It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 45

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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awards. 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. All right. Hello. This is It Could Happen Here. for you but you can make your own decisions all right hello this is it could happen here oh boy yeah we've conned robert into being here uh for civil war week no less uh we're also joined by special guest margaret killjoy uh and sophie and get who are less special now we're here we're here to start a civil war right that's what I've read on reddit start a civil war Sophie

we cleared that we cleared that with corporate right I can neither confirm nor deny officially backing the start of a civil war essentially corporate said go you know, go ahead, Cool Zone Media. Start a civil war.

Start a civil war. We will be civilly and criminally liable for all violence that occurs. That's the iHeartRadio guarantee. Yeah, and we've enlisted the people on this call who are Margaret Kildroy, Robert Evans, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and myself, Sophie. They are also all civil and criminally liable. Yeah. But do we get to collectivize a huge, maybe like 70% or so of all the industry?

Yeah, obviously. I mean, some of us do. Okay. Okay. It's like any civil war. You're going to find out who later. Okay. We're going to find out who today, Robert. This is my in-depth guide into how to beat a coup,

start a civil war, and win the first part of it. Oh, good. Well, that's the only part of it you really need to win. Yeah, it is. You don't want to get too bogged down in the later stuff because it's just depressing. So we just want to focus on how to win the first 48 hours and uh sort of from there you can taper off take a week take the weekend off yeah break off chill out yeah fine or just go down as a hero and let everyone else sort

everything else out afterwards i think that's probably the best option that's gonna learn learn about a guy who uh dies within 24 hours of the war starting as a hero and gets a gun named after him which is all we can really want for ourselves. Oh, that does sound like the dream. Yeah, that's the way Robert Evans needs to go. Not suggesting that anytime soon, of course. All right. I'm trying to imagine, would it be the Robert

or would it be the Evans? The Robert, yeah. Definitely the Robert. Just give him a good old bobbin. It would be named after my nickname, the Jesus Christ of podcasting. Right, Sophie? 100% no.

Yeah, no. Sophie says yes. If there's not already a gun named after Jesus, I will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not a kind of company you want to... We've really gotten off, and I think, in all fairness, it's not my fault. I think it's Garrison's fault.

Yeah, that's who I was going to blame. I think we've all agreed on that. What are we talking about, James? Talking about the Spanish Civil War today. We'll be desecrating the name of Jesus Christ a little bit later as well. Oh, I love desecrating the name of Jesus Christ. I'd bit later as well so oh i love desecrating the name of jesus christ i'd gathered yeah yeah we'll do that's just some more for you today i'll send you some pictures afterwards that you you you will enjoy all right so we're talking about the

spanish civil war we're not talking about all of it because that's a lot and because i think it's important when we talk about the spanish civil war to talk about like the moments when revolutionary things happened because they are as important about the moments when revolutionary things happened because they are as important as the moments when terrible things happened. And the moments when the people in arms defeated the coup because that's both instructive and inspiring and interesting. Wait, I have a question.

Yeah. What's the Spanish Civil War? That's a great question and one I've failed to address thus far. It is a war that happened in great question and one i've failed to address thus far it is a war uh that happened in spain uh it wasn't very civil so only two out of three uh remarkably uncivil actually so we're looking at 1936 today we're looking at july 19th and 20th 1936 right but you can see it as like the precursor to the second world war uh you have people who are fascist or fascist uh you have people who are fascist or fascist adjacent you have people who are explicitly anti-fascist uh and they are killing each other

uh from 1936 to 1939 and the anti-fascist win right not entirely uh unfortunately yeah they have some wins along the way you know okay okay yeah there's some moments the friends that you meet along the way yeah what is civil war if not the friends that you make along the way you know okay okay yeah there's some moments the friends that you meet along the way yeah what is civil war if not the friends that you make along the way don't answer that at home because it's sad but yeah these these are some friendly times these are some good times uh these are the first 48 hours of the spanish civil war we're going to start with an anecdote about the popular olympics which you probably have never heard of unless you're me because uh it's a it's a thing that i've written about a shit ton uh but not many folks have read about it's the antifa olympics it's the best way to understand the popular olympics it was a gathering held in 1936 in barcelona in opposition to the berlin olympics so the olympics are given

to uh weimar germany in 1931 right they're not given to nazi germany but when germany yeah uh weimar germany is the pre-nazi it's before hitler takes power yeah uh when they were actually pretty cool uh in in some ways pretty pretty progressive for the time period right in lots of ways um it's the woke germans yes it is the woke germans it's uh it's like if if if aoc was running 1930s germany that's what you get i bet they had a whole institute that trans people got to hang out at and learn about themselves i've heard that yet what happened to institute i can't remember uh the nazis came and uh killed the first woman to medically transition in the Western hemisphere and burned all of the books and then stole the records that the people had been keeping

about all the gay people and then rounded up all the gay people and murdered them in camps. That's what happened. That's disappointing. Well, good thing that'll never happen again. Anyway, we've learned our lesson yeah there's absolutely no echoes of that in current political discourse so that's fine hey let's learn how to kill fascists um let's talk about that yeah yay fuck them uh okay uh so we're talking about the popular olympics the anti for olympics the olympics that happen because the nazis are shit and you shouldn't play games with shit people.

