It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 3

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've 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

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories,

combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing

new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast that I opened perfectly as a professional, as a man who makes all of his money from podcasts. No notes. Kaveh, how is syphilis doing these days? You don't hear a lot from syphilis. Is it holding up okay? Yeah, it's around.

It's fine. Thank you for asking. Good. I'm glad to know that. It's not the same threat it used to be. It comes back in waves every now and then. It had a good run for a couple of years. It's kind of like Star Trek, right?

Yeah. It kind of comes in and out. Well, I don't think there's new versions of it. I think it's like the same good old syphilis, pretty much. I don't think it changes drastically. So it's like Star Trek on Netflix. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Well, good to hear from syphilis. This has been your syphilis update. That's going to do it for us this week. Until next week, I've been Robert Evans, Dr. Kabehota, and of course, Garrison davis all right bye everyone bye no that's it would be pretty funny to just do that sophie to just drop a one and a half minute episode on syphilis but only if we put in 15 ads yeah we really like word, we have a full ad break in

between. Yeah, then people would probably complain less about the 900 ads that are in our episodes right now. I can talk about syphilis. What are we doing right now? What is this episode about? Kaveh, what's going on? I'm assuming you guys want

to talk about the coronavirus, or I don't know. I can talk about whatever you want, but I think that's'm assuming you guys want to talk about uh the coronavirus or i don't know i could talk about whatever you want but i think that's probably what you guys brought me on for all right what do we what is this coronavirus is this a problem it's a little problem okay um it's not good to hear it's oh it's it's not great so why didn't you give me a heads up on this oh yeah that's me not giving you heads up on the plague the thing yeah i didn't hear anything about this is this why all the masks yeah this is the mask thing that's why you got those two jabs in your arms in that random parking lot

oh i thought that was heroin sorry to disappoint first of all, can we talk about the use of the word jab? I don't love it. I mean, you're not James Bond. Let's not use jab. That's fair. I prefer what I think is the proper medical term, vein fucked. Yeah. But it's not really your vein either.

It's really just intramuscular fucked. Oh, right. Muscle fucked. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what are the cool kids calling it? Is it a poke? What do we want to call it?

Yeah, Garrison, what do the teens call it? Yeah. Are they calling it the TikToks? Yeah, it's called the TikTok. I don't know. I've been working on this all day today. I've been working to find this proud boy who's pretending to take covid vaccines but it's actually steroids um and he calls them critical support he calls them

extracurriculars okay so that honestly rules that's extremely funny i'm hoping an article will be out by the time this podcast airs so uh who's the article for uh i'm not sure yet i'm hoping an article will be out by the time this podcast airs so uh who's the article for uh i'm not sure yet i'm talking with opossum press oh okay cool well that's funny garrison what is today's episode about what are we doing we want to talk to we wanted to talk to kava about both what the current plague situation is because a lot of people seem to think it's over a lot of people seem to think it's not over um and then also how is covid and all the stuff still affecting our hospital and medical system um is there supply shortages for medical supplies what's going on in different areas staffing yeah because all of that all that kind of stuff. Got you. Yes, is the answer. Yes, is the answer.

It's the answer. Yeah, it's still a problem. I don't think, don't listen to anyone who tells you that it's not. Don't listen to anyone who gives you too sunny a forecast on it. But it, you know, it's different in different places, is the long and the short of it. Okay. In places where the vaccinations are higher and where there's mandates and there's reasonable laws about things the rates are going down shout out california california but also like rhode island maine massachusetts connecticut vermont these are places with

high vaccination rates the rates of cases are going down in those places. Places like Mississippi, West Virginia, Idaho, Alabama, these are places where it's 40% to 49% vaccination rates, and the cases are going way up. You guys might have heard of a couple of things happening. There was that 46-year-old guy named Daniel Wilkinson. He's a vet who developed something called gallstone pancreatitis, which I could talk to you guys about for hours. I won't, don't worry, but I could. I'm just letting you know I could. I won't.

And there's, I mean, in Idaho, they just declared it's not a total DNR, but like anyone who has cardiac arrest is on a DNR now in Idaho because they just don't have the resources to be. Well, that's not entirely. I mean, that's what I get wrong there. Okay Well, that's not entirely... I mean, that's... Okay, so what did I get wrong there? Okay, so that's not your fault that you got it wrong because there were doctors that were sort of spreading that story about. Now, they are in what's called the crisis standard of care, and part of that means that

hospitals could go to putting everyone on DNR, which means do not resuscitate. Yeah, yeah. Which means if you have a cardiac arrest, they won't do anything about it. That's not what's actually happening. It could happen. When they institute this crisis standard of care, what it means is that if a hospital gets so short on their ventilators and they just don't have any more room, then they could implement that.

I mean, I don't know. I haven't heard of anyone. I was asking around to see if any doctors in Idaho could tell me of a hospital that's actually doing it. I haven't seen or heard of one that's actually doing it yet, but they could. The point is, it's that bad. That's a reasonable discussion where doctors have to discuss, kind of like they were back in the day in New York, where they have to be like, okay, does this person, do we put the, you know, the, the, the young lady on the ventilator or the old guy, you know, then we have to decide and they make those

decisions. It's really awful. It's a position no doctor wants to be in. And now that's becoming a reality. It's brutal. It's brutal out there. And that's bleeding into other states nearby, you know? So is that what you mean by the Wilkerson situation? Because his doctor couldn't find an ICU bed for him. Is that the story you're talking about? That's the story. So he's this guy who had a problem that can be fixed. I mean, it's a procedure called an ERCP

that he can get done at specialty centers. And he didn't live far from Houston. Houston has plenty of those specialty centers that can do it. They have great gastroenterologists like myself, not as good, but same sort of thing. And they could do it if they had the availability to get him in, but they didn't. And so he died to something that he shouldn't have, is basically that example. And I'm sure there's more examples of that. And what really worries me is the examples that you're not hearing yet. Like cases that are delayed now. Cancer screening things that are being delayed now in these hospitals that we're going to be paying down the road.

That's the shit that really scares me. Great. And like just people not going in for things in general too yeah exactly yeah i have friends other than you who work in ers and stuff um nurses and a doctor um and bullshit it's up in the pnw but the shit they're saying is like in today's crap like like i they are working on like building capacity and making sure they have things to like treat their friends because it's like the advice is do not go to the hospital like if if at all possible like because there's just not capacity for you unless it's like literally an immediate life and death thing it's it's almost uh uh not worth, trying because there's just nothing.

There's no slack. The system is – and it's starting to turn, it looks like, here in the Portland area. But, like, it's frightening. Like, these are not people who would be bullshitting or are prone to panic. You know, they're ER professionals. But it's fucked up like it's it's sad it it's this thing where like the scary thing to me is not even necessarily where we are right now because it does like there is some kind of broadly positive news in a lot of

areas about like where the pandemic is going it's just like this situation won't be fixed when case numbers go down it's it's it's going to be permanent damage has been done to the system. And I guess what I'm wondering, first off, like from what you're seeing, like what is the extent of the permanent damage done to our emergency medical system in particular and our ability to even like get care at the moment? Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know. It kind of goes back to, I think, what Garrison wanted to talk about,

which is the collapse of the medical system. I think we talk about it a lot in terms of we're on the edge of collapse. We're near collapse. I think there are places in this country where it already has collapsed. I think that's pretty evident. It's really not homogeneous in any way across this country. There are certainly places that are better than others. And there's certainly places that have a lot more leeway and flexibility, but everywhere is strained right now. And in regards to your question about permanent damage,

I'll answer that in regards to just the personnel. Because of the show that I have, The House of Pod, follow us on Twitter at The House of Pod, I talk to a lot of doctors and nurses from all over the country. I talk to them a lot, and it's bad. I mean, the stress that they're under, the PTSD that they're dealing with, the burnout, the level of burnout is just intense. It's intense. And I think we were talking about moral injury and burnout before all this started, and now it is to a point where I don't know what's going to happen to the medical system, just in terms of the personnel when this is all over. system, just in terms of the personnel when this is all over. I know a lot of people who are getting out of medicine, getting out of clinical medicine. I mean, out of like, I would say out of just my immediate friend group, I can think of a couple offhand, excellent doctors, really great ICU, ER doctors who are already planning their exit. And when, I don't know, I mean, in the next coming

years, that's going to be a major issue. And I don't know how we're going to address that. And our nurses in the ICUs, man, the stuff they have to put up with is insane. You just see it in their eyes. Their eyes are broken. Like, I volunteered on the wards a couple weeks ago, and the doctors and nurses taking care of these COVID patients day in, day out, there's a little bit of their soul that's been broken. You can just see it in their eyes. I was there for just a week, and it's terrifying. You're going into a room with a patient with COVID, it's scary. Even no matter how much PPE, protective equipment you have on, you're always a little scared. And I just think years of that,

that weighs on a person in a way i don't i mean i am worried about i don't know how we're going to address that yeah that's cool yeah and it's frustrating because like from the perspective of people listening right the thing you want to ask is like well how can i help and it's like well you can't because you're already if you're listening to the show i assume you you're masking. I assume you've gotten vaccinated if you don't have like a condition that that renders you unable to get the vaccine. You're you're I think our listeners tend to be pretty responsible people. It's just not enough because 30 to 40 percent of the country decided to like Leroy Jenkins a plague. And God.

Garrison, do you know that reference? Yeah, do you get that reference, Garrison? I'm familiar with Leroy Jenkins. That's good. That's good. Were you born when Leroy Jenkins became a thing? I don't know. You would have been, like, three.

I would have been young, yeah. Yeah. It was Deadpool that brought him to your attention, isn't it? No, no. It came to my attention just doing general internet yeah it was one of the first it was the first meme that you could show your parents pretty much i guess they were like badger badger mushroom a couple of others in that category but like it was one of the first memes that wasn't a man's gaping asshole prolapsed

but i showed my parents that all the time i don't know oh yeah no yeah there was a prolapsed. But I showed my parents that all the time. I don't know what you're talking about. There was a beautiful moment back in the day when somebody goat-seated a stadium. That's what brought you into medicine. This is what I saw at work. They were so proud of me. They were like, look at our son.

Look at our boy. Look at our boy. He can tell us exactly why that man's asshole looks that way. I have a weird job. I guess one of my questions is with the assumption that people are taking the actual plague related steps they can to reduce their burden to the medical system. What can people realistically do? I mean, I think part of that is, and this is, and I'm not going to have you to like, explain how you can take care of your own medical treatments

in an emergency on a podcast. That's not the time or the place. Although I do think it's probably a good idea for people to read up on first aid and basic life-saving emergency. Like it's always a good idea to have some training there.

But yeah, I mean, do you have other advice? You know, you're exactly right. The people that are listening to this podcast are totally on board already. And they're super supportive. And we appreciate that. I mean, that is not unnoticed. I mean, you know, it's having people like outside the hospitals every now and then applauding doctors, I know it's cheesy, but it's great. I'll take that over the Blue Angels flying overhead any day. So that stuff is really important, and masking and taking care of themselves is great. You know, the real practical things that people can do, I think, is help contribute to sites that will help get the rest of the world vaccinated. I mean, we can definitely talk about that, the question of boosters here versus vaccines for the first time elsewhere.

But that's the one thing I would recommend right now. If you want to help, let's put our money into places where we can get vaccines to other places and i i think that every little bit of that helps in the long run and and that's the sort of thing that that we could use other than that i mean i just hope that people are still going into medicine and in nursing you know i that's the only thing i can still hope is that people who have an interest in it you you know, continue to do it. And for those people who are just, they're training, those years of their formative years or during this time,

I just want to let them know, I swear it gets better. It's not always going to be like this. And if you make it through this, you're going to be an amazing clinician. You're going to be an amazing nurse. You're going to be an amazing doctor. And I really want you guys to keep doing it. That's one thing I would say too. Yeah. I mean, and I'll certainly add that if you're someone who's contemplating a medical career, please. I mean, just from a, there's a couple of things on that, like just from a perspective of what the world needs, it's what the world needs. But also if you're listening to

the stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about world needs. But also, if you're listening to the stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about the possibility of the collapse, if you're someone who foresees things getting potentially much more difficult in the future, not a lot of things more useful in a bad situation than somebody with medical training. I do count on that

getting me through the apocalypse. I'm soft. I am so soft. I went camping and i couldn't handle it a couple weeks ago i went camping it was awful there was so much dust it was an awful experience but i just thought if the apocalypse comes i will hopefully get uh placed in a very nice tent because i'm a doctor so i i'm counting on that to get me through there are there are so many dumbass boogaloo type quote-unquote preppers who who focus on the guns and the gear and the the dried food but and the throwing knives and the shirt

throwing knives but don't even have an ifac an individual first aid kit or like a tourniquet and like the talk to you talk to like like i mean this is a little off topic but like talk to combat marines about about their favorite person. It's always the corpsman. It's the guy who knows or the lady who knows how to patch a bullet wound and whatnot. There's nothing more useful in any situation, pretty much, that is dangerous than somebody who can do medicine. So please, if you're studying to do medicine, if you're contemplating becoming an EMT or a paramedic or a nurse or whatever, good God, we need you so badly. Yeah, I agree.

We've talked a little bit about just the medical system in general. And then we can also kind of discuss more stuff related to how COVID's impacting certain areas more than others. And let's say someone who's listening who's in one of these areas that has only 40% vaccinated, not a lot of people are going around with masks on. And schools starting back up, maybe they have kids who are going to their school system. I know in Texas, child deaths are rising. That sounds very frightening to be that kind of person who would like to see that stuff happen in their state but it's just not really possible and i don't know with so much of the rest of the world kind of slowly

taking back restrictions i'm sure it feels very jarring to be in a situation like that and kind of like there's really nothing you can do right besides right because you can talk to your family talk to your friends, but like overall, it's hard to make, you know, a big impact in a state, you know, like Texas, Alabama, like Idaho, all the ones that you were mentioning before. From a medical kind of perspective, is there any way people can kind of start to talk

about those things with their family? And because the way we've been trying to get people to take the vaccine with the marketing we've been doing has not been super successful in these demographics. Do you think there's other conversations that can get people to slowly kind of be more able to contemplate that? Yeah, that's a tough question. It's particularly tough if you're someone who believes in the importance of vaccines or the importance of masks and that sort of thing, and you're in a place where you're a minority. That is tough. The first thing I'll say is definitely know that the vaccine helps. You're in a much better position because of the vaccine. When I was on the wards and I was looking at patients,

they're almost all unvaccinated. Those are the people that end up in the hospital. You can still get hospitalized if you have the vaccine, but it's much less likely. Not that these people don't count, they count just as much, but if you don't have an underlying problem like a liver transplant or some immunosuppression, then you're less likely to have a really bad outcome with COVID if you're vaccinated. So just know that it helps. You still might get it, it'll suck, but for the most part, you're going to stay out of the hospital.

And that really, I think, is something to have a little comfort in. It really does seem to work. You know, outside of that, the schools thing is a real concern for me. And I'm going to feel a lot better. And we're going to be in a much better position once we are able to get kids vaccinated. Yeah. So there's two things you guys probably heard that there was um this this committee that met to advise the fda

about booster shots that's one thing so booster shots are going to go out to people who need them uh 65 and older people at high risk uh people in high risk occupations they're gonna like frontline workers. So there's going to be booster shots coming out. And then the data is coming out now about 5 to 11 year olds. 5 to 11, yeah. Yeah. And that's pretty promising. It looks like they're going to do okay with lower doses. So they use about one third the dose of the vaccine that the adults get. And it seems to work. We haven't seen much other than the pre-press release from

Pfizer. But if you really pick at it, it looks promising. So that's something that makes me hopeful. That's something I'm definitely clinging to. I think there's no way we're getting out of this without vaccinating kids. That just has to happen. I think once that starts rolling out, and hopefully it will soon. I i mean i don't want to put a date on it but i'm hoping within the next couple months this starts happening so you know once once that starts happening i'm gonna feel a lot more comfortable i think people in those situations are gonna feel a lot more comfortable too yeah the the booster thing is an interesting question to me. I mean, there is this... Yeah, from an ethical standpoint particularly.

You know, I think it's not a fair narrative to say it has to be one or the other. And I think people are saying that. I think we can do it. I think we can produce enough vaccine here for people who haven't got it yet and enough for the boosters and start supplying more to the world. I mean, we can do more. Our government and Pfizer and Moderna definitely need to do more in that regard. They definitely need to do more in terms of production. They haven't hit their goals in a lot of these places.

But it's also not like they haven't done anything yet. They gave about 200 million doses are being donated just this week, I think. So they are doing things. It's happening. It's just we need more of it. Everything needs. We need more of it. We need to ramp up production. Yeah, it's weird because like you're right, we could produce enough vaccines for the places

that don't have them and enough vaccines for boosters over here. And all it would take is a couple of months of our Afghanistan mad money. But we're not going to do that and so it it probably will like i don't know contribute to an issue of fact there's a there's a chance that it will contribute to an issue of vaccine unavailability but also it's not like if we don't get the boosters those vaccines will be available because we're just not giving them out yeah in the extent that we need. So, yeah, I don't know.

