in a way, doing something like that is more effective than the kind of marching in circles that we can do that we call protest. And you know, like going back to punk, I think also punk has has gets a bad rap sometimes because you know, in that line of like the kind of book chin lifestyle ism. But I don't think we should downplay like punk created its own culture of people doing everything themselves to make it happen.

It's where I got radicalized to and they were like, it was anarchist, right? It was like explicitly anarchist and you were living in an anarchist way and like creating things in an anarchist way and it was this whole other world so like if we put our anarchist energy into culture it's part of making a world that we want to live in you know over and against that this world this hell world that we're also trying to destroy at the same time. So I think we shouldn't kind of just like dismiss this as less important than the other kinds of actions that we can take.

Yeah, and that brings me to something I wanted to sort of ask about like more deliberately, which is like, what's the kind of specific political intervention that you're trying to make into this moment with this project and both both sort of I guess, a bit more generally to Big question. I mean, I, my work has always been about intervening around any kind of dominant narratives that things are just now bad or that things are just now bad or that people don't know anything or pedagogically they're lacking. I've always tried to intervene around this idea that we've always been otherwise and we always are.

And there's always cracks everywhere and eruptions of radical ways of being and knowing and doing. And so it's like a deepening of that. And I think probably on a systemic thinking, systemically is really about disrupting individualism or liberalism or empire, whatever you want to colonialism to really like live it in the everyday. So that's partly that. And then on a just a super practical level, like, you know, all of us don't have wealth, don't have generational wealth, are working all the time to try to meet ends meet and some of us are have

housing insecurity and other real basic needs are insecure and health stuff and so like actually showing up for the each of us is at the core of it for me like I it feels so good in my body to know that I'm not just showing up to think about what to do for Kha. For me, it's like, it's in the act of collectivism for each other. And so I'm just open to what sparks and emerges with our work. I don't have an agenda except for to disrupt and intervene belief systems that are ideologically driven by Empire. And I also came of age in the early 80s in the punk scene and had a venue space. And to me, punk is, and I would say hip hop as well, underground hip hop stuff,

is like always the way to disrupt being captured by Empire or from liberalism, is to keep that punk ethos of doing it together and keeping it low to the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just like to build on that, Carla, because I think that was really beautiful. I second everything that you said. Is it like, many of us have a perspective, you know, that huge structural change is going to need to come and that often that will come through these big social movements, that these explosions of energy that, you know, these lightning strikes, right? But energy, these lightning strikes. But you can't force those.

You can't make those happen. And in the meantime, I think I've spent a lot of my in the mean times in trying to sort of organize stuff that's sort of oriented towards mass movement. And it just feels, often feels like wheel spinning. I'm trying to build mass movement organizing, whatever that means. And in the 2010s, one of the things that happened from 2011, arguably 2009, but definitely 2011 to 2020, was that wherever you were, it was never more than probably 18 months before there was something else going off in the streets. And so although

those could be very hard, those waves could be very difficult, you still had a lot of periods where you could just be waiting and it would just sort of happen again. That was certainly what I was doing in that decade in a way that I don't think I appreciated until it was over. Yeah. Because the last four years has been very different. The rhythm has been very different since the pandemic started.

And I can't just say panini on this podcast. Okay. Everyone does it right. Since the dynamics started, you know, those, those rhythms have been disrupted. And I think the Biden counter revolution against way 20, which has also really disrupted those things. And in that space, it has felt very clear to me personally, and I'm older, you know, whatever I'm like, you know, a movement elder at this point, just because our movements are so youth focused, not because I'm actually old. Like the decade before 2011,

from like 2001, you know, from, from 9 11 until sort of Occupy is sort of how I periodize it a bit. There wasn't a ton of street movement. You had the Iraq war stuff. That was really, really big. And there were important exceptions to that in the U S I'm doing a pod in history here. Obviously there's exceptions to this, But you definitely had all this time and the stuff that was sustained and remembered were largely like cultural projects. I think now as we're moving into this era here in North America, on Turtle Island, of extreme repressive danger. We shouldn't joke about it or downplay it.