To include the Olympics, even if you very much want to win a medal, take note, athletes doing sports in dictatorships. And so a lot of people, about 20,000 people, instead decide to go to Barcelona where they're going to host this alternative games. And the subtext of the popular Olympics is not just that like hitler shouldn't have the olympics it's that gasp hit shouldn't exist and the anti-fascism is strong

and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting a war and killing the fascists right that's sport george orwell called sport war without the shooting right uh this is a war with the shooting uh it's a good quote uh george orwell pops up a few times in this one uh not always right about everything but he was right about that um we popped up at the wrong time it's never mind i'm trying to make a george orwell gets shot shot in the throat now i just feel bad about it because... At least that's the least... I mean, before podcasting, the throat was the best place to get shot as a writer. That's true. That's true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't go well for him in the end. It sort of did end his life prematurely, I guess. But he got some bangers out in terms of books first. Yeah. But you can't fault him. All right, so we're talking about the Populary Olympics, talking about the night before the Popular Olympics.

You're going to learn why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics, so I guess keep listening. Okay. 86 years ago in Barcelona, Pau Casal, the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had already practiced the hymn of the Popular Olympics.

It was a song co-written by a Catalan composer and an exiled Jewish one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they moved to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. You might know it as Yeo to Joy. Casals recounted what happened next in his memoirs. I just called the chorus on stage to sing the chorale when a man rushed into the hall. He handed me an envelope saying breathlessly, This is from Minister Gasol. An uprising is expected in the city at any moment. I read Gasol's message. It said our rehearsal should be discontinued immediately or the

musicians should go straight home and that the concert scheduled for the following day had been cancelled. The messenger told me that since the message was written, an insurrection had started in Madrid and fascist troops were now marching on Barcelona. I read the message aloud to the orchestra and to the chorus, and then I said, dear friends, I do not know when we shall meet again. As a farewell to one another, shall we play the finale? And they shouted, yes, let us finish it. Then the orchestra played, and the chorus sang as never before i could not see the notes because of my tears so that's how uh paul casale starts a civil war uh they finished that concert in 2016 incidentally they came back to the same place and uh well and yeah it was very with the

same people uh no no well okay the same institutions right these are called or fails like uh i guess popular choruses popular kind of uh city orchestra kind of thing okay um so they finished it in the same place uh because in the intervening 80 80 years there was uh a little issue with the franco dictatorship uh which there still is in Spain incidentally but yeah Barcelona is very much reclaimed its memory as an anti-fascist city following the dictatorship I could really see myself in those musicians

it just feels like a very possible thing unfortunately to just be like okay well we're going do this thing and then well i guess i don't know should we finish like yeah fuck it fuck it yeah right like at some point i don't maybe not like look all of us were doing something else when we learned that uh a bunch of chuds had stormed congress right and that the uh the yak hat man was inside the senate chamber um like like and some of us finished i was on a bike ride i kept riding my bike like there's not there's not much i can do uh sometimes you have to take the moments of joy because there might be

much joy available for the next little while um so yeah i think it's easy to see myself in a lot of this stuff uh perhaps that's why i'm drawn to it uh all right the following morning the city woke up before dawn to the sound of gunfire to most of the catalan working classes wasn't a surprise the coup had begun two days earlier in morocco and word traveled quickly among the anarchists by the time the men of the fourth division under general fández Buriel, began their march to the central plaza de Cataluña, the people of the Popular Front were ready. The uprising had begun in Morocco on the 17th, and all day tension had been building. Union radio had called a general strike, and despite the refusal of the republican government to acknowledge how deep of trouble they were in, their unions were under no illusion as to the stakes by lunchtime on the 19th spain had gone

through three prime ministers since breakfast and barcelona had defeated a coup so what happens to the other prime ministers like okay you be prime minister and you're like oh fuck no i don't want to be prime minister are they getting like killed by the fascists or no no madrid is is very well it's not very safe it's safe uh they basically your first guy uh is like i done fucked up here i should have uh seen this one coming given that i was explicitly warned about it for weeks uh he's like peace i'm out uh second guy pops in he's like don't worry guys we can fix this what we need to do is call the generals, talk it out. Call the fascists?