I understand what you're saying. I'll get the booster if they decide to give out boosters because I like not having permanent damage due to COVID. Or getting long COVID, yeah. Yeah, that seems great. And a lot of the vaccine hesitancy kind of relies, tracks back to how we've been marketing it. And I've been on the team that's like, we should stop using Fauci

because every time Fauci goes on TV to talk about vaccines, more people are going to do like a backfire effect. You'll be like, no, I'm not going to get it because I don't trust Fauci. So there is a particular like marketing thing that I think we've failed on. Like America is very good at marketing when we can make money,

but when it's not related to gaining more profit, I think the government's very bad at marketing these types of things. And on the marketing side of things, this is kind of old news at this point, but the whole swollen testicles thing,

which you have not talked about on this show about but i'm sure you have thoughts about how this thing has kind of ballooned which is that can be like the testicles like the testicles exactly yeah friend yeah so how how the marketing and misinformation relates to this cool kind kind of current problem yeah Yeah. First of all, that particular story, I mean, that's hilarious. I mean, like, I've never seen someone's excuse

for venereal disease become such an international issue. Yeah, contribute to the deaths probably of hundreds of people. Right. You know, the marketing thing is a really great question and it's been driving me crazy because like part of me at this point just wants to be like get the fucking

vaccine what the fuck's wrong with you get the fucking vaccine part of my language and like um but then the part of me knows that that doesn't work like right i do believe doctors should be able to express their frustration yeah um they need to be able to do that if we can't do that right now i mean it's game over they need to at least have that ability where doctors can voice their frustration with anti-vaxxers but still give them the same high level of care that we're always going to give them no matter what when they show up in the hospital but it's not working to do that we need other approaches i don't i don't entirely know what they are there are some people they're they're so far out there that we're just never going to reach.

The people, the microchip people, there's like a level of deprogramming that will need to happen to those people that we just, it's too exhausting to do that. You really have to like, you can't scale that in any meaningful way for the country. I think, I don't know. I think calling it the Trump vaccine

was the closest we got to having that be a possibility. And that fucking, I'm interested in your thoughts on the fucking Breitbart article. And if you're not aware, because you're less online than us, and God bless you if you are, Breitbart, which is, I don't know, CNN for fascists, came out with an article blaming the Democrats for the fact that Republicans don't want to take the vaccine and saying it's a secret liberal plot to exterminate conservatives because conservatives refuse to take vaccines because they're fundamentally oppositional defiant. And like it's it's the fault of people who are telling them to take the vaccine that they're not taking the vaccine because obviously, why would you trust a liberal on anything? But also they're trying to kill us and we're going to lose the election because we're all dying because we refuse to get vaccinated for a preventable disease anyway how do you feel about that comment i i don't i don't love it i don't love it um i'm vaguely familiar with breitbart i don't know that exact uh article because i have enough pain in my life already. Sure, fair enough. But, you know, I do wonder, it's like when they put out articles like this

or when Tucker Carlson goes out and he does his thing questioning vaccine, just asking questions about vaccines that lead to vaccine hesitancy, like what calculations are they doing? Are they doing calculations? Is this just him being callous and not giving a fuck and just doing it?

Or is there some calculation that him and some sort of right wing think tank are doing where they're like, hey, look, this sells to our audience. They love it. Let's keep doing it. Yes, we are going to lose X portion of our audience because of this. But we still have plenty of audience left. Like, I don't I wonder how that's happening. It is true. It is hurting them more than other people. It's hurting everyone. Everyone's getting affected by this, but it's those states that are being affected, the people not getting

vaccinated who are listening to people like Tucker Carlson. So I don't understand what their end game is here. This is their market. Why not protect it? And that I do not have a good answer for. I was hoping one of you guys would. There's a lot going on there. I think a decent chunk of it is the assumption that whatever they lose in terms of dead followers won't be worth more than continuing the cash bonanza that is owning the libs, right? Because that's the entirety of the right-wing media. It's just owning the libs. It's just oppositional defiant. It's just hating anything Democrats do. So you kind of can't, you're a cuck if you tell people to receive basic medical care if Democrats are taking that basic medical care, right?

So it's a pride thing for a lot of them. Two things I love is when you use the word cuck or when you do Ben Shapiro's voice. Those are two of my favorite things that you do. You say it really well, far beyond anything rational on the right. Um, and it's, it's difficult to like,

I, I think the calculation is just like, I think a lot of these guys is the same thing with climate change. Like they're smart enough to know that they're contributing to an uninhabitable world but they want to cash in first they want to get as much as they can out before it falls apart and i think that's all any of these people care about because i think you there are the true believers the radio guys are true believers right the radio guys who keep dying because they don't get vaccinated those guys did believe that it was some sort of weird conspiracy it was the communists

whatever um clearly because they died mid-management level yeah mid-management level they don't know all the stuff that they're being told from above and they kind of believe it enough to where they kill themselves for the company i think for tucker it's more a matter of like hey i keep making money and i maintain my power if i if I continue to hold this line, you, you, you lose power, you get weaker.

It's like when Trump got booed for telling people to take the fucking vaccine, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Crazy.

You can't go back with this shit. You just can't. And you certainly can't admit to ever having been wrong. Right. Yeah. Well, man, it's good shit. What a, what a fun note to ever having been wrong. Right. Oh, man. It's good shit. What a fun note

to end the episode on. What a good society we've built. Love us. Oh, my God. Bravo. Well, Kava, people can find you by looking up the house of Pod.

Yes. Uh, it was slightly less depressing, but not, not super uplifting either at this point. Uh, follow us at the house of pod at Twitter and, you can listen to our podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcast. We'll talk about medical type things,

but not so deep into the woods that it's not entertaining. I hope. Yeah. Fuck the woods. Yeah deep into the woods that it's not entertaining i hope yeah fuck the woods yeah fuck the woods we have fun guests ranging from the world's best medical experts to you know you guys people like us the world's best medical experts yeah you guys are right up there oh let me tell you for medicine right there's no better medicine than just a big fat pile of cocaine. And the good thing about cocaine is it's a sterilizing agent.

So if you're worried about COVID getting in your nasal passages, just rail cocaine before you and after you go into the store. It's like getting a COVID test, but more fun. Legally, I have to tell you that's false. Well, we all have our opinions about how cocaine works. Well, you have your facts. And I have my facts. I have my facts. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pick up a single item at the grocery store.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows Presented by I Heart and Sonorum An anthology of modern day horror stories Inspired by the legends of Latin America From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

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It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards welcome to it could happen here pod a podcast that is today about the fact that 10 years ago it did happen and when i say it did happen i mean we occupied an extremely large number of places and we did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways and with with me to talk about this is garrison as always i like that you used the twitter handle for our podcast not the actual name but that's fine where can it where can it go for it but hello hi i'm garrison with me i have I have my special guest, Vicky Osterweil, who is an agitator, who is a writer, who has done many, many things, probably most famously writing the book In Defense of Looting in 2020 from, is it Bold Press?

Bold Type Press. Bold Type Press, yeah. Very good book. People got very mad. People got very angry. thank you it's it's really i'm really excited to be here to talk about the uh the anniversary of occupy from which is basically you know when i when i all got this whole train rolling so yeah and the the other the other thing um that is that is probably relevant here is that vicky was one of the

first people at occupy and and correct me if I'm wrong about this. I found it a bleak reference to this in one of the things I read. You facilitated the first meeting? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's on the record now.

Yeah. Yeah. During the New York City General Assembly, it was called in August. There was, you know, uh, ad busters hopefully called for a general assembly and, um, you know, a bunch of us sort of went down there and there was a, a tanky party there, um, doing a general assembly, which was just them on a, on speakers, um, doing their regular ranting. Um, it hasn't changed much

in 10 years. Um, and, uh, and we, um, yeah, so a bunch of us just went and sat down, you know, to the side of it and started an actual general assembly. And by happenstance, I facilitated that meeting. And it was the first and last Occupy meeting I ever facilitated. Yeah, okay. So I want to roll back a little bit to just before the start of Occupy because. Yeah. The more I've been thinking about this, the more I've just realized that 2011 was just a profoundly weird time in a lot of ways. I think people have forgotten.

Like the entire American security state is at this point being terrorized by a joint anonymous low-sec hacking campaign called Anti-Sec, the symbol of which is a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask wearing a monocle and a top hat. This was just like normal. This was a thing that everyone looked at. It was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's the Anti-Sec top hat troll-faced guy in a monocle. Fun fact about that, just before we

forget, David Graeber, rest in peace, who was there in the early days organizing, claimed that he had heard and talked to some of the – overheard the police talking about the reason they didn't sweep the Occupy encampment the first day when we were pretty weak, frankly, or the first week was because there were a bunch of Guy Fawkes masks. And they were scared. They were scared they were going to get hacked if they attacked. They were scared they were going to hack them and steal their – yeah. So it was a weird time indeed yeah yeah and i think the the other thing that's you know i think important about this time period if we're looking back at what occupied was is that

so this is this is three years after the the financial collapse and you know so i think this is you know in the run-up to 2011 there's been a few there's been a few protests there's been there was a big thing in greece 2008 that was kind of related kind of unrelated but i i think in my sense of you know i was like i don't know i was like 13 i was like i was like an actual baby child but my sense of it was kind of just like like there's there's this like sense that everyone's just kind of waiting for something to happen. Yeah. And it's just like, hadn't,

and it just like kept going and kept going and kept going. And then, you know, and then, and then Tunisia starts and suddenly there's, you know, there, there,

there's protests in Tunisia, there's protests in Egypt, there's like people fighting tanks in the street in Bahrain. And, you know, and this, this is, you know,

this, this becomes known as the Arab Spring and it starts to spread to a lot of places and Vicky I want to talk I want to ask you about this because you you were in Spain when it starts started there I want to talk about what what what was going on there and yeah so I I wasn't there when it started um but but uh but yes um basically you know nothing and I want to shout out, like, there were a bunch of, like, movements, like, in 2008, right after the crash, there were a bunch of protests, like, outside Wall Street.

They were very small, but they were, like, sort of, they, like, produced some images. And then there was, you know, in 2009, there's the Oscar Grant rebellion in Oakland. And you have the Madison occupation earlier in 2011, where they, where the, the workers, the unions took over the state house in Wisconsin. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. Everyone does. It was actually really important at the time.

But yeah, so, so, you know, so I think I'm glad you brought up Greece because I think actually Greece really, that, that sort of anarchist rebellion in 2008, 2009 really kicked off the cycle in a certain way, but also didn't quite, it wasn't quite the first domino, you know, it was sort of more of a like forecast. So yeah, so Arab Spring, you know, is huge. It's this huge, huge event. And the US media is loving it because obviously like these sort of old, you know, quote unquote, Marxist dictators are falling. And so of course, the US is like all about it, which of course, later on the return of the tankies will use to confuse everyone on the U.S. left and destroy all solidarity with Syria. Anyway, but that's neither here nor there. So then in that summer, you get this wave of early summer, like May and June.

In fact, the 15th of May was when the movement started in Spain, and then it starts soon again in Greece. And it was similar to Occupy in that there was these people coming together in these sort of encampments in the center of the city. I don't know if people remember or know this history economically, but Spain and Greece had recently been sort of going through these like big, big booms, economic booms, just for about five or six years, that turned out to be real estate bubbles funded by their entry into the EU. And 2008 just smashed that. And they were just like incredibly impoverished. I mean, like Spain was facing something like 50% youth unemployment. Greece was like similar. Spain has recovered more than Greece has in the intervening years, but it's still bad. So, so yeah, so you had all these, it was, it was, you know,

predominantly young folks who were, you know, had been pushed out of the economy, who'd been pushed out of their homes, whose families had lost their homes, gathering together. And it was all over both countries. And it was huge. I happened to just be in Barcelona. I had been on a planned vacation with some friends, you know, that we had planned like sort of six months earlier when it all popped off. And I had also just started my writing, I would say career, but that's very generous. I had started technically being paid for writing things

and they were like, oh, write about it, like cover it while you're there. And because no one in the US was talking about what was going on in Spain, when my article popped up, and this is really strange, but it was like the early days of Twitter as well. Um, 2011, like I guess Twitter started 2009 or something. And so like, so the, the, the, one of the accounts from the camp tweets out my article. So I went

there the next day. I was like, I wrote that article and then I was like embedded for a week. And I was there for like kind of the height of the popular power of the movement in Barcelona only for a week. But I was there on the day when there was a two and a half million person march through Barcelona. Just like still probably the biggest march I've ever been part of and probably ever will be was like that. And so, you know, so that goes on for a few months in Greece and Barcelona. It sort of hits similar limits that Occupy would eventually hit, which is that like, you know, that if you can take the space away from people, that's,

that's the common ground. And like, you can't really have the movement without the encampment. And also all the way in which the, the camps sort of force a kind of internal naval gazing and people like get really obsessed with maintaining the camp rather than the struggle with the city at large. All of those,

all of those contradictions sort of like came up in Spain and Greece as well. But at the time, you know, I was there for the height of it. I come back to New York. I'm like, this is going to happen in the U.S. Like it has to. I think a lot of folks who had been watching felt that way as well. I actually took part in this thing called Bloombergville, which was like 50 people on a sidewalk.

It was from Michael Bloomberg, right? 50 people on a sidewalk. 50 people was gender Bloomberg, right? 50 people on a sidewalk. 50 people was generous. That was like when we were doing really well. It was mostly 15 of us. It was like 15 of us on a sidewalk in the financial district, like getting yelled at by cops, you know, sleeping on cardboard, you know, Occupy style, but without any attention or solidarity.

But because I had been in Barcelona and I still had these comrades in Barcelona, I was like, oh my God, we're doing it in New York. So we had this thing where Bloombergville, which is like 20 people, got to talk to a general assembly in Barcelona at the height of its power, on an internet link,

like a really early internet link. So there was all this energy that was happening. And then I think really crucially, the London riots pop off. And that doesn't get talked about very much anymore, partially because the UK left really stabbed the rioters in the back during that and repressed the memory of it largely and have suffered ever since, in my opinion, strategically. But, you know, that was for us in the US, that was huge. It was huge watching those riots unfold. Like, you know, again, this was like early live streaming. So like we were like watching live feeds of the riots, you know, which like was not a thing that you could really

do without a TV before. There was just like there was a lot of stuff going on that felt exciting and was really important and inevitable that it would come to the U.S. because things were so messed up over here. I think we should talk about what a general assembly actually is, because I think a lot of people aren't going to have like never actually ran into what exactly is going on or have sort of forgotten in the last 10 years after they've sort of fallen out of favor. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it was never my favorite either, honestly. It's a meeting style designed, it actually does largely actually come from European anarchist traditions from Spain and Greece. But as many of us know, a lot of those traditions go back further and have crossed the water. General Assemblies, actually, there's a long history of them in indigenous communities in Turtle Island, for example. So it's an old meeting style in which the Quakers also, the Quakers famously also sort of co-opted it

from indigenous folks out here on the East Coast. But it's a meeting style in which, you know, with the exception of a facilitator, which is occasionally but not always present, everyone is able to speak together. There is an agenda sometimes, but it's basically a meeting designed where everyone present in the meeting has an equal voice. And it's not really designed generally for decision-making specifically or with really really specific goals in mind often, although there will be sort of like things that are trying to get settled.

But it's designed to allow, you know, a very, very multivocal approach for everyone to sort of put in their thoughts and their ideas and often is connected, although not necessarily, but is often connected to consensus operation where things can't get sort of decided on unless everyone sort of agrees. And in Occupy, that was the General Assembly was sort of was a bit controversial because it was just whoever showed up obviously participates in it. So, you know, unlike unlike, you know, an organizational meeting where you know, everyone knows each other and you have to have a, you know, you have to be there with an invite or whatever, um, you know, whatever cranky wingnut, um, wanted to show up, uh, could, um, and that had pluses and minuses. It was charming sometimes, but it was also very frustrating.

Um, and in, in New York where I was, um, it was made almost impossible to function by this thing called the People's Mic, which I think still happens sometimes. People also have a mic check and then everyone repeats what was said. But that means that it takes four times as long to talk as normal. So when you have a wingnut, you know, like advocating for wrong Paul, and then you've got 30 people echoing him every four words. It makes discussion completely impossible. And a micro history of the People's Mic. The reason that happened was because in the first week in Zuccotti Park, whenever we got on a megaphone, police would come and arrest whoever was on the megaphone because you weren't allowed to use amplified sound in New York.