We're facing a lot of extreme repression and fascists back in the streets in a big way. It doesn't feel like big political organizing of the kind that happened during the first Trump administration where people did a lot of marching in circles, but there were targets for the pressure, you know, like they don't feel as relevant now. So now I'm really off. Now I'm way off. But no, I think, so I think like, I think like we're in this moment where the fascists both are quite empowered and very unfocused. They're, they're, they're confused. They don't really have us in their sites. Like they think Liz Cheney is just as much a revolutionary as Assata Shakur or whatever. Right. And like that leaves us some space to move and to build things that can maintain a spirit of resistance that can reproduce

a culture of resistance that can also organize spirit of resistance, that can reproduce a culture of resistance, that can also organize. Another thing that has really been important for me recently with Kaa is that I've been doing an organizing project that I won't talk about the details of, but that the skills have largely come from punk music that I did in the 20s, in my 20s, being in a touring punk band. Those skills have made this organizing really easy.

That's been a huge thing for me because I'm working with other people who are younger who don't have that experience like, oh, how do you do this? I'm like, oh, no, no, it's so easy. You just like do this. You know, here's these skills I learned just from doing music. And like, I don't think that's just like accidental. As Julie was saying, like the DIY nature of some of that work, the culture work, you know, maybe the band wasn't revolutionary, the bands I was in certainly weren't like the revolution or whatever, but they gave me all of these powerful skills and ideas and concepts for doing really important work.

And I think that that's also a reason to pursue DIY culture in a way that's, that's genuinely sustainable and world building. I think like if I can build off this too, and I'm going to try to do some tying together of things. But like one of the ways that I think about my contribution is to think about like, let's not like don't look there. Like, let's look over here. And that can mean multiple things, which is often when people think of politically, they're looking at these big moments or big actions or like top down solutions which means that we take our attention away from these other places where we're doing all this stuff like like carl was saying that we're already doing a lot of important kind of like life making work. And then also there's moments in our movements where we have to be like you all look over here while we do stuff over here like you you don't want to be seen all the time so we have to be able to direct our attention to the things that we do stuff over here, right? Like you don't want to be seen all the time. So we have to be able to direct our attention

to the things that we do, and then also keep some of that stuff under wraps. And that means it's hard sometimes to see, and because it's so decentralized and anarchism really functions through decentralization, like we're not always aware of how much power we actually have and what's going on at any one moment. And going back to the kind of moments, even tracing back to, you know, the

battle of Seattle, and I think it's like ever more present today in all of the kinds of organizing for street actions that are being done, that a lot of the groundwork for any of these moments is done by anarchists and then it's not either claimed by anarchists or it's stolen from anarchists. Like, like we make everything sort of run and Anarchism makes everything run and then it just gets ignored because it's not about taking credit it's not about kind of imposing itself and so I think like that kind of in between of Saying what we're doing and sharing that knowledge and and then keeping under wraps so that we can keep chugging along.

And then just also being aware of when our work is being stolen and then repurposed for something that goes against what we want. I think these are all ways for us to prepare for those moments of like explosion or eruption where anarchy really manifests and then we can kind of taste freedom for a moment. Love it.

Yeah, I think the way I've always thought about it was this kind of like, it's this like flame tending process, where in these sort of flow cycles, your job is to keep the flame alive. And eventually, you know that you're going to see it, like, you know, you're going to see the explosion again, right, you're going to see the flame for, but like that doesn't happen unless the flame is still there. And unless people have been tending it and people have been trying to make it grow and you can't necessarily just like add fuel to it and be like, ah, it's going to, it's going to grow now. Right. It, you know, you don't, you don't really have control of how it sort of moves and grows. It

expands, but you have control over your ability to like, make sure that it keeps going. Absolutely. All about the numbers. Yeah. And I think also like, I think about the punk metaphor a lot, like one of the ways that I've been thinking a lot about like what we're doing here at a good app in here is we kind of took the like we took the rage against the machine gambit, which is to say we were like, we're like, okay, we're going to go to try to go somewhat mainstream in order to I mean, Brage, well, obviously, like, well, way better than we did, but like, we're gonna go try to some we're gonna go like somewhat mainstream so we can like, spread this thing to a larger group of people. That's also very, very dangerous. In the sense that like, it's very easy to sort of just lose yourself in the kind of