And one organizer was like, oh, no, no, we can like use the People's Mic. We can like repeat back to each other. And this is when there's still mostly like 30 to 40 people in the park at any one time. It's very small. That didn't feel so bad. But then when the movement really got big, the People's Mic became completely unwieldy and also was a response to a – was a cowardly response to police repression, frankly, and was a way of... So the People's

Mic is, in my opinion, a reactionary form. Anyway, that is so... It's been 10 years. I haven't been able to complain about this in like eight years. Thank you so much. But anyway, so yes, the General Assembly is just a meeting forum that often associated with anarchist practice or radical democratic practice, in which sort of consensus is aimed for by allowing everyone to speak their mind i would say yeah and so this this i think gets us back to where we open this episode which is adbusters calls an event with literally no plans to like do anything they're just like yeah everyone we're occupying wall street and then yeah and you know as i was talking about the beginning of it you guys basically hijack well sort of i mean so adbusters adbusters doesn't show up like you said there's i've never

met an adbusters person um and it was funny like we would do jokes about it but i think it's also thinking about this in preparation for this interview it's also interesting because adbusters and their culture jamming is kind of like one of the results of the sort of alter globalization movement of the like late 90s and early 2000s, the summit hopping stuff, the anarchy movement of like one generation ahead of Occupy. So I think it's sort of appropriate that ad busters sort of like, you know, was present in this legacy in a certain way. And a lot of those organizers were as well. But yes, I'm sorry. Did I just jump in before you finish? No, no, no. Okay. Um, the, the, yeah, so, so, so, so a bunch of people, I don't actually know who calls for an August 2nd, you know, general assembly to talk about the call for September 17th to occupy wall street.

Um, and at that, at that point, that's when the thing i was describing earlier like happens where where um you know we a bunch of folks and and i really want to underline this most of them were people who had been in spain or greece um david graber was also there it was like a lot of old heads there was like a there was a comrade from japan um it was a very international uh crew who had like had experience in these movements over the summer, um, came and had this general assembly and sort of ran it that way and broke out. We had, we broke off working groups and then there was meetings sort of once a week and then working group meetings within that, um, and general assemblies from August 2nd until

September 17th, at which point, um, you know, occupy the date, the date that adbusters had called for, um, actually happened. So my, my impression of this, and I was very small. I had very limited idea of what was going on. The way I remember it in the media is that like the media was weirdly interested in it in a way that I've never seen them. I've never seen them cover another social movement that wasn't like literally burning their offices down. I've never seen them cover another social movement that wasn't like literally burning their offices down. And it was like, it was like in the beginning it was, I mean, you know, obviously the right wing media is losing their minds, but they were kind of, kind of supportive of it. And I think, I don't know, I want to see what you think about this.

One of the things that happens in both, in both Greece and in Spain is that the the the product movement of the squares is these electoral movements and these electoral movements just fail like catastrophically like sarzia takes power like like they they like you know they they have they have they have a like their their finance minister is a left communist he is like he is the most far left person ever like to hold office since like the spanish anarchists in 1930 like 1936 and they implement austerity anyways uh in spain you get podemos and it's like well okay you have you know they had this thing called the electoral war machine they're gonna take over the spanish political system and they just it collapsed it just doesn't work they've never like they've they've they've never taken power they've never really got anywhere they they successfully evicted a bunch

of squats in catalonia but yeah but and i think this is my impression of it was that i i think the u.s media thought they could they could do this to occupy and and i i think they kind of it's weird because looking so you know like i i i come in in like to to this kind of stuff around 2016 2017 and i and i think it it's like it weirdly worked but it worked because they were able to recruit the anti-occupy people yeah so it's like yeah and so they they they did finally get their like cadre of like pseudo-left organizers so they could use to build democratic party it's just it was like jacobin and then i'll take the whole the whole sort of anti-occupy group yeah so those folks were actually um active during occupy um critiquinging the people who now most loudly claim the legacy of Occupy.

You know, as you said, Jacobin, a lot of those sort of social Democrat groups at the time. And those of us who were there, remember, they hated Occupy. They would show up, but they would critique it constantly. They would write all these articles about how it was terrible, how there were no demands. It was too disorganized. And then I think when Black Revolt got put on the table, they were like, bring back Occupy! We like that better!

But I think, to be as harsh as possible. But I think like, you know, yes, there was a lot of media coverage. It didn't feel super friendly at the time. There was a lot of media coverage. The media was very curious, it was very interested, but a lot of, there was a lot of media coverage. Like the media was very curious. It was very interested,

but a lot of that coverage was like, why do they have no demands? Like why are they so disorganized? Why are they so smelly? Whatever. Like there was a lot of like, there was a lot of slander in the press, but also a lot of attention which, you know, it turned turned out was as good as you could get, but at the time didn't, didn't feel very good particularly I think. Yeah. But yes, those, those yes, those forces were already present in, you know, in Occupy itself,

you know, sort of denouncing it for its disorganization and then eventually claiming that it was the reason that Bernie Sanders happened, which isn't totally wrong. Yeah. I want to be really clear. Like, I think,

and I think we'll get into this more, but I think like the thing that about the thing that was important about Occupy and the thing that the people who, in my opinion, like my comrades during Occupy or people I meet who were like doing Occupy stuff, but like who I didn't know, but like now we, I, you know, I roll with them. Most of us have the, have the, you know, the analysis of like, it was really important that we were doing politics in the street. It was really important that we were back together, that we were talking politics. And then there were really, really intense extreme limits to what Occupy could have done.

And I think Oakland really pushed those and got to those. And I think the folks who were like, no, no, Occupy was good at the time were like, Occupy is terrible. And I think that's worth noting and thinking about. So I think, yeah, before we sort of go into talk a bit about what happened to oakland to talk about some of their stuff so on a day-to-day basis like what is occupy actually doing because i think that's also been sort of lost in this whole like everyone remembers like the slogans and i remember the fact that there's a thing but you know know, like there's, there's a bunch of working groups and they're doing things. So what was that like, like day to day and then on a sort of broader level?

Yeah. So, so, um, so first of all, again, I was only in New York. I spent some time at Occupy Boston as well. Um, but like, I don't have a sense of what other places were like. So I, I really can't, I mean, other than having heard from people. So I want to be very clear that I'm like mostly addressing that. Um, I think the thing that was going on was that Zuccotti Park, like the park was like total chaos. Part of that was because there was a drum circle that basically was going 24 hours a day there, which meant that whenever you were down there and it was like a canyon, Zuccotti Park is surrounded by skyscrapers.

So it was just this incredible cacophony all the time um which i think was cool it really ruined a lot of finance bros like like like orally you know with an a there um but i think like but it also was pretty intense and unpleasant sometimes you were like please stop oh my god like that at one point a general assembly i think decided that drums were like only acceptable during certain hours like near near the end of the movement, like the drum, the drum circle got reproached when in fact they were like actually the biggest agents of chaos in Zuccotti, which is another important lesson. Um, but, um, yeah, I think so. So, you know, also because I had been in Bloombergville because I'd been in Barcelona, I didn't invest myself

very heavily in, in camp management stuff. So I mostly was doing work. One of the things that I think gets forgotten about is that there were snake marches, basically three or four a day, every day. After the first week, when we were really small, when it got big, there were just constant, constant marches through the city, just like always going off. Like you would run in, you'd be on one march and you'd run into another march, like on a Saturday or Sunday when like people were really like out there. Like it was, it was really like, there was a lot of mayhem. There'd be big planned marches that would then be bigger.

So there was like a lot of like what people now would call direct action, what I would call largely like sort of symbolic practice for direct action mostly. I don't mind. I like marches. I certainly got my miles in then. Like, I don't feel like I need to do that again, but but you know, so then at the camp people were just living there. There were a lot of like a lot of punks, a lot of like, you know, a lot of homeless folks obviously. And some, and some encampments had more at a higher concentration of unhoused people.

Some in New York, because of all the media spectacle and all the money that came in, we had a lot of nonprofit grifters by the end in the encampment. But there's also like a library, a free library with all these books that like would be donated. There was a lot of like, you know, political agitation. There'd be people standing around the, the, the, you know, the corners of the park with signs and yelling at people. And it's also important to remember that Zuccotti Park in New York is tiny.

It's tiny. We had originally wanted to do it on this big plaza, like City Bank Plaza, and the cops had heard about that and fenced it off. So on the 17th, we just what's the word? We did a football metaphor. We called an audible. Thank you. On the 17th, we just like, we just, what's the word? We did a, oh my God, football metaphors.

Called an audible or something? That's why you shouldn't do this. We called an audible. Thank you. There we go. So Zuccotti is this tiny little park. It's incredibly dense and it's surrounded by, you know, like I said, skyscrapers. It's in this really weird part of the city that no one would ever spend any time in if

they didn't have to otherwise. So that sort of, so there's all this stuff going on and there are general assemblies twice a day, which as I said, in New York were particularly unhelpful. But I think anarchists in a lot of cities who I've talked to, like I had a comrade down in DC, one in Denver, they sort of said that the general assemblies either quickly got shifted or became irrelevant. I think the general assemblies were not in the end were symbolically important but not really a driving force of my experience.

Then there would be, like I said, there would be a lot of organizing outside of the park. There would be a lot of meetings and talks and direct actions and marches and then there would be you know I guess that's kind of the extent of it, right?

Is that there was like a lot of direct action that, but there was always this park where you could go and like run into people and like hook up with people, meet people and like do a weird thing. And I think that was really like the heart of the movement was the fact that there was this place you could go meet someone and like link into something weird and maybe cool and maybe not. It doesn't matter. But like there was always something to do kind of,

and it was constant. It was like this sort of 24 hour, right? Like experience. And I think that was really what, um, what separated it from, from other, from other movement waves that we've had, we've had since, um, and was, was, was probably, I think it's greatest strength in many ways. Yeah. I think that was, that was the the impression that i got and part of this also was when i was in college like every once in a while you just get assigned like some person writing about occupy and it was like most of them were just extremely cranky

about the whole thing but sure you know one of the things i think was interesting about it is that Sure. You know, one of the things I think was interesting about it is that everyone seemed to agree, at least to some extent, that part of what was going on was that it's this way to do – I don't know if identity formation is quite the right word for it, but it's this way to sort of like rebuild social connections and rebuild like social sort of bonds in a way that just had you know as public space becomes just the cops and right like i there's there's a table in chinatown that i like call the cop table that i'm really mad about that like like this is in chicago chinatown i would like go there's in front of the library and there's a sign sign on the table that says if you loiter at this table you will be arrested it's like this is a picnic table like the, if you loiter at this table, you will be arrested. It's like, this is a picnic table. Like the cops are, you,

this table is threatening that it is going to arrest you if you use it for what's using, you know, for what you're supposed to use tables for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

I know. I think, I think that's right. I think like it was, you know, there was a lot of, um, at the time,

a lot of people were talking about, um, uh, embarrassingly about heart and degrees, sort of like multitude stuff. Um, really, a really, a much of people were talking about, embarrassingly, about Hart and Negri's sort of like multitude stuff. A much better book that was important was also David Graeber's Debt. But I think like, you know, and there was like a lot of like people saying things about like the agora, you know, democracy, the sort of political, the political space of encounter. And that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like, I mean, I'm sort of being a little sarcastic with a lot of encounter. And that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like, I mean, I'm sort of being

a little sarcastic with a lot of it, but I think like there was a lot of, you know, part of how I think we should understand the over-discussed, under, you know, like over-analyzed word neoliberalism that like has largely become meaningless. One of the things I think is valuable for understanding is a process by which capitalism responded to the long 60s by disorganizing its production process such that the long 60s could never happen again, right? So the control, the concentration of workers within production in such a way

that they could be agitated by students and then sort of radically unionize Wildcat and sort of like almost overthrow government, right? Like neoliberalism is like, you know, it smashes the unions, yes, but it also like distributes out the act of production, right? So that that's not so easily done. And I think one of the real problems of, you know, that was facing social movement, um, you know, in the, in the period, you know, the long period, like, you know, you had stuff like in the U S again, that's, this is where I know the best, but like, you know, you have the LA uprising, which is huge.

Um, and you have, you know, the, the, the summit hopping movement and anti-globalization, which, you know, could attack a target, but there wasn't really a sense of like how it felt hard to do a local struggle, um, beyond like literally like a revolutionary riot, like LA, which, you know, you can't really precipitate.

Um, I mean, you can't really precipitate a movement either, obviously, but I think like, but like, but like a, a political,

a political movement, a form of political organizing that didn't require something on the level of George Floyd, which is what the LA rebellion was. Um, but that also didn't require something on the level of George Floyd, which is what the LA rebellion was, right? But that also didn't require like an action from capital that you were like striking against, right? Like the summits or whatever. And that, again, I think all of these eras are very important.

This is not to like, you know, obviously like this is with respect for those movements. But yeah, we felt, I think it felt like we were in a political wilderness and I think that that like, um, occupy really, and the movement of the squares globally, I think, um, really like demonstrated that it was possible to practice a kind of street politics even without, um, you know, a shop floor where you could organize even without, um, you know, a, a, a, a capital P party, uh, to organize within. Um, and I think that was really important. I think it also scared

a lot of people who, and continues to, who are committed to those politics. Um, and, um, to the 20th century workers movement, uh, or the 19th and 20th century labor movement, which they somehow fantasize will come back, um, if they just wish hard enough and write enough books or whatever. movement, which they somehow fantasize will come back if they just wish hard enough and write enough books or whatever. And I think like, so I think that was powerful. I also think like, yeah, sorry, we can move on to legacy later. But yes, I think that was like, I think that was very much like an important thing was just like, and you know, I graduated college in 2009.

So I was like part of that millennial generation that like, you know, had gone into incredibly deep debt, but like we'd have a college degree and then like the, the bottom fell out of the economy. There were no jobs. Um, and like, I think there were a lot of, you know, like people who like had anticipated a middle-class life, um, of some kind, uh, not that I really had at that point, but whatever, like, but, but a lot of people like in my economic cohort, like had suddenly facing, you know, proletarianization, right? And I think that was one of the strengths of the movement. I think that was, you know,

like I mentioned the statistics in Spain and Greece. Like, I think that was a global aspect of this kind of movement. Arab Spring too, like there was a lot of, like that was really a response to the economic crisis. Obviously those folks were already more proletarian than the people who, the young people in the squares movements, but they innovated,

they created the tactics in Arab Spring, right? Tahrir Square, most famously in Cairo. And I think like those, creating a meeting place where you didn't require a pre-constructed like political community in order to engage was a strength and a weakness. And I think it also, you know, as a result of the dynamics of the General Assembly, the dynamics of the sort of voluntarist nature of that, what I'm describing, Um, it led to a lot of people who were already confident, who were already feeling good, being able to like take more power, right? Like, um, uh, and I think it also was a very white movement, um, certainly in New York, but, but I think, I think across the country, um, it was largely, it was largely, you know, it was, it was, uh,

majority white in a way that, you know, by higher percentages than any movement that we've really been part of since, um, was, um, and that was obviously a limit um for for reasons that will be obvious to everyone including the idea that like a lot of people pushed that like the police are part of the 99 percent yeah right um okay so let's talk about the police because you know that's you know that's that's one of the other extremely important aspects of this is this immense militarization i mean okay so i think the militarization of the police as a phrase, I think is somewhat misleading in that, like the cops have always like shot people. there there's yeah there's there's there's still like there's an intense sort of ramp up of the prison sector there's you have this intense boom in the size of prisons you have uh yeah you have increasing parts of the economy that are just the entire towns that used to be sort of manufacturing

sectors used to be sort of involved in sort of industrial production that are just like it the economy is now just there's a prison there and right and i think this is also looking back one of the things that look like occupy kind of ran up into because you know occupies this attempt to like you know form a democratic space and it relies crucially on this this thing that is nominally in the constitution but doesn't exist which is the like the the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly and freedom assembly like that is that is like that is bullshit it does not exist if you like if you actually believe that this exists like try getting like 70 people into a space and see how like just like i don't know like into a street or just just like into like have a bunch of people in a park and just like see how fast the cops show up because

you know it turns out like yeah yeah first time i yeah that i was i was at any kind of protest cops immediately wanted to take anything i was holding you're not you're not allowed to take the first thing if if you if you have anything in your hands that's that is a that is a problem yeah it's like the first amendment is just it's super completely superseded by traffic laws like laws about like sidewalk. Yeah, it's like the First Amendment is just, it's completely superseded by traffic laws, like laws about like sidewalk maintenance. Like it's all fake. Like none of it. Yeah.

Like you're not allowed to. And this I think is partially why, this is kind of a talk, but this is partially I think why there's so much focus on the right about the First Amendment because they want to draw attention away from the fact that like the actual thing that's fake about it is that you can't gather people and meet anywhere and they want to draw it into these like inane – like this professor said the N-word a bunch of times in class. Isn't it bad that people are mad at them? But I think also tying this sort of back to Occupy – okay, so Occupy functions right insofar as there is a physical location where people can go and physically interact with each other. And that's a problem because at some point the police are just like, no.

And they start clearing the encampments. And I think this is the other thing with Occupy is that outside of like parts of Oakland and that's a whole other thing that yeah but but it's it's incredibly studiously non-violent in a way that like nothing i've ever seen before or since is yeah so so so there's a lot there i'm gonna i want to talk about it because that's there's a lot um but yeah so i think i think the militarization of the police thesis is incomplete if you don't also talk about the police-ification of the military, right? So part of what happens with the great expansion of the carceral state, part of that is also a response to the Vietnam War and mass resistance.

The troops, in the last two years when ground troops are there in Vietnam, there's like 1,400 fragging incidents where, you know, where privates and recruits killed their officers. The U.S. Army during Vietnam was on the brink of collapse in the way that like the Russian Army was looking in 1917. Yeah. It was like, like the numbers, I think, I think so. Number one point, there was like 40% of the army by the end of Vietnam was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah, no, it was, it was complete.

There was the reason that, that Nixon pursues Vietnamization, which is when they just start doing air campaigns, bombing and napalm is because they couldn't rely on ground troops anymore. They just, they were useless. They were all high. You know,

the talk about, you know, there's a lot of talk about like heroin, but like that was actually kind of a form of resistance within the lines in a complicated way, whatever. Okay. That's all very, so the military realizes that it can't function as a mass military in the model that nation states have done since the Napoleonic wars, right? Which is like the, the, the mass, you know, the mass recruitment of the citizen soldier. That's sort of how war is fought between, you know, 1810 and 1970. And then it becomes clear that that's not going to work anymore because the aims of the countries and the power of nationalism have become too abstracted.

Fascism has done too much damage to that image. There's just like there's it doesn't really work anymore. So the military turns into a sort of what it always was also, which is like a colonial policing force. And so the police and the military drift towards one another in form and function. Okay. So in Occupy, one of the micro histories that I think gets forgotten is that like, I mean, because it took a week and like who remembers this week,

except for like weirdos like me who were there, is that like there was no one at Zuccotti in the first week. And one of the big things that happened was these young white girls got caught in a police net and pepper sprayed. And there was this video that went around of them getting pepper sprayed and screaming. This woman on her knees screaming with tears and pepper spray going down her face.

And that really outraged people because it was police repression and police violence. So in terms of the question of nonviolence, yes um there was a lot of non-violence it was a constant fight that took honestly took until the george floyd uprising for the right yeah our side to win frankly but but but um but during occupy there was you know there was a lot of non-violence nonsense um and i think like, but another thing that happened though was that like, you know, like I said, people were marching every day.

So even in New York where I think the political height was kind of achieved October 1st when we took the Brooklyn Bridge, I think New York never really like had a big moment again. Like it was largely sort of like smaller things after that. But like, and there was a mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge.

So we marched over the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge got shut down. They arrested 700 of us. It was the first big infrastructure shutdown that happened in the U.S. since the L.A. riots. It was, it was a big deal at the time. Now it happens all the time. Can I put a note out though, specifically for the Brooklyn Bridge?

If you're, because people, I've seen every, every single time there's one of these movements, people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge and they all get arrested. Because people, I've seen every single time there's one of these movements, people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge and they all get arrested. And it's like, can y'all, like, please, I am begging you, if you're going to try to take a bridge, make sure you have a way out. Like, you have to hold one of the sides. That's the problem with taking a bridge. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

You gotta have a way out. A bridge is designed to not have a way out. That's how bridges work. Yeah, exactly. Please don't all get arrested it's it's in fact bad and yeah sorry exactly i have seen a few people successfully take bridges a few times but that's because there was like three cop cars and like 15 000 people yeah exactly if you have like a block with 200, you're not going to be able to hold the bridge. Yeah. Welcome.

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, Thank you. started, you know, we were mostly people who had been educated by the cooptation of the civil rights movement, which is that it was all nonviolent and that the whole thing was getting arrested. And Martin Luther King was like the only voice that made any sense. And that was what was effective, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, we had all learned that in school, right? We had all been trained that like nonviolence was like the only thing that made sense and that worked. Um, and I think like those of us who learned about it at all in school which is certainly not everyone um but like i think like like the the experience of occupy of like every day just getting beat up by the cops every day like getting attacked getting arrested some people got really some people got really nihilistically non-violent like some people like really dug in and they're like yeah like like we're like no like there is nothing we can do except be beaten and it turned this like real masochistic game yeah

but that happens yeah that still happens all the time oh yeah oh yeah that's one that's one common response but another thing that happened was that people started breaking through that that that shit people people started on the ground like i remember a march you know early on you know the police would attack and everyone would sort of like try to deescalate. And people would try to like, you know, like talk to the cops or whatever. And like by November, when right before the camps got cleared, I remember being on a march where we stole all of their orange netting that they were using. And we were just holding it over our head as we marched and like trapping cops in it. So like even in New York where things never got that intense, um,

like in some ways in terms of direct action, like that lesson on the ground, like you have to be, you have to be very ideologically committed to get hit with a baton three times and still think the police are on your side. You know, you have to like, you have to really be drinking the Kool-Aid and some people are like,

some people really do want to believe that. But I think, um, I think that was one. So during occupy, like those of us who hated the police were pretty lonely, even though the police were beating us up. But by the end of Occupy, the seeds had really been sown for a lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily immediately sow fruit. Like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think like, I think like folks who stayed in struggle from there grew more and more

anti-police. Yeah. That was in general. That was, well, okay. So my experience was less with Occupy and more with like the 2013 stuff in Turkey,

but it's like that, that was like, cause I was brought up in that, like the sort of like faux Gandhi and like MLK civil disobedience. And in that, like, the sort of, like, faux-Gandian, like, MLK civil disobedience. And then it was like, like, I watched Turkey happen, and it was like, hey, here's my friend just, like, getting his ribs broken by a cop. And then, like, there's Rabah, you know, and Rabah is sort of where the Egyptian movement dies. And at Rabah, they just, you know, they bring out the machine guns, and they just shoot everyone. Yeah.

And at a certain point, like, you know, this is the limit of nonviolence, right, is that what happens if they just shoot everyone yeah and at a certain point like you know this is the limit of non-violence right is that what happens if they just shoot you and and gandhi you know if what if you ever want to like go down the gandhi rabbit hole like gandhi like writes this letter to like like the jews of germany where he's telling them to like throw themselves on the blades of the nazis and it's like this is this is like yeah it sucks this is ridiculous like just this is like you it's being complacent for abuse um any window studios has a really good video on why non-violence helps the state um and how basically activists that try to force other you know demonstrators to adhere strictly to non-violence yeah that's basically that's that's them in that's them basically saying

that if like that's them endorsing the police beating somebody up like like that like that's it's it's not actually tied to any kind of movement and it doesn't actually help like i i mean we could actually see this last year with like the first few weeks of like you know abuse from the state actually making headlines and actually changing people but after a while it just didn't matter like a cop could pin someone down and pummel their face in like august and like who gives a shit nobody like it doesn't it doesn't matter you know like that's why i i i found it funny when he talked about like you know people getting mad because cops were like macing people when they surrounded them and i'm like if that happened no one no one would give a shit like

yeah well i think not not at all anymore yeah totally well i think i think part of it is is the first time that you see it it it's like, what on earth? Yeah. This, I think, has been one of the things that's been the core of the whole sort of 2019, like, late 2018, 2019 to, like, 2021 sort of cycle of revolutions is that, like, if you're just, like, a dude in a grocery store

and some guy runs in, is, like, running away from the cops and then, like, 15 15 riot cops and just start beating the shit out of them which is a thing that happens like a lot like if you just see that right there's no way you can actually like like if you ordinary person just witness the cops running up and just beating the shit out of someone like there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized against the police by it but like yeah but there's there's a certain point where you hit it the desensitization happens yeah more quickly than what it should yeah um and we stop caring i agree i agree with both of you that like that like both it is

shocking and radicalizing and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular pressure yeah to naturalize the police and non-violence ideology is part of that, is part of naturalizing police violence, right? There's nothing you can do about police violence, so all you can do is control yourself, and therefore you should be better or whatever. Yeah, Gandhi had this whole fantasy about the perfect

army would march unarmed into machine gun fire, and would just be mowed down. He's a fascist, frankly. You only need to look at his opinions about uh black africans when he was when he was in africa to see that even if you even if you just read like like even if you just read like self-reliance it's like this is you know there's not everything i want to talk about with with the the peace police though which is that that they're also, in terms of fighting, inflicting violence on other protesters, they are the most violent of the factions you see in a protest. That does happen very often.

Maybe not the most, but that does happen. They beat people up. That does happen. They beat people up. I was just going to say, it ties into protest security. And when protest security is usually working with these more peace police type organizers, and then they use protest security to literally beat up people who are doing more radical action against the state, that happens all the time, yes.

Oh, yeah. Protest security. When I see protest security or marshals, I know exactly that that the that we're in a bad we're in a bad march yeah um the only time i've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during occupy actually um during after the night after we've been evicted um which is like november 15th i think um and if people don't remember obama and the fbi coordinated this nationally all the occupied encampments got swept within a week of each other. On that march, we're marching around. We've been marching around all night. And I'm just dragging a trash can into the street because we're being followed by police cars. And I'm literally attempting to do some education at the same time.

I'm pulling the trash can into the street and I'm yelling, I am doing this because I want to protect us from police violence. If this is in the street, then the cop cars can't catch us as much. That's why we build barricades. I'm literally trying to yell this because pulling a trash can in the street is incredibly ineffective ultimately. So it was literally just for education purposes at that point basically anyway. Especially since a lot of people would pull them back out of the street, whatever.

This guy runs up on me and grabs me by the collar and lifts me up and like threatens me with his fucking fist and he says if my mom can't get to work tomorrow because of you like i'll beat the shit out of you and we're like we're marching in manhattan at like 1 a.m i'm like what the hell are you talking about and like he would he would have hurt me like pretty bad if a friend of mine hadn't like luckily had my back and like de-escalated a bit that's the only time i've ever been like physically like brought up like into a fight um with by by another protester uh was was a guy insisting that me dragging a trash can into the street was beyond the pale and i think no pun intended i want to just talk a bit more about like how systematic the violence was like because okay

so originally i was going to try to get someone from occupy oakland's to come talk about this and i talked to a lot of people and the biggest thing that i got was that no one would talk about it on the record because they would they got because oakland had oakland had a blacklist and if you were in occupy and like anyone else found out about it like people like people couldn't people spent half a decade just not being able to find jobs because they just blacklisted everyone and like to this day like the thing i was told was like yeah i can't i won't talk about this because you know like if i talk about this like i will be fired all my family everyone around me will be fired and there's like

i think like this is the other thing but when we talk about the collapse of Occupy, the extent to which after Obama and the FBI ordered the camps closed, the policy is that the cops are going to torture anyone who attempts to gather in a place. Yep. For two years, you couldn't have a meeting outside without the police attacking, basically. Yeah. police attacking basically in New York. And yeah, I mean, it was, you know, I think like a lot of the people who now claim that Occupy is the reason that they do politics or whatever for Bernie Sanders or whatever.

At the time they were saying that the reason it collapsed is because there was no organization, there was no structure, there was no political party, there was no, you know, whatever, there was no demands. And like, it's true that it was poorly organized. Like there's no doubt. Um, but like we got beat out of the streets, like we got beat out of the streets and like people tried for six months really intensely. And for another six months after that, less intensely to restart that energy. Um, there was all this works towards like a general strike on mayday um 2012 which ended up not really

working which is actually exactly the kind of demand-filled one day of action kind of politics that they were demanding it actually really failed yeah um which i think is telling but but in the meantime like you know like occupy like zuccotti got cleared but for a while there was the thing no one remembers this i don't think but there was a thing up in um uh Union Square um there was an occupation for three weeks there was like all the Union Square freaks um and like a bunch of occupiers um and yeah the cops just like it was just like batons out on site for a few years in New York um and I know it was like that everywhere else or most everywhere else and that that came down from on high that like the police were just like, oh, what was dangerous about this was people gathering in public. So we really need to like,

we really need to like enforce the second amendment being meaningless. Now we really need to stop meetings from happening in public. Um, and that violence was super intense and super real. And a lot of people got beaten out of the movement, you know, and a lot of people got really demoralized and left. And, and I understand why, um, it was scary and awful. And there And a lot of people got beaten out of the movement, you know, and a lot of people got really demoralized and left. And I understand why it was scary and awful. And there was a lot of repression and, you know, and it and it has continued to sort of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate. But what has successfully happened in our movements, I think, to our to our credit is that we haven't actually formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more effective police repression. All the police have right now against us, for the most

part, is batons in the street. They have a lot more trouble infiltrating, a lot more trouble, which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy, but they have a lot more trouble taking down the movements in a sort of cointelpro way, right? The modes of repression have changed a bit. But that's also because we don't have, it's a combination of the fact that we don't have those forms of organization, but we also don't have those forms of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our

living conditions like they used to. So I think it's, you can't just give credit to any one thing. There's a lot of different factors at play, I think. I will say, one of the other things that I've noticed, and I'm pretty sure this has happened, and I've talked to people who are talking about this at Occupy, is that the first thing, if you have a group of people who are just there,

the first thing the cops try to do is appoint a leader so that they have one person they can negotiate with. And this lets them sort of, this sort of access point to which they sort of break the demands of the crowd is that they find one person, they appoint them the leader, and they get that person to sort of like be the liaison my favorite occupy joke i gotta give respect to occupy denver this was the best joke that ever happened in occupy they announced the beginning of one week on friday we are going to announce our leader occupy denver has chosen a leader and the whole movement got so upset everyone was so angry i was

like what the fuck and like they had this like big press conference and their leader was a golden retriever and it was like it was as a perfect role kudos to occupy denver whoever organized that prank i love you i guess yeah so speaking of kudos to a place the last thing i wanted to talk about was the giant like port occupation strike thing in oakland yes because i mean that wasn't the first time people had done it like i know during the anti-war movements even even till like 2007 2008 there's a lot of people trying to occupy ports but in oakland they like did it they really they put like 40 000 people like in this in in the port of oakland and they shut it down yeah and i think that was like that was one of the thing one of the stories kind of been lost from this because like you know like that was the point like so like i know people in oakland who like they got like drugged repeatedly

drugged by police informants because particularly oakland is also oakland's also way the walk by oakland is way way less white than any the movements and they get like the the kind of police oppression they get is like just like yeah you know again like people people being repeatedly drugged by informants like comp shooting people in the face like the the you know you have the blacklist you have all the stuff and and i think you know part of it is battles yeah yeah and i think part of it is because part of it's because it's a bunch of non-white people and that's you know that's just what happens and but i think another part of it was also that there was this fear about yes so so the reason the port strike is able to happen is because

there's sort of there's a complicated game here where the people like sort of got involved in in like longshoremen union politics but that sort of like fusion of of you have all the people in the street and then they start shutting down ports and that like like the cops, like, lose their minds over that. Like, that, I think, was, like, extremely scary to them in a lot of ways. But, you know, I think I think part of the heightened police repression and the heightened power of the Oakland Occupy Oakland folks was the Oscar Grant rebellion, like I mentioned, in 2009, which had happened, which had, you know, had been a few hundred people, but it had been really rowdy. They've been like looting and smashing maybe maybe more than a few hundred, maybe near a thousand people on the big on the first night. And you also obviously have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland. So, you know, the Black Panther party, you know, forms in Oakland, it lasts in Oakland a decade and a half longer than it does anywhere else in the country.