mire of like the field you've walked into. But on the other hand, the upside about it is that we're not the only people doing this, right? And there's all of you out there who are doing this. And like, everyone on this call is doing this, like is doing the like, like the DIY work that is going to be the core of what this whole thing becomes. And the more the more these media projects we get get and the more that people are able to sustain themselves doing this, the more that we're sort of able to break, like, I don't know, just like the monomaniacal sub-stack control of, like, taking your money and giving it to transphobes kind of thing, the better shape we're going to be in in the years to come. Exactly.

And speaking of which, one thing anarchists are famously bad at doing is accepting that we do require money and asking for it. So I'm going to do that for the squad. We are currently fundraising because it's actually really hard to make something sustainable for four people. Yep. Yep. And we have a fundraiser going on. If you like what we're talking about here, you can donate to our Indiegogo. Literally anything helps. Once we fully launch in February, we're going to have a pay what you want subscription model. So everything will be subscribed, but we really want to have three

months worth of living wage for all of us to do two days a week on it. So we're not even, we're not talking full salaries and that's $45,000 because four people for three months, it's not even a tremendous amount of money because we're including solidarity funds in that and like paying any writers who contribute like lots of other stuff. So yeah, if you have a few bucks and you know, maybe you're thinking about, you know, getting off of one of those substacks or something and you want to throw our way, we would be absolutely honored. I'm very excited to accept anything in this launch.

And if you don't have that money, which is true for a lot of us, which is why we feel bad asking for the money because there are so many people who need it right now, you can subscribe online. You can find us on social media and keep feel bad asking for the money. Yeah. Because there are so many people who need it right now. You can subscribe online. You can find us on social media and keep in touch until we do launch. And then you can join and subscribe that way. That's also a really great way to support us. But if you have a few bucks you want to throw,

if you want to give someone a present of a year's membership, you can get that for $100 for the holidays. Radicalize your uncle just with our work. We'd really, really appreciate it. And yeah. Thanks, Vicki. Yeah. And I'm, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for this.

There's already been a bunch of great stuff that's up on the site. We will have links to everything in the description. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you three for coming on the show. And I'm, I'm really excited about this. Well, thanks for having us. Yeah.

Thanks for the chance to share it. And like I always say, like if anyone is interested and wants to get in touch, I'm happy to about this. Well, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for the chance to share it. And like I always say, like if anyone is interested and wants to get in touch, I'm happy to hear from you. And yeah. Yeah, same. And to reach out to us too, a few ideas on what cost stands for. We love hearing from people.

My favorite is can anarchists write? That's what it stands for. I don't know who came up with that. I think that might've been Shulie or Vicky, but it's a good one. TBD, TBD. So yeah, send in what you think. And we are going to have an advice column. It's going to be launched soon.

Yeah, so send us questions and or individually or whatever. But you know, disrupt individualism. Reach out to us. That's not true. Hold on. It's like, hold on, hold on. Yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah. As a long time listener, first time caller. It's really faint to be on here, so thank you Mia so much.

Oh, second time. Dang it. All right. Sorry. I was on with the ones for it. Damn it. I just go on so many podcasts, Mia. Like, can you blame right. Sorry. I was on with you once for it. Damn it. I just go on so many podcasts. Can you blame me? No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. Yeah. Well, anyway, it's really exciting to be here and talking to everyone. And we have to meet y'all in the future. And we will have a Discord community. We'll be having like right in class. We have a lot of really exciting stuff. So even if you can't throw in money right now, please sign up to our website, cost anything, stay in touch, and find out all the really cool stuff we're doing.

And Carla's many projects which include podcasts and writing and these interviews, and Danny's writing and classes. Yeah, this is all moving there plus new things. Doing it together. Yeah. In that spirit, you too, dear listener, can do things together and go disrupt this world. So go do that now instead of listening to whatever else is happening on the show.

This ending is not going well, but go disrupt things. Get it. Thanks so much. If Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics

surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturne Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trail, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.