Um, so there's a lot of like, and you also have the really, really intense justification of the Bay that's happening. Yeah. So there's an incredible political and economic pressure in the Bay combined with this history of radicalism that really, you know,

um, but yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting, I think what you said, like you, you put your, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Like it was largely like, it was terrifying that it was the most effective direct action in the occupy

movement. I think was that port shut down. I think without a doubt, like the biggest mass direct action that, that occupy achieved was that November 12th. Was that, was that, was the date of that? I don't remember, but 2011 near the end of the, near the end of the cycle. And I think like the other thing about that though is that that was very similar to the alter globalization movement, right? Where the unions had sort of teamed up with,

you know, like in Seattle, there's a lot of trade unions on the ground next to all the black blocks, right? And I think like that image, I think really, it's really interesting. It really terrified the police. And it really, it could be interesting it really terrified the police and it really it could be it could have been a vector for a certain kind of like labor first politics

that could have emerged but instead like the labor first people have turned out to be all electoralists yeah it seems that's sort of a weird blip that hasn't really returned um yeah and it's interesting too because like because now like you know like is like, no, cop union's great. And there's this sort of split between the street movements and organized labor because they're off doing electoral stuff and cop shit, which is this sort of… Yeah, and have been now for seven decades. is sort of... Yeah, and have been now for seven decades. Really, the buying

off of the unions and the New Deal, with some brief windows of wildcat action in the 70s and the 90s, the buying off of the unions has never really gone away. Industrial unionism in the US has long been, and in Europe, everywhere where those developed in the early 20th

century, that labor movement, they've really been successfully bought off and i don't think there is uh i don't think that those unions are like a big easy route to power anymore than yeah i don't like yeah i think they're gonna overthrow the government i mean i will say yeah this is this is my my also my the thing that i plug every time is that the afL-CIO overthrew Allende. Yep. Yeah, like their people on the ground were like directing a bunch of the anti-Allende stuff. And it was the union bureaucracies more recently in 2001, or in the wake of September 11th, who transformed the anti-globalization rhetoric into buy American. Yeah. Which it turned out was often buying prison-made materials yeah but like that was that was the union the union sort of um defanged

the defanged alter globalization into by american yeah there's there's i think like there's a whole another story there about how that like how anti-globalization turned from like you know the zapatistas to like trump yeah which is incredibly depressing and yeah goes goes through this line of sort of like the replacement of internationalism with nationalism and that kind of like by local stuff and the fact that like these people sort of just decided that you know partially after seattle partially after 9-11 they're just like we're not doing direct action again. And,

and Oakland's like, Oakland's like, that's like, that's like the one big exception to that was that moment. And then it just kind of just has never happened again. And that's partially because that, that union, the ILW,

is ILWU, I think out there is on the, on the courts. That was a particularly like radical union that had had some wildcats like, and, and was like, like more democratic than any of the, many of the other unions in, in, in those, those years. But yeah, but that's, that's also like a big story for another time, obviously. The competition of global anti-globalization over the 20 year period.

Yeah. You know, it's just kind of corny, but like, what can we actually learn from what happened there? What went wrong and sort of what the limits of it was? which we can go over quickly is that it reintroduced class discourse largely into the popular, you know, the 99%, which is a very, very bad class politics, but like, you know, like, um, like the, you know, it reintroduced some of that sort of class war class war discourse. And, um, and I think more important than that, but, but not that dissimilar, it, um, reintroduced, um um street politics into the u.s um i think a part

of the legacy that gets forgotten um because like the general the globalness of the wave gets forgotten as well like is that when when shit pops off in new york everyone in the world knows or at least they did then right because? Because America had been so successfully, you know, um, appeased politically for so long that I think that when Occupy popped off, um, in 2017, like in 2011, rather, it really like signals to the world, like the rest of the world, like, Oh, like this is real. Like even in the, you know, even in the center of empire, like, like people are rising up. Um, it's hard to remember and it's weird, but like there was an Occupy in, York, in the UK.

There was one in Tel Aviv. There was actually kind of like a pro-Palestinian Occupy in Tel Aviv briefly. And, you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort of immediate tactical offshoot of Occupy was Occupy Nigeria in the first weeks of 2013 when President Good Luck Jonathan took the fuel subsidies away. And there were like, sort of two weeks of really intense revolutionary rioting in Nigeria that then called themselves Occupy as a way of being legible to the rest of the world. I think the other legacies, though, that are a little more sort of subtle, I i guess is like that a lot of folks still in the struggle now like i will still meet people you know my age who like i've met i have two comrades here in philly who i didn't know at the time but who were organizing in new york right

like we probably hung out in rooms together like we probably like we were probably in the same spaces but like so like a lot of folks you know it each of these waves that has come has left you know some people leave some people swing right but like there's a residue of folks that like becomes the base for the next movement and i think like occupy really did provide a lot of people in a way that the gap between alter globalization and occupy didn't produce nearly as large a contingent of people although of course there are those people um but i think also, really importantly, the tactics of Occupy. One of the things that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising was that every tactic that we have tried in the last 10 years reemerged.

There was a prison strike. There were indigenous blockades. There were Me Too-style call-outs, which, of course, developed out of punk and queer scene call outs that had been going on for a decade, but there were occupations, right? You had the Chaz in Seattle, which we can, you know,

yeah. But we'll, we'll, we'll, we're, yeah, we will get to that one day in any case, in any case,

like I think like that, that has remained in the repertoire of proletarian struggle, like as a result of, of occupy. And, and, and if it had just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't, but as a result of, of Occupy. And, and, and if it had just been Occupy, maybe it wouldn't, but as a result of the global movement of the squares,

which obviously goes until Tahrir Square in 2013, 2014 in Turkey, I think is probably the, the, the, excuse me, Gezi Park in Turkey, which is like the last big moment of the squares really. But that five-year wave, like it was really, really important globally, really, really important locally as well in terms of building activists, building a class of, well, I don't, you know, whatever, building revolutionaries, whatever you want to call them. The good version of the thing, not the bad version. It produced a lot of them. And I think, like, in terms of its limits and, like, what we can learn from, I think, I think taking the police more seriously was really important. I think taking police violence more seriously was a really important legacy of occupy.

I think, um, I think pushing towards the limit of what total democracy meant. A lot of people in occupy remember that like a lot of Ron Paul people and like weirdo, like, and the fed cranks and like right wingers like spoke and occupy and like like, uh, that, that, that total open populism of, of occupy, I think was both probably its greatest strength and its ultimate limit.

Right. Which was that like, it was never going to be able to really like sharpen itself into the, into the knife. And it wanted to be to like really change the face of, of global capital or whatever. Um, because of of because there were so many white yeah middle class yeah like a bunch of the uh like a lot of the like the the current far right media people came out like center fairbanks was like an occupy streamer tim pool yeah you're welcome for tim pool um he was filming on the last day, a bunch of us doing some things. And Tim Pool did not manage to continue filming is all I'll say.

And after that is when he started swinging right. So you're welcome. Anyway, sorry, that guy's a fucking asshole. He was an asshole then, though. I think what's important to know is that a lot of these people were sus as hell back then to Occupy folks. Like they were around in Occupy because of the nature of Occ. Like, but like they were, we already didn't like them, you know, like a lot of these people were already unpopular, were already disliked in the movement. Um, so yeah. Um, but yeah, I think, I think, so I think, you know, there is, there, there are all these

different legacies, um, from it that I think that I think ultimately the legacy things that emerged are much more important than Occupy. I think, you know, one of the things about it was that it really was just like the reemergence of street politics. And like like as the reemergence of street politics, like it was pretty limited and it was not that effective at changing things. And also it was incredibly effective at leading to this last decade of struggle in the US. And I think you can't, I think there's a tendency to want to judge movements by the immediate results that they produce.

And I think, am I about to quote Mao? I think I am. Was it like when he gets asked, what was the, in the 20th anniversary of the chinese revolution he gets asked like what was the what was the the outcome of the chinese revolution he says it's too early to tell right like i think like that maybe that's javan i don't remember who that is yeah i don't know but they were right like yeah they were right they were right a lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, they successfully transitioned to capitalism. And they transitioned to capitalism. They did a great job. Yeah, yeah. So what was the result of Occupy? It's too early to tell, but I think like, I also think like the things that we've talked about here

were core components of why it mattered. I do think one other kind of effect that it's had, and it's hard for me to gauge this cause I've only been around post occupy, but I feel like now when people try to get stuff started, they really fall kind of into an occupy mindset where they're like, the only way to make this successful is to hold this space. And I think that is really a default way that even more experienced,

like both experienced organizers and new organizers really kind of just, I keep using the word default, it's because that's just really what they go into. You saw this in a lot of different cities last year where they had people trying to set up spaces to hold. A lot of them did not work. A lot of them were like,

oh yeah, we're trying to hold this space for an hour because then the cops pushed us out. and you know in a place like the chas it got extended out a bit longer the chas had its own problems um in other cities in the pacific northwest this happened a city happened in atlanta too it happened it happened in a lot of places i mean like i think george floyd square is maybe one of the more, honestly, successful ones for how they were able to actually kind of keep police away. And they avoided turning it into this big media thing like with the Chaz did. And I don't know. I think I grew very – I saw a lot of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this kind of Occupy mentality.

saw a lot of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this like kind of occupy mentality because what that kind of results in is people just setting up outside of a police headquarters and trying to stay there for as long as possible which is like that's not doing anything you're just kind of waiting to get beat up um yeah yeah but it's complicated though right like in defense of that tactic like i think like like that was also very that was also very core to Ferguson. They held West Florissant for a week and a half. Now, they didn't do it by setting up tents and sitting there. And also, a thing that gets forgotten a lot in the history is Occupy Ice. It was pretty small.

It was big here in Philly. It was massive here in Portland. Yeah. So there were moments when that tactic really does, it's important to have a space to meet in, and I think we did learn that. But I also agree that it has become, like any tactic that works once, it becomes a fetish, right?

Yeah. It's always trying to balance space, because, like, you know, the two big things that have happened the past 10 years is Occupy and Hong Kong. So people try to balance these two kind of almost opposing things, like, hold this space and be water. these two kind of almost opposing things like hold this space and

be water that's kind of the two things that people yell in the street back and forth and no one really knows what to do because we're just yelling slogans and it's and i was i was listening about this so so they're like the one time the people in hong kong got pinned down when they had to and they had this whole university siege it was a a shit show. Like, you know, and I would say, like, the people in Hong Kong, like, you know, okay, like, even when they were, like, they did not have, by the time you're getting to the

sort of the siege of the universities, like, that, like, you know, like, they had, like, Molotov workshops, like, there were people like, standing on the roof, shooting bows and arrows at cops, and it, like, it just wasn't enough and i mean in part partially it has to do with the fact that like you know hong kong is in a uniquely bad position insofar as it is one city and it's like the the only possible way that a social movement in hong kong like ever just doesn't get crushed by just

the fact that they're outnumbered like a thousand to one is if it spreads but like yeah it became this you know like that that moment like yeah the this that the whole problem with with trying to hold space becomes really apparent there because even if you have an extremely large number of people right like like attacking one isolated space in mass is the thing the cops are really good at and i think they're really bad at is trying to deal with like you know like 500 people like 700 instances of 500 people going through places because there just aren't enough of them but yeah that was what was it like the the head of who was it it was a big yeah a big muck muck in the in the national police

in the national police uh you know whatever um said that like we can very easily handle one march of 10 000 people but we can't handle 10 marches of 1 000 people right it was you gotta see this in chicago too like this is this is how the police lost control of of of the miracle mile was like yeah it was just there's people everywhere everywhere and yeah i don't know yeah no and that's and that's how that's that's what you know i mean certainly in philly where it was where very, very powerful, that's what the George Floyd rebellion looked like was when people were everywhere in Philly. All the neighborhoods, you know, people didn't, you know, like we were out there, you know, whatever. And like people didn't know what was going on three blocks south.

You know what I mean? Like it was like that. Like there was just there were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions, the police can't can't no matter how militarized they are they can't act yeah um effectively anyway they can act they they certainly will um they will act like pigs um but uh but i think like yeah so i think that that that sort of dispersion but i think the other there's this so there's i'm gonna promote a, really weirdo crank book right now. Sure. Go for it.

This 20th century literary weirdo, this guy, Ilias Canetti, Italian guy. Oh, boy. Wrote this book called Crowds and Power. He attempts to describe the entirety of human history and anthropology in terms of crowds. This is obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that book has the best descriptions of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere. Interesting. And I like people who take big swings because they end up, they miss.

Yeah, yeah. Miss has lots of interesting stuff. I think that's why people liked Settlers by Jay Sakai so much. Like I think the thesis wasn't great, but there's so much incredible stuff in that book that like it works anyway. That having a really wild thesis

allows you to like really like get into some interesting so anyway one of the things that canetti talks about in that book is that um a crowd uh an open crowd as he describes it an open crowd is um must constantly be growing and the moment it stops growing it starts shrinking right yeah like this i think that dynamic um in terms of both movement and, like, a momentary protest or riot, right, is, like, really real. I can totally see that, yeah. And I think one of the things that particularly organizers are trained to do and, like, that we learn to do, especially in lull periods when we're, like, organizing these little,

you know, these little crystallized groups of, like, hard cadre or whatever, is that or whatever, is that like you that like what we learn as organized is something that is defendable. But once you start defending something, you start losing it because we cannot take on the state or the police in a head on confrontation. And this is this can be confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. You can defend confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. You can defend a space sometimes. But once people get really interested in the defending, then they begin forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing, security forces, whatever it is.

They start undermining the very thing that made it powerful, which was this sudden rapid growth, this sudden big explosion of you know, like, like big explosion of power and self-recognition that comes in the beginning of movement. And I think, I don't think there's a way to will that problem away. Like, I don't think we can just like think our way out of it. Like it's just a problem. But I do think that like one thing that we could take from the experience of Occupy and the experience of the last decade is that like, if you do, you know, consider yourself someone who wants to participate in these kinds of movements, which is probably why you're listening to this podcast right now. Don't try and defend, like, don't try and defend.

Like some things will need to be defended sometimes, obviously. But like, if your main thing is like the thing, we should never defend something we've achieved so far. We should never not be willing to destroy it in order to like build something bigger. Right. Like we should never, no movement thing that we have,

be it an occupy park, be it, be it a, like a taken space defending that should never outweigh the possibility of expanding. And if that's our strategic mindset, obviously moment to moment, you can't just be thinking that constantly. But if the strategic mindset is like what we have now

is only good to the extent that it can turn into something more, rather than we have to defend what we have now, if you can think that way, I think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities. And I think it's what has worked over the last decade that I've seen is when people attack, when people expand, when people try to do new stuff, it doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold. But when that stuff stops happening, the movement is doomed. I think that's a really good way to wrap things up. I think that's a really good way to wrap things up. I think that's a nice, beautiful sentiment.

I kind of view this type of thing in more than just protests and, you know, in different facets of life. I think you can always learn from past experiences, from past struggles, but if you try to perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely going to fail. You should always learn and move on,

but you should not be focused on any kind of replication. Is there any of your books or writings you'd want to plug before we wrap up here? You should always learn and move on, but you should not be focused on any kind of replication. Is there any of your books or writings you'd want to plug before we wrap up here? Sure, yeah. I mean, I wrote a book that came out last year called In Defense of Looting. It came out in 2020 with Bold Type. I am currently also writing. I'm obsessed with movies.

I write a movie review column for the Al Jazeera plus um i did not know newsletters yeah the newsletter sub stack um if you want to read i mean it's really it is really movie reviews so if you want you know cranky anarchist theory it's not the spot for you um otherwise yeah i'm on a pretty long social media break right now but good for you there eventually i'll probably come back inevitably. Unfortunately. Yeah. I have writing popping up every now and then,

and if you read it, I would appreciate it. Is that helpful? Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about Occupy and stuff that I think a lot of people hear about, but at least a lot of my generation does not fully kind of grasp it. It is literally my pleasure. Like, I, you know, I wasted so much of my life thinking about this.

I'm so glad to be able to share some of it with some people. I'm so glad you're able to join us, too. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Yeah, I was very excited. Alright, that wraps up us today. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at CoolZoneMedia and HappenHerePod.

We'll be back for a few more episodes this week. Adios. we'll be back in uh for a few more episodes this week adios welcome i'm daniel thrill 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 shapeshifters

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You clicked on it, so I don't need to tell you the title. I don't need to say who we are. I'm just going to dive right into the fucking episode. No, I'm not. This is It Could Happen happen here a podcast about uh things falling apart and uh and what to maybe do to to arrest that and do something better in its place and uh you know folks who are regular listeners who listen to the original scripted episodes of it could happen here the first 15 episodes which i certainly recommend to everybody know that one area in which I kind of separate from a lot of particularly more liberal folks and even some folks on the left is an embrace of the fact that firearms are sometimes necessary tools, especially in times of collapse when things get bad. Now, that said, we're also not kind of gun culture people here.

We try not to, for one thing, recommend that everybody necessarily pick up a gun. There's a lot of people, perfectly nice people, who shouldn't have them, who don't need to have them, you know, if you're dealing with suicidal ideation or whatever. We're not, the point is, we try to be very careful about how we talk about firearms as a potentially useful or even potentially necessary tool in the times that we're in. And today, since we're a few weeks into this, we've covered producing food, we've covered some medical stuff, we've talked about community organizing and a number of other things that I think are priorities for most people before, you know, getting strapped.

Today we're going to talk a little bit about getting strapped. And my guest today is Paul. Paul, do you want to kind of introduce your background in brief so people know why you're on here? Sure, Robert. I was in the Marine Corps and infantry. And after that, I went to security consulting and then to the Federal Protective Service and finally the ATF, some of our funnest agencies. Yeah. All my favorite organizations there. Well, they're better than the, what is it? The FDA. Yeah. They beat the FDA. I mean, in terms of body count, they're certainly better than the FDA.

Yeah. And what do you do now, Paul, that you're out of that line of work uh well i do two things i got a day job at disney world and then uh the the side gig is we run a explosives and machine gun supply company also body armor a handful of other things but uh that's the big thing is destructive devices yeah and uh you've you've got i think experience that a lot of people, particularly on this side of the political aisle, lack. You know, one of the downsides of kind of rejecting the federal government and the military in all its forms is that there's a lot of people who may accept the validity of being armed and don't really have much in the way of practical training. And firearms are tools that to use most efficaciously do require training and practice. You can't just, um, you can pick them up and be dangerous, but not in a way that is

particularly protective to you and your community. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, so I wanted to talk about kind of recommendations and, and everything we talk about nothing, we're, we're not talking in the context of forming a militia uh or in the context of you know showing up with guns to to yell at people at a protest if that's the thing you're choosing to do that's a whole different ball game we're talking about um kind of responsibly arming yourself and your community in a way that is not going to get you in legal trouble. It is also not going to endanger them.

Because one of the things you have to accept about firearms is that there's a risk, you know, related to owning a firearm, not just the risk that like, you know, suicide risk raises if you have a gun in the house, but just if you don't use them properly, even carrying a gun, you know, it's not unheard of for people carrying guns to have those weapons taken from them and used against them. It happens to police and it happens to armed citizens. So it's it's a matter of, you know, I think when you accept that you're going to be armed, there's something incumbent upon you to understand the risks of being armed. And I guess that's kind of where I want to start. Like like what are some of the big pitfalls you see people uh fall into like um that i think traditionally training is supposed to

uh uh help allay to some degree uh well probably number one is uh grandpa's gun in the closet that's been there for 40 years unfired and somebody just picks it up and throws some ammo in it to go hunt a deer. And, um, you know, it's got a barrel obstruction or something. It just blows up, you know? Um, but number two and, and the one that can be mitigated by training rather than just general, uh, not being stupid. Cause it's kind of stupid to pick something up. That's really old and just try to shoot it is,

um, not shooting yourself. And when you do go out to the range, not shooting other people and then not shooting people in your own home, um, you know, you don't as much as you might want to say, defend your own home.

Do you want to, uh, shoot your wife when she comes home at 2.30 in the morning after work and wakes you up? And there are ways to mitigate that. And it's really easy and it's really cheap. Yeah, let's start with some of those. If you're new to, if you've decided I need a gun for whatever reason, you purchase a gun. you're if you're new to if you've decided i need a gun for whatever reason you purchase a gun um you know i i think the most basic first things are are in terms of like actually making that

relatively safe is number one knowing which which kind of firearm to purchase and number two and these are not an order of importance these are both very important number two is securing that weapon properly as opposed to just having it laying loose in the house, uh, which is never the best place to best way to store a firearm. Is it? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I own a number of personal firearms. Um, you know, I, I'm in my office right now where I got a locked door and nobody can get in and I got a gun safe back behind the monitors.

locked door nobody can get in and i got a gun safe back behind the monitors um and you know i'm comfortable with that but if if it was in a place where kids could get at it you don't want to just stuff it in uh in a sock in the closet which is actually what my mom did when i was a kid yeah i mean safe storage and i mean really being able to identify your target is probably the biggest preventer of like an inter-family accident. Because I know, you know, we do talk about safe storage, kids and all that. But back to the wife coming home, if you just put a light on your gun, $100 light, you can look at the thing that you're shooting in the middle of the night and not shoot someone you don't want to shoot. Yeah, I would go so far as to say that if you've got a home defense weapon without a light on it, you don't fully have a home defense weapon. No, you don't.

It's going to be useless in roughly half of the situation. Statistically, if you're looking at when people actually tend to be endangered in their own homes, the vast majority of the situations in which you of the situation. And statistically, like if you're looking at when people are actually tend to be endangered in their own homes, the vast majority of the situations in which you might be in danger. When it comes to weapon selection, this is another area where like, if you go on maybe one of the worst places

in the world to have this discussion is Twitter, because everybody has their opinions on Twitter. I tend to say, because I think most people, when they're looking for a first gun, if they're committed, just like thinking of personal defense, they're going to go for like a Glock or something. And I think unless you're planning on carrying a gun, and you can correct me if you disagree here, but I tend to think a handgun, again, unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon, is the last thing that you should own as a gun owner. I got a mixed opinion on that i mean yeah i i think that uh the handiness of a handgun can outweigh some of the issues i know you guys dealt with fires up there we have hurricanes yep um being able to stick a handgun into a backpack you know it can go a long way or being that is a good point um keep keep it on you in your car

because i here we're and that will depend on state laws yeah everything we say depends on state laws yeah there are states where you can yeah yeah if you're in california and you're in one of the counties that it doesn't issue a concealed carry of license like at la it's really hard to get one from what i understand yeah you gotta get to san bernardino if you want to get one of those yeah i mean first off like tooth i got a short list of guns and like two thirds of the list illegal in california they're they're not on roster but for what's most usable against or most handy it's probably a handgun but if you're expecting a threat more than uh like 30 feet away have something other than a handgun handguns they suck at hurting people they suck at killing people

yeah they're they're ineffective uh they're hard. I mean, let me say 30 feet away, but if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in a stressful situation at 30 feet with a handgun, it can be difficult. It's not easy. Yeah. Um, it's not easy.

And I, I tend to recommend number one, there are some options. Like even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are different kinds of, um, like, uh,

uh, options for that. Like I, I, I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which is essentially. Oh, they're cool as fuck. The size of a small rifle. So you can fit them easily in a backpack.

Every backpack I've owned, you can stick something like a CZ Scorpion in without much difficulty. And because they're. So when you're talking about what makes a weapon easier to use, one of the number one things is size. So the longer the barrel, the more accurate it is. The heavier the gun, the less recoil is a problem. The easier it is to use at range. And a pistol caliber carbine, you stick a light on that, that's a really good home defense weapon. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, especially people will argue about the different types of magazines. I mean, especially people will argue about the different types of magazines, but if you buy one that takes a Glock magazine and you have a Glock, you can build a full little loadout that just takes all the same magazines. One is more accurate. One is a handgun. And, you know, all the same ammo. You're not having to figure out and read a bunch on what kind of ammo ammo you need and stuff like that you just buy one and it works for everything yeah and and when you're talking about ammo i think one of the most important things like especially if you're worried about a survival situation is is availability um which is the nice thing about like what we call

the nato caliber so the nato calibers are nine millimeter, seven, six, two by 51, better known as three Oh eight. Your grandpa's hunting rifle is seven, six, two by 51. Um, or it's 30 out six, but whatever.

Um, and then five, five, six slash two, two, three. And those are the rounds. That's like five,

five, six is the standard. That's what's in your bog standard AR 15. Um, and so almost no matter what happens, um, including, you know, ammo ammo crunches you will be able to find some amounts of of those calibers generally dig through your neighbor's drawer

and you're gonna find a box of bullets they might not even own a gun and they got a box nine millimeter yeah everybody's got nine mil there and um so yeah i i think that the the the basics of like um what to get if you're looking at kind of just a basic defensive arm, you know, how to store it safely. You know, those kind of questions are important when it comes to training. What are some of, in your opinion, like the mistakes that you see people make when it comes to kind of practicing training with their weapon? when it comes to kind of practicing training with their weapon? Going to an NRA basic, like, four-hour class and thinking that you are a god. There are people who have spent five days a week

going to classes and doing training, because there's practice and then there's training. Training is where someone teaches you something. Practice is where you go with what you're already taught, right? So there are people that spend all that time, and they're still not the best in the world. There are people who do a ton of practice. Jerry Miklik, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen him shoot,

but he's like the fastest gun in the world or something like that. Yeah, his videos are crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, he'll out-shoot a full-auto gun with revolvers. It's just absolutely mind-blowing. Yeah, he's like Michael Jordan or something. You just get these people who have almost supernatural levels. It's just natural ability.

Certainly married with practicing. But yeah, continue. If you had a fight, a gunfight, which they really don't happen that much. But if you had a gunfight between a guy with a high point C9. Which is one of the cheapest, ugliest handguns you can get. A quote reliable handguns on the face of the cheapest, ugliest handguns you can get. and then did dry fire drills once a month in his garage or whatever, versus a guy who went out and bought a Wilson Combat $3,000 1911, but had only taken the NRA class, I will bet on the guy with the C8.

Yeah. Or the C9. All day long. Even if he's only got one bullet. Yeah, don't care. He'll win. And often, for all of the guys you with in all of their tactical gear and whatnot and and their spare mags taking like 300 rounds out oh god if you actually look at most defensive shootings um it's very common and i

think like it's like three to five rounds yeah three to five rounds yeah three to five rounds generally closer than 30 feet sometimes closer than like 10 or 15 this sits in my pocket most of the time it's that a glock 19 no it's a 43 oh 43 yeah so tiny um it has more bullets than i'll ever need in a gunfight probably i think i want to pivot from this point to um we started this by introducing that uh you you spent some time in the ATF, spent some time in the FPS. I haven't had any personal interactions with the ATF, but I have met some FPS guys on the streets of Portland. I'm kind of curious, especially as, because I came in contact with you through your Twitter, where you're very vocal. My personal Twitter. Yeah. And you're quite politically active now in a way that I think is surprising to people for someone with your background. Are you comfortable with kind of tracing sort of the broad strokes of your journey there? Because I think that's instructive for folks. Oh, at FPS specifically?

Well, just kind of what brought you from there to here. Oh, so I got kind of uh oh man what what's what's the word for when you just get uh i don't know i i just i got to a point i showed up for uh for work at 4 30 in the morning and i was literally shuffling through some some paperwork and and was um getting ready to file a warrant and just kind of realized i didn't think that it needed to happen and you know i i talked to my supervising agent about it and um was kind of told too bad and and i put in for some vacation time and ended up um putting him a resignation while I was on vacation. I mean, that's the gist of how I became not a cop.

Yeah. And I'm wondering kind of what do you think? Is there anything that kind of I don't know what looks different to you now as you've kind of left that behind was it like sort of a um i'm guessing there's like a period like a goldfish you know in a new bowl of acclimation to to life outside of being a cop um like what what were the first kind of things that started to shift in your perspective when you left that that thought space i'll tell you what uh watching uh or reading whatever an article or a youtube video especially now that body cams are more and more prevalent, is watching something, reading the press release and going from being able to justify it in your own mind and literally argue with people and be a hundred percent convinced like that was a good shoot

um castillo what was it philandro castillo yeah oh god oh god and he was i mean if you've if you've gotten lost track of this shooting in between all the others philando was a a black man a legal gun owner with a legal concealed carry permit who was pulled over with his girlfriend and child in a car and uh hands on the wheel told the officer he had a gun uh and got shot um yep you know and did the thing you're supposed to do although now actually since then you will get like some states will and some training classes will recommend if it's not legally required and you're carrying a gun don't say anything for that reason but i mean he went yeah uh the the command to not reach for the gun to being shot multiple

times in the chest was like under two seconds yeah um so i mean i mean the decision was already made as soon as as soon as he gave the command, the decision was made. Here's what that brings me to in terms of a question that's relevant to the topic of community self-defense, of potential community armed self-defense. Because that's not – that is a cop problem, but that's not just a cop problem. That's an everybody problem. In the CHOP, in the chas in seattle the the autonomous zone is evidence of that you had this situation where people after nights and nights of mostly inaccurate warnings about proud boys coming to attack got amped up they had guns some kids drove

by in a car and they fucking shot him to death um and it is the same it's the same mental thing happening you don't have to have a badge for that that mindset to to infect especially when you're carrying a gun um how do you in your opinion fight back against that be fucking chill uh you know like like honestly um if you were a teenager which we grew up in almost the same place you're from plano i'm from uh capel yeah so i would have argued with you about them being the same place when i was in plano but they're the same place yeah they're absolutely the same place like yeah one has uh one has uh woot.com and the other one has Raytheon.

Yeah. And a bunch of hospitals. But you and I grew up in the same time, same place, same types of schools. How many times did you see in high school or even middle school just a guy hit on a girl and then the girl's boyfriend comes over and just starts fighting him yeah like like the guy had no reason to know he didn't know he was doing anything wrong um and and i'm not suggesting uh or i'm sorry. What I'm pointing out is that, um, it's almost ingrained in, uh, us at a societal level to, to react violently, to maintain like our personal position. Yeah. And if that means that I'm in my neighborhood and I don't recognize someone, it may seem like violence is the right way to go that's actually what what

you're doing when like uh what's it called karening you know where you call somebody the the black kid yell uh selling water bottles or whatever um i know that was one in new york where the police came and harassed you know some like 12 year old black kids because they were selling water bottles yeah um it's the same thing i mean you know in that case you're not personally doing the violence you're just calling somebody else to do it for you um because you know the police are kind of violence violence of monopoly and all that yeah yeah yeah and that's um one of the most i think important things about that is the idea of violence is like when you when you're willing to accept violence to kind of maintain your your your social position or something. And I think that has a huge amount to do with with the kind of violence you see at protests with like we've had, you know, protests, quote unquote, security here in Portland.

People declaring themselves security. And what the fuck does that mean? Shooting other kids with guns for graffiti, like, but it is, it is a matter for it's, they're not doing it to protect anybody. They're doing it because they've declared themselves security.

Somebody doesn't listen to what they say and their ego is hurt. It's the same thing that again, cops do. It's this, it's a human mindset. It's not just a, a cop mindset. And,

um, I think you, when you're talking about about like, I think there's a couple of things. Number one, if you're going to be armed and if you're going to be armed in a community self-defense role, one of the things you have to accept is that like you're not as a person who is armed and cares about the defense of your community. You're not a separate thing from them. I think that's one of the areas where in which policing goes wrong yeah i mean you can't view yourselves as separate yeah and uh i i know you guys have a big problem with that um we do here too i live in a metro and uh our metro police like 99 of them don't even live in the county yeah they all go the same here yeah yeah they don't even not just the city they don't live in the whole county um and that's despite uh they get a living allowance if they'll live in the city and there's a bunch of uh if they live in the city they get a take-home car there's a bunch of incentives to try and get people to live here and they still won't do it they want to go uh live in the next sheriff over the next county where uh yeah we have a very vocal sheriff the next county over who's who's really racist and all that shit um and i yeah i think if you're if you're talking about like the potential of of uh

again of like armed community self-defense um you almost I almost would prefer phrasing it differently. Community self-defense, you know, which should be the entire community. Yeah, yeah. I mean, community and you're not the gun isn't what you are. You're not you're not security. You're not self-defense because you're armed. You're self-defense because you're a member of the community. And if you personally choose to be armed, that is an option that is expanded to you specifically because you're armed. But it doesn't change – it shouldn't change what you are. And if it does, there's a phrase that I think is really useful.

The finger pulls the trigger. And if you want to avoid – or the trigger pulls the finger. Sorry. And it's this idea that when you show up armed and you're showing up armed as someone like your purpose there is to be armed. You're at heavy risk of the weapon guiding your responses. And that's the most important thing in any circumstance to avoid if you're carrying a weapon. If you got a hammer, everything's a nail. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, and the last 20 years we've had kind of a – with the war on terror, you've seen a proliferation in media around making Navy SEALs and all that shit look really really really cool uh every other movie is about that even though like really they're just drunk guys who um yell at people a lot and who occasionally commit murder to protect or was that was that the seals or was that the green berets who killed that guy to protect a drug trafficking rig i mean probably both oh yeah that was the green berets at north carolina yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean it crosses all borders um but one thing that's come out of that is uh we we've started to call those guys operators right so you've gone from a gun being a tool that someone trains there to use to they are merely an operator of a weapon system.

And it's kind of dehumanizing. Like it allows you to get out of the thought on that. It's exactly what you were talking about, where the trigger is really pulling the finger at that point. Yeah. And it's it's I think there's a number of, I don't know, I, there's a number of tactics and more than we can get through. And that we'll be talking with some other community self-defense people at some point in the near future about this, because this is a big topic, right? And it's not one, I haven't seen anyone do it super

well yet in the United States. Like like we anytime you have kind of persistent right-wingers do every once in a while yeah they yeah they take over blm land yeah yeah but then they die i forgot about that yeah they did die get killed um and i i think that uh it's it's a it's a really messy topic because of what you brought up is a valid point. All the kind of social baggage there is around weaponry in this country and in our culture, this kind of like worship of the gun. And if you think like the left is any more immune to that than the right, you're wrong. You see the same toxic behavior all around. You have to be extremely cognizant of it,

even if you know it's something to risk for. There is – weapons in general have a mental impact on us carrying them. And there is a level of just like being around weaponry that is entrancing. It's a human thing. We make weapons. We're tool- using apes and weapons are some of the first tools that we made that that are responsible for why you know we get to tell the dogs and the cats what to do um and you have to you have to really

approach being armed from a standpoint of rejecting a lot of that if you're going to do it responsibly. I mean, among other things, the idea that you might have to use a gun, um, has to be your, your work very close to your worst nightmare. Um, cause it would be, it would be if you ever actually had to use one, um, at minimum, you're talking like when you actually look at like legal self-defense shoots, you're talking minimum the next, if you kill somebody, at least minimum, the next year of your life is, is dealing with the legal consequences of that. Sure. And probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. I mean, if you're having, if, if, if, if file, if charges get filed, you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a capital defense case.

Yeah. If not millions. Yeah. Yeah. And that's in – there's one of the gun YouTubers that I like to push people towards for this kind of stuff is a guy named Paul Harrell who is certainly more on the conservative side but who actually killed somebody in a self-defense. And went through the whole legal process afterwards. in a self-defense and went through the whole legal process afterwards. And he has a couple of videos where he talks about it and he gives, I think, pretty good advice on that is completely without ego because it was a nightmare for him. It was the worst experience of his life, which is

what it's going to be if you ever have to use a gun. And that should be the top of your mindset. I've been in this situation a couple of times at protests where like someone pulls a knife uh and starts lunging at people and i have a gun and i'm 15 feet away and i i never drew in part because it never quite crossed that line for me and i i knew that giving people the chance to de-escalate was vastly more important than um introducing a second weapon to the situation immediately. Sure. And if things had gone differently, perhaps I would feel differently about my choices in that moment,

but, um, they didn't and nobody got hurt. And that's always the best case scenario. Even if it's somebody you really dislike, uh, who is, who is threatening people with a weapon.

I swear that happened up in Olympia like two weeks ago. Yeah. Well, the shooting in Olympia, which was a guy named tiny who got shot. Um, and there's video of it. It's absolutely not a legally justified shoot for sure.

Like the, yeah, he was, he was like 40 feet away, you know? Um, yeah, but he's really tall.

He is big. He is. I think that counts for something yeah he was tall he was tall he was chasing them he was armed um i'm not making a moral case here i know i think legally they would have had a trouble had they stayed around now of course they've got uh i believe they've been arrested at this point oh have they i just heard yeah i didn't visit i think so so sorry i don't mean to crash it for a second i i think i saw uh our best friend andy post something about it oh yeah yeah yeah two days ago three days ago three i must have missed this yeah okay

so they did they did arrest the guy yeah and it's you know it's another thing if you um if you feel if you're involved in like a shooting that you feel is a justified legal shooting um you don't you don't leave the scene uh and in fact one of the better videos you'll get on like what to do and uh this guy's life has gone to shit because of the political nature of the shooting but the guy in um in denver who shot that dude at a protest the the pinker oh man that dude i'll tell you you know no matter what you want to say about whether or not it was a good shoot yeah that that he dropped that fucking guy he dropped that gun i mean he dropped his head down on his knees oh yeah yeah um yeah yeah yeah it was you know again the court case is not settled out. So I don't know if that guy's story is going to end happily,

but in terms of if you want to not get shot yourself and you want to have the maximum chance of defending yourself, if you have to shoot somebody in a situation that's legally justified, what that guy did after the shoot is, is how to handle it. Yeah. And I, I mean,

the evidence for that is he did not get shot. And obviously your mileage with that's going to vary depending on your skin it. Yeah. Um, and I, I mean, the evidence for that is he did not get shot and obviously your mileage with that's going to vary depending on your skin color. Uh, yeah, that's a big factor. Yeah. In terms of,

uh, actual training, people can like pay for if they, if they want to take that step, which I think is a good idea. Um, who do you, do you,

do you have kind of like broad recommendations for how people can know if some's you know because there's this is certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters and whatnot um yeah i mean most of the uh beginner level uh how to fight with a gun classes are two to three days long like that that's a good starting point is the fact that you're going to pay probably three to five hundred dollars per day um and it's going to be multiple days long you you can't because you're going from a baseline uh you know they know you already know how to point and shoot a gun but they're gonna go for everything on uh how to draw how to move how to reload um you're gonna have some classroom time going over their specific safety instructions and stuff like that um but anything you can do in one day or four hours or

uh 40 rounds or whatever it isn't gonna cut it, you need to go get something and you need to listen because they're going to ask you to do things that might not be the way you want to do it. You might say, yeah, that's not the way my dad taught me how to reload a handgun. Um, uh, a good example is actually, um, tactical response in tennessee they a lot of people hate them but they have a very specific way that they say everyone reloads this way in our class you know you put it in and you slingshot the slide um and then people argue and go well i want to just press the button well the button's cool and all but we want you to slingshot the slide just do it for this class.

Sorry, I got a little off topic there. No, no, no. That's a good point, too, because, I mean, a lot of people. Just go in and listen. Yeah. And you don't have to take everything away. You take what you saw as good, usable information and merge that with what you already know. Maybe throw away some of what you already know and you got this ball of goo that you can work with uh for practice um yeah yeah

and yeah it is and to that point when you're talking about like training one of the differences between handguns and rifles like all all shooting as always there's a degree of perishableness to it but shooting a handgun is a much more perishable skill than shooting a rifle um and it's it's so if you're going to be armed with a handgun um it really behooves you to take to train you know um because you're only as good as how often you've been out there really um and having a state a good foundation like taking some real professional classes will help a lot in that as opposed to just kind of going out to the range every now and again but yeah um let's talk at the ass the last little bit of this here about kind of the gun that's always on the tip of everybody's tongue when you start talking about being armed uh and armed

self-defense is you know the ar platform um it's a gun with a lot of baggage a tremendous amount of cultural baggage and it's it has become vastly more than just a firearm in our culture okay um what uh what what do you what are kind of because i am a big advocate of people who uh who are open to being armed, getting an AR platform. I think it's a great gun to learn on. Yeah, it goes bang really well. Almost every time, as long as it's from a reputable manufacturer.

Um, despite what some people say, they're very reliable. Yeah. Um, they're easy to clean. Literally, as long as you keep them lubricated,

even in the field, you keep it lubricated. It will just, just keep banging out rounds. Um, they're easy to clean literally as long as you keep them lubricated, even in the field, you keep it lubricated. It will just, just keep banging out rounds. Um, it functions in, you know, we talked about this during the episodes on like, you know, food storage and, and, and whatnot, like where there's a, there's the, there's the cheap version. I like stuff where there's, there's the cheap version that works and there's the expensive version that works. And you the expensive version that works.

And you have that with an AR. You can get a very inexpensive AR and you can replace every part of that AR over the next five years and have a $6,000 gun. I did minor price checking last night because I was like, you know, I haven't checked the retail prices on stuff, right? You know, I haven't checked the retail prices on stuff, right? So in like your budget tier normal price that's out right now, you got like a Ruger AR-556. They're 700 bucks. Yeah. That's dirt cheap and it's going to go bang.

And it's a great gun. Yeah. I have a friend whose AR is a Ruger 556 and they're very solid. Yeah. They just, they go bang every time. You're not going to break it. I mean, as long as you don't use it like bang every time uh you're not going to break it um i mean as long as you don't use it like a baseball bat you're not going to break it yeah especially now that the russian steel case ammo has been banned but then like the the other end of the spectrum is you got a sig right yeah i've got a couple

okay so you know what the rattler is oh yeah that's a fun one yeah i do not own a rattler but they are they are cute do you know how much well first off uh the the rattler it's a short barreled five five six it's not really an ar-15 but like technically it kind of is yeah um and it it's well how about this how much do you think that the rattler costs right now don't don't go look it's just probably 2,500 bucks would be my guess 2,800 2,800 yeah 2,800 yeah now it's uh now i actually put it in my category of honorable mention slash meme because it's kind of a meme gun. Uh,

it's so tiny. Um, but I don't want to get shot with it, but that's kind of the, the spread we were talking about, which is, you know, you can get a $700 gun and it'll go bang the exact same way as the

rattler. Um, it fires the same bullet. Um, and you can build up to something, not like a rattler, but you can build up to, um, a bunch of Noveske parts. You can throw a bunch of Noveske parts into that Ruger lower and upper that you bought and build a really awesome gun that will be, you know, 99.9% reliable. Yeah. Yeah.

will be you know 99.9 percent reliable uh yeah yeah and you can uh you know i i think generally if you're buying like a again you're getting kind of a a bargain basement ar one of the first things that that it's going to behoove you to replace is the optics you know it'll probably start with iron sights but shit these don't even come with anything yeah usually they come with nothing on them and you have to stick the irons or you stick a reflex site. There's a whole world of, um, of optics. And I think one of the, actually one of the websites I recommend people check into if you're looking at kind of reading up on this and doing your due diligence is pew pew tactical.

Oh yeah. Um, they do not written from like a super, you know, chuddy or whatever. Like you get a lot of very political gun websites that may have some good information, but are frustrating to read. They're not that way. They're written, you know, for people who are not super aggro about guns, but who are interested in guns. And you can find really good reviews on stuff.

But as a general rule, modern optics beat iron sights every day of the week. Like you may prefer iron. And I do in some cases. On my AKs, I vastly prefer using irons, but that would never be the weapon I would pick if I was in a situation where I needed a weapon, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think everyone should learn how to use iron sights. Absolutely. Absolutely. But if I can hand someone a $450 Aimpoint Pro, which is the budget version of a high-end optic.

If I can put a $450 optic with the mount and everything onto a rifle and just go, hey, just put the dot on what you want to shoot. You're done. Now, there's a lot that goes past that but we got rid of the entire uh proper site alignment and all that they just got to put the dot on the box and squeeze yeah um yeah i mean even even the marine corps famous for for fielding marksman has gone we're gonna switch over to optic based training yeah they're just i mean you look at even guys in like idlib province which is like one of the rebel provinces in syria that's been persistently under siege for most of the last decade um they're all using fancy optics now like that generally alphan alibaba versions of like yeah brand optics but it does the trick you

know i mean it's a it's a sig romeo that never got the role market for sig on it yeah exactly and they paid a hundred bucks instead of 450 yeah um all right well i think that's most of what we can responsibly get through i do want to end on the caveat we started with this with which is that um deciding whether or not we advocate firearms as an option, both as a legal option and something that can be for your community and for you as an individual, potentially practical. I don't blanket advise people to buy guns. I think in many cases, it's going to be counterproductive. I think you should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone who struggles with suicidal ideation, they can be a very dangerous thing to have in your home if that's something that you battle with. I do think that they can be owned and used very responsibly

in addition to I think shooting can be a really enjoyable pastime. And I think more than anything, when a whole bunch of people who are talking about killing you all have guns, it can behoove you to own a firearm as well if you're a member of one of those communities. So please don't take any of this as Robert Evans says, everyone go buy a gun. But if you're going to buy a gun, there's a right way and a responsible way to go about it. And there's picking up a random 12 gauge and shoving it under your bed which is oh god no no no more shotguns for home defense yeah they're not they're not ideal um yeah i mean we can we could talk about over penetration and stuff but yeah yeah i mean just being able to move lead in a direction they're very bad at it yeah um yeah yeah they they're

they're not they're not i mean again something like uh uh an ar or a pistol caliber carbine is in a lot of situations going to be a much more practical and and have less risk of hitting stuff you don't want to hit necessarily get get the high point um yeet the the yeah the yeet cannon yeah we'll discuss that on our whole episode of about high points uh so you've shot yourself in the dick the high point story uh all, um, do you want to, Paul, you got any, got anything to plug before we roll out here? Uh, give food to homeless people. Well, houseless, houseless, I think is. Yeah.

Um, and if you're in an area with a based DSA, join the DSI and then vote out the shit libs. Um, that's what's happening here in Orlando. Um, but yeah yeah embrace anarchy well i'm uh robert evans this has been a podcast and uh and remember as we sail out there's a reason the episode talking about guns came after the episodes talking about uh storing and growing food. Welcome.

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Yeah, that's the podcast we're doing right now. It's a podcast about how things are kind of falling apart, but maybe they don't need to, or at least not as much as they have been. I'm Robert Evans. With me as often is my co-host Garrison Davis. Garrison, say something inciting to the audience. I'm on my second cup of coffee. Yeah, because it is the early morning for you, by which I mean 2.11 in the afternoon.

Also with us today, our guest for this episode is David Van Dusen. David, you are the president of the State Labor Council for the Vermont AFL-CIO, and there's a bunch of stuff that's interesting about your organization. We'll dig into it in more detail in a second. But first, I just want to say hello and thank you for being on the show. Pleasure to be here with you, Robert. Now, David, the big thing, I mean, the Vermont AFL-CIO has been in the news a couple of times recently.

The most recent one is y'all issued a statement making you, the coverage I've seen has said the first labor organization in the u.s to like support gun rights i mean like as is stated in a lot of the stuff you've put out like blair mountain there's a long history of labor organizations making use of the second amendment but um i certainly haven't heard of a labor organization stating it the way you did which is basically the case you've made is because far right fascist organizations are so heavily armed and any all of the gun control policies being heavily debated, at least among liberals, are likely to ignore those people while restricting the ability of working class and particularly marginalized

people to arm themselves. You do not support those regulations because you support the rights of those groups to be able to defend themselves, you do not support those regulations because you support the rights of those groups to be able to defend themselves from fascists. That more or less correct? Well, look, we believe in the right of a people to defend themselves. But our policies, including that one, are not adopted by the elected leadership, including myself. They're adopted by our members. We believe very firmly in democracy, participatory democracy. So with issues like this, we're happy to bring it to our convention, which we recently did, and facilitate a full debate on the issue.

So that's exactly what we did. We talked about it. Our rank and file members talked about it. They made amendments. They debated passionately different sides of the issue in a respectful way, in a productive way. A number of amendments were made. They were adopted. And then ultimately, the resolution was passed with over a two-thirds majority of our rank and file delegates in favor. So that's where we are right now. Yeah. I've read a bit about this, including, you know, there's been some critiques from a representative from the AFT, which is the local teachers union. But there was also a member of the Vermont AFL-CIO who essentially stated like, hey, I didn't actually agree with this amendment, but or with this resolution,

but it was made democratically. And like, I support the process by which it was done, which is one of the things I think is, is so interesting here that this isn't like, um, um, kind of a group of activists at the top making declaration declarations. This is an organization that is really, um, dedicated itself increasingly to, I think a kind of progressivism that we, we haven't really seen in an organized way in a lot of the American labor movement until recently? Well, when you're talking about democracy with labor, I mean, we could be just as well talking about democracy in society as such. The fact is, is that organized labor today is not particularly democratic, and we're looking to change that. And our world is not particularly democratic. Now, the vision that we hold, our slate, our progressive slate called United, is one where we increase the means for direct participatory democracy, both within labor and within our society.

So, of course, we're going to go to our members and our rank and file and ask them to debate the issues of our day and ultimately to make a decision on these major political and social issues. This was one. We, again, we do believe that people need to have a right, the working class needs to have a right to defend itself. And we can't bury our head in the sand. Anybody that's even followed a little bit of the news lately will know that between November will know that between November 2020 up until late January 2021, we were one general shy of a coup in this country. In the upside down world that we're now living in, it was because of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the CIA not supporting a coup that a neo-fascist coup didn't totally unfold, materialize in a more mature form. Let that sink in for a minute. Our democracy or the vestiges of the democracy we

have in the United States right now is precarious. Just because they've been there for 200 years doesn't mean they're going to be there tomorrow. The new playbook from an increasingly far-right Republican Party is to limit as much as they possibly could of people's right to vote and to participate in the political process. We see this happening in Texas. We see this happening in Georgia. We see this happening in Florida. We see this happening in red, I shouldn't say red, but I should say Republican states all throughout the U.S. So these are dangerous, dangerous times, right? So dangerous that our top generals were trying to decide what their position would be and make plans in case a coup, a full-on coup, not just a hint of a coup, came into being within the last year of our republic.

Now, given those realities and given the rise of the far right, given that our former president, Donald Trump, told the neo-fascist Proud Boys to stand, what did he say? Stand back and stand by. Yeah, that's right. And now, at least they claim to have 40,000 members around the United States and they are armed. to have 40,000 members around the United States and they are harmed. We can't just rest on our laurels and pretend that the state as such is going to keep us safe. So it seems prudent and reasonable for us to have taken the action to say we defend our constitutional right to bear arms as intended to defend our communities, to defend our unions, to defend the working class. And one of the things that because we were just talking about the coup that very nearly got pulled off your organization, at least in I believe it was right after the election in 2020 issued a statement that if the president illegally attempted to stay in power, the former president, you would participate in an attempt

to help organize a general strike. Now, that's something we talk about a lot on this show. We're big believers in the potential of a general strike. We're also big believers that the kind of general strike that we need to, I don't know, potentially get climate justice and a number of other major things is an undertaking on par with the space race. You know, you're talking about an enormous task. I'm really interested in picking your brain on when we talk about a national general strike,

what is the kind of infrastructure that's actually necessary to make something like that feasible? Because there's a lot of talk on like Twitter and Facebook of like, let's just do a general strike on this day in October. Six months doesn't go by as president of the AFL-CIO of Vermont, where I don't know if a leftist group of some kind contacted me to endorse their general strike, right? The whole country is going to shut down on datax, and it's yet to happen, at least in our country. So that's a great question. A couple of things. When we voted,

and again, this wasn't a decision of myself and the leadership. This was a decision we went back to the rank and file with to one of our conventions. Eighty seven percent of our delegates after our long debate voted to authorize the elected executive board to call for a general strike in the event of a coup, in the event that there wasn't a transfer of power on January 20th, as the Constitution requires. It was our feeling that in that very specific space and time, in that very specific political climate, we would be able to call for such a strike. And with a serious amount of work and a serious amount of organizing, pull that off and make that happen.

And the thought was, if we could do it in Vermont, because the call was for a Vermont general strike, then it could spread to other states, which would be absolutely necessary if our country descended into a fascist dictatorship of some sort. Generally speaking, when we talk about climate issues, when we talk about the fact that millions of Americans don't have health care or aren't paid livable wages, all of these issues, at least these issues together, certainly warrant us looking at things like a general strike. But it's a bit pie in the sky to think that, hey, we got 10 great issues that we want to see progress on. We're going to call for a strike and it's going to happen. The infrastructure is not there, nor is the political will within the large labor bodies at this present time. Without participation from organized labor, first of all, I don't think anything's going to happen. So you're going to have to achieve buy-in at a certain level. But even with buy-in from key leaders or even localized shop stewards, you still need to have infrastructure in place. So one of the things that lacks in the AFL-CIO as a national organization, we don't have an effective network of local union contacts in every shop, at every shift, in every factory that's represented by a union, let alone the

majority of workplaces at this point that aren't unionized. So what our top priority is as far as the Vermont AFL-CIA goes over the next two years is to build a network of local union contacts in every single shop and every single shift that we represent folks here in Vermont. So we see this as a way to increase communication. Without communication, you're not going to be able to pull off mass mobilizations. And also, you're not going to be able to conduct mass education on issues X, Y, or Z. So over a period of two years, we're looking to build this network that would function not as a one-way means of communication, but almost a two- or three-way. Imagine that this is a way for the rank and file to communicate up to the leaders. This is a way for the leadership to communicate down to the ranks.

I mean, down to the lunchroom level of what it means to be in a union shop. And also, ideally, it's going to be a way for local union leaders to horizontally communicate with each other. with such a structure in place on a grand scale, on a state scale, on a federal scale, then things like organized general strikes over political issues and social issues become feasible. And even when they're feasible, though, then we still have the political question of, you know, will they be supported by the internationals? Will they be supported by the executive board of the National AFL-CIO? And that's a huge conversation, you know. Yeah, it's interesting to me hearing your perspective on this, because my experience with kind of activism has been much more of kind of the decentralized and kind of much

more recent groups, you know, since Occupy. You were dealing with these structures that in a lot of cases are, I mean, the AFL-CIO goes back like, what, like a century, right? One way or the other. Yeah. I think because of kind of how – shall I say online a lot of the discussion about this stuff seems to be organized labor often in any kind of discussion of a general strike is what happened during the budget negotiations or whatever you want to call them in 2019, where you had airline workers threatening a general strike that effectively brought an end to a president's saber rattling over the budget. President Sarah Nelson madelines over that. And that was the right thing to do. Absolutely. So her and would love to see her in a stronger position of leadership on the national level.

Well, I'm interested because I see a lot of potential in obviously organized labor has had a lot of problems, particularly in the last, you know, during my lifetime. And I think part of it is what you said earlier there's it's not as democratic as it should be at most levels um what you guys have done with uh united is attempting to reform that you know within vermont i'm wondering first how did that kind of come about you know 2019 is when you first got got put into office when when the united slate got put in the to the office in vermont what was kind of the backstory to that? And then my second question is kind of, what do you see as necessary to,

like, what's the fight as you see it to get stuff like that done on a larger scale around the country? So our story in Vermont is probably a lot like the story of organized labor in many different places, our starting point. So in 2017, not that long ago, we had a convention with something like 20 or 25 delegates there. Imagine that, 20 delegates representing, at the time, 10,000.

We've grown since then by 10,000 members. And that's called a democracy. So there was a problem, an existential problem. Now, I come out of AFSCME, local 2413 in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. So when I got together with a number of other leaders from different unions, different AFSCME locals, but also United Academics as part of AFT, the building trades, a number of folks. There was a general recognition at the leadership level that something was very wrong. Member participation was weak as can be and things had to change. And we continually as an organization, you know, with some exceptions,

hitched our wagon to the shortcomings that are the Democratic Party. wagon to the shortcomings that are the Democratic Party. So all of these things together led to inactivity, apathy, and lack of democracy. So we started going around. We started talking with workers. We started talking with shops across the state. And one of the first things that was striking, people would say, they would know what union they're in, be it APWU or Absentee or whatever it was. But we'd say, listen, we're talking, we're thinking about running a slate, a progressive slate for office to take the AFL-CIO in a new direction. The next thing they would say is, what's the AFL-CIO? Think about that, right? Workers involved, some of which were union stewards and their locals, didn't even know what the AFL-CIO was.

So that was our starting point. It was an existential crisis of labor. And mind you, during these, what I would call some dark periods, we would often endorse 100 candidates for state house, nearly all of which being Democrats. And then they would win. They would win their elections. Largely, our candidates win. And then we'd get nothing in the state house, right? There'd be no labor bill. There'd be no advancement of card check, differently organized labor. And yet we keep repeating the same mistake year in, year out and not figure out that something was wrong. So when we formed the United Slate as a coalition of a number of different unions to recognize it was time for

change, we really brought the discussion to the grassroots level. We developed a 10-point program, we call it our little green book. It's now the policy and the platform of the Vermont AFL-CIO. And we ran an organized campaign based on that, right, at a very local level. And here, we did all the things that, you know, you should be doing, the phone calls, the emails, the shop visits, all of this, and created a sense of excitement going into our 2019 convention. Our 2019 convention with over, if I recall, over 105 delegates and alternates was the largest convention we had up here in something like 30 plus years. So that was an exciting atmosphere where something was going to be different and something was going to change, right?

So we essentially swept those elections. We won all the seats except for one. we essentially sought those elections. We won all the seats except for one. We had a follow-up convention in two, I'm sorry, election in 2020, where we won every single seat. And then the last election, we won all seats except for one, where one person who's a good person

from the building trades ran, but was not part of our state. So the real question is what have we done in the interim? How are we changing that direction? And how are we trying to seek to change the capacity of labor? And what lessons does it add to the national agreement, I would suppose? So on that front, one of the first things we did is we took money out of our lobbying operation and put it to an organizing department whereby we would hire, and we have hired, on-call organizers to assist our affiliates in either new organizing or internal organizing,

therefore delivering an actual benefit to our affiliate unions. Now, mind you, we represent just about every sector of workers all across the state, but forever, they very rarely got in concrete, measurable acts of solidarity from the Federation as such, right? Because too many of the resources were put in the lobby. And we also took a critical eye towards the Democratic Party. And recently, we've instead endorsed the Social Democratic Vermont Progressive Party slates in their runs for statehouse and statewide office in many cases. So we've done a few things differently. We're continuing to do things differently. We've expanded the size of our executive board. So we elect more leaders now. We've more than doubled the size of the delegates afforded to each local. So we could have more

rank and file voices present when we're meeting at a convention. And we've taken a strong social justice position where we think that organized labor must work very closely in an alliance, form alliances with groups like Migrant Justice or Black Perspective or environmental organizations like 350.org. And we've done those things, worked on their issues where we have common interests, and we've asked them to support us on our issues where they may have some common interests. So those are things that are very different that the national AFLCI is not doing. Other state labor federations largely aren't doing them enough. And we're hoping now to build that out. And we're engaging conversations,

seeking to form a national progressive caucus within the national AFL-CIO. And I think that's so important when you talk about kind of on the national level for progressives, number one, to not continually kind of reflexively support the Democratic Party when the Democratic Party is failing progressives, which, you know, we have a perfect case study right now in Congress with the reconciliation bill. Like a bill, the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill is so widely supported by Americans, but it just keeps it is such a titanic task to imagine translating that on a national scale in a way that actually gets us the things that we really can't wait for when you're talking about some of this infrastructure stuff, when you're talking about healthcare, when you're talking about climate justice, I do feel the clock ticking. And I'm wondering what you see as the hope on the national scale for actually putting some muscle behind the progressive movement. Well, look, it's not just the issues of the infrastructure bill and the budget bill.

It's also the PRO Act, right? The bill that is languished in the Senate. And let's not lose track of the fact that those efforts are all stalling and likely, very likely to fail, and I hope they don't, because of Democrats, because the Democratic Party is not united. They ran on a platform saying they were going to do X, Y, and Z. And now when they're in a position to carry it out, they're not going to do it. and Z. And now when they're in a position to carry it out, they're not going to do it. And Joe Manchin, as far as I'm concerned, I call him a class traitor, but I don't think he's ever was part of the working class. He claims to support the PRO Act, but in the same breath, he won't get rid of the filibuster. So, I mean, that's absolute bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

So how do we change that? Well, the National AFL-CIO puts millions and millions and millions of dollars into elections. We have gotten so many of these people elected and back them in Arizona and West Virginia, you name it, and then it into a robust new organizing department or a recrafted organizing department and actually assign real, on-the-ground organizers in every single state in the country to help our affiliates, to help our state federations and their affiliates to internally organize, to build the kind of network I was talking about before, and to be active and build alliances with social justice groups, our power would be amplified five million fold. This is the way we do it. Politicians aren't going to do what's right because it's right. Politicians are going to do what's right when they feel so much pressure that they have to do it. Now, the victories that we saw for working people during the Great Depression under FDR, that wasn't just because FDR thought, you know, this is the right thing to do.

It's because people are going on strike because people are organized, because they were scared of revolutionary change in this country. So turn to meaningful, true, major reforms as a way to blunt that perceived threat that they have. as a way to blunt that perceived threat that they have. And that's what we got to get back to. Our power is never going to grow from people who are wearing ties in Washington. Our power is going to grow based on our solidarity on the shop floor and in our communities. So that's the direction we got to go. And we got to do that rapidly, very rapidly.

It's been clear to me for quite a while, both that the reason workers gain so much in the wake of the Great Depression and the only kind of hope we have for doing that now is they have to be scared, you know, to an extent. They have you think people listening, people, um, who maybe are not involved in organized labor, like what, what, what do you think people can do to further those ends? Like this is a, like when we, when we start talking about national level AFL-CIO politics, that's not something I think most people listening feel like they have any kind of ability to influence. What do you think they can influence? What do you think people can be doing to build that kind of capacity? Well, you got to be active and you got to engage in the political and social movements. But also most folks, you know, they're going to have a job of some kind. And a lot of

folks aren't getting treated the way they should in their job. I don't care if you work in a coffee shop, in a restaurant, or in a gas station, or in manufacturing. And you could start by organizing with your coworkers to form a union today. You know, you could reach out to a local union to ask for help, or you could do it on your own, frankly. But if we're not organized as working people, and we are the 99%, we are most of the world. If we're not organized amongst ourselves, we're not going to be able to become that expression of power that we need to be in order to create the change. If we're just a collection of individuals, then the ruling class, the wealthy, the powerful, the elite, they're going to have all their ducks

in a row to keep us divided and to keep their foot on the pedal of the status quo. So we need to come together. We need to organize it. The natural place to organize is in the workplace, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, it is the natural place to organize. It's also become an increasingly difficult place to organize. We all watch what Amazon did in Bessemer this year, you know, and that fight is still ongoing to an extent. But it is a continuing challenge to actually effectively unionize in a lot of the industries where it matters most, you know. actually effectively unionize in a lot of the industries where it matters most you know like we have some choke point industries like we talked about um aircraft employees that are heavily unionized thankfully and that do have a lot of power as has been demonstrated recently when they when they go to the mat um but i i'm interested in kind of we we've got you know amazon

employees is really one of the areas that i'm looking at where, my God, if something significant could actually get off the ground and a significant number of those workers could get organized, it could make a real difference. But you've got effectively what are community organizations for the most part going up against, you know, Amazon at this point has more resources than most nation states. Yeah, but so do the Carnegie's and the Rockefellers and the folks like this. And it's always been hard. Too long ago in our country, maybe during our grandfather's day, where there was a very good chance you'd be shot or at least beat over the head with a club from the Pinkertons if you tried to organize. Organizing has never been easy. In countries such as Colombia today, trade unions are killed at an unbelievable clip almost on a daily basis.

And yet still they organize. So I'm not suggesting to any of your listeners that any of this is easy. What I am saying is that it has to happen. It has to happen. And there's different models too. Like in some places, one of the models that's been effectively used is forming worker centers, right? So that's not a traditional union. It's a center in a city or in a community or in a town where workers can come together and strategize, right, in a location to strategize how to be effective as a group, as a whole, as a class on issues that are important to them, you know, be it economic, be it social, be it fighting against racism, whatever it may be.

That's a model that I suggest folks could look into as an alternative way. If for whatever reason, you don't feel that the time is right for a union in your shop today, although it needs to be tomorrow, take a look at Worker Center and see if there's one in your community, get involved. If not, get together a few people and see what it would take to start one where you live.

But one way or another, we have to be organized. We have to come together. We cannot just be a collection of individuals. That's a great point and useful information. One way or another, we have to be organized. We have to come together. We cannot just be a collection of individuals. the YPG and J in Rojava. Um, and you've issued, you know, stated your solidarity with black lives matter with, uh, the Zapatistas currently what they're undergoing in, in Mexico, um, which is massive repression from the government yet again.

Um, and you know, your support of Palestinian rights and of, uh, against sort of the U S occupation or not occupation, but a blockade of Cuba. Um, what do you see when we're talking about

this struggle, this broad struggle we've been talking about all day, what do you see as the role of internationalism in both organizing people and organizing resistance? Well, our starting point today is capital is international. So if we're going to have a foundational challenge to the power of capital, we also have to be internationalists in our elbow. We supported the YPG and the YPJ and the newly elected government in Rojava because they are struggling for economic equity and a direct participatory democracy in that corner of the world. We see this as the most significant revolution in the world in generations. I mean, this, in our mind, is on par with the Spanish Civil War and what we saw around Barcelona and the CNT then, or the Paris Commune of 1871.

If this was happening in Europe, a day wouldn't go by where this wouldn't be front-page news. But in the Western world, we often, the corporate media turns a blind eye to many of those struggles. So they're doing their part and we have to do our part in our country too. The Zapatistas are doing their part in Chiapas and in broader ways in some regards in Mexico as such. But we need to reach our hand out in encouragement and say, hey, we're here to support you. One of the things we sought to concretely do in the Vermont labor movement is in 2019, one of our central labor councils passed a resolution in support. We said, look, if you go over to fight and volunteer with the YPG and YPJ, because there's thousands of volunteers right there who have volunteered to go over.

If you return and you're American, we'll hook you up with a union job, and we'll hook you up with three months of room and board. So you could get reacclimated, you could get back into the community and get back into the local fight through the labor movement. And we were proud to actually have an opportunity to do that for one returning American fighter. In our latest resolution in 2021, and this one was broader because it was the whole Vermont AFL-CIO, not just the Central Labor Council, we again offered, we encouraged folks to feel so inclined if they're in that place in their life to volunteer with YPG and YPJ.

And if they're Americans and they come back, we're happy to hook you up. We'll do our best to get you a good union job when you return. So we felt that was a very small, least we could do kind of thing, but concrete way to provide solidarity. We all have to stand together. It's really one fight. But the place we're going to be effective is where you live locally, in your town, in your city, in your state, and in your country.

Yeah, I think that's a great note to end on and a great thing that you all are doing. And I really do appreciate that. And I appreciate you, David, coming on and talking to us today. Is there anything else you wanted to get out or anything you wanted to, like any charities or mutual aid funds or whatever you wanted to push before we kind of roll out today? I'd just like to push for folks to go to work tomorrow and organize. Organize with your fellow workers and let's change the world. Solidarity. Thank you, David. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to ask for your help. There is a Portland area woman, Ruba Tamimi.

She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist, and she is trying to save her home at the moment. She's got a GoFundMe. If you go to SaveRuba'sHouse, R-U-B-A, on GoFundMe, you'll find it, SaveRuba'sHouse on GoFundMe. If you've got a few bucks, she could really use it. Again, SaveRuba'sHouse, R-U-B-A, at GoFundMe. If you've got a few bucks, she could really use it. Again, save Ruba's house, R-U-B-A, at GoFundMe. Thanks. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the

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