Yeah, give them just like reason with them. It's interesting because what happens is in that conversation, it's the fascist generals. I think it's Capo de Llano he calls. I can't remember. Godet, maybe. Maybe Godet. Anyway, it says like, you have your people and i have mine and uh in

that moment what's happening is a fascist general who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician that he has an obligation to serve the people who elected him and not just to make like unilateral compromises with fascists right so that's the yeah what a country what a time at that moment that second prime minister is also doomed right so then we we move on to number three and at that point we open up the armories to the working class right which is what they should have done earlier in in every city where the working class is armed the coup is defeated in every city where it's not armed the coup succeeds um and that doesn't have any ramifications for today so keep going no absolutely none um no and it's something that we can't learn from uh so we shouldn't we shouldn't

try um and obviously it's not a direct parallel uh there are some really interesting moments in in this particular arming of the working class. One that I like to come back to is that the soldiers, right? Obviously, the weapons are in the hands of the military. And obviously, the military has just done a coup. But not all the military has just done a coup. So you have some generals or colonels who are in charge of barracks or armories.

And they will be like, yeah, okay, I i've got the order that's what i'm going to do i think this coup is kind of bullshit like it hasn't succeeded yet it might not succeed here are the rifles union members but in madrid you have another colonel who's a die-hard uh coup guy big big coup person uh who is in control of the bolts of the rifles um so like the rifle doesn't work without the bolt right the bolt is the bit that like plugs a hole and makes the bullet go bang um i've explained that properly right robert that's uh that's a technical terminology yeah yeah yeah yeah it's just the piece that makes the gun go bang yeah so the uh bolt critical to the functioning

of the rifle held by another guy who turns out to be a fash uh and so he doesn't issue them the bolts so you have all these working class militiamen being like how rifle work with no bolt uh and just like entering the streets anyway right slapping on the bayonet now you have a pike uh you have other people who have never operated a rifle before so like allegedly everyone's calling the socialist union headquarters in in madrid being like do this do that and they're like i can't hear shit there's just hundreds of people behind me trying to operate the bolt on a bolt action rifle trying to learn how to do this and like they're taking their newsprint from their union newspaper right

and trying to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been in like deep storage it's very evocative scene like you can smell it you can hear it of these people being like well we never used these before they've been in deep storage for a long time they're covered in grease but fuck it like it's now or never yeah and uh it was right so if we go back to what happened in barcelona they had radios in public places right this is This is very common. Whole books about how Nazis used radios, but it's common in the 30s. Parts of the city, the paving stones have barely been relayed

from October 1934's fighting, but they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed. Old rifles and pistols and the bombs that the anarchists particularly love were dragged out of the bottom of drawers. These people fucking love throwing bombs like uh the uh just the the yeah there there's a there's a lady later on in the war called rosa

like rosa the dynamiter who um who just like becomes a legend right for just throwing dynamite fascist uh she loses yeah she like there's so much awesome shit that happens that gets lost because yeah ultimately like hitler and and uh mussolini win the spanish civil war basically right spoiler yeah so actually that night before the before the troops march on the city the ugt the socialists control the dock union the dock workers union and they're like hey hey, hang on. I'm pretty sure there's a ship in the harbor that has dynamite on it.

Let's raid it. So they raid the ship, steal the dynamite, and drive through the city distributing it to union members who spend the entire night making bombs. I'm sure that that went badly for several of them. Yeah, it went badly some fascists too but uh oh yeah almost undoubtedly uh and like uh robert and i have talked to some people in some other contexts who have made homemade bonds and uh don't smoke is what i will say do not smoke if

you're in the process of making bombs or explosives oh whatever that's the same people who say that you can't smoke while you're fueling up your car yeah cowards yeah go down like a chad yeah um that's my message to you uh the other thing they did was they put on like their mono so like a mono is like a like a onesie right like an overall uh blue mono is kind of the militia uniform because they weren't an army they were just working class people who worked at factories who were not taking any shit from the army that day um and they put on their little union hats which you can see in all the photos they look very cool very quaint um so to understand why the conflict they fought that day began it's probably beyond the scope of this podcast and to understand where it ended the way it did will infuriate just about everyone listening

which is fine but we don't have all day. Okay. If you want to know more about some of the people involved, Margaret Killjoy's podcast on Hispanic Anarchist is a great place to start. What? Yep. I thought it was wonderful.

I'll have to check that out. Yeah, do. Yeah. Great podcast. It's really, really great. I love it. Wow. Sophie listens too.

Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great co- that yeah yeah sign yep you should like and subscribe uh is that is that still the thing that was what was that title again cool people who did cool stuff yeah i think so that sounds about right yeah yeah i've heard of that yeah the host is brilliant yeah she's amazing i'm trying to make be clever but instead i'm probably blushing no you deserve oh okay yeah if you want to read some books i'm going to list some books at the end uh probably far too many uh because this is my shit but uh uh i think there's more books

written about the spanish civil war than um well i guess war in general but i think anarchists have written more about the spanish civil war than maybe undoubtedly anything else combined yeah the the device we are speaking on is currently uh propped up on a large stack of them actually most of my material possessions are yeah it's nice it's a way your life should be kids i've written one too uh and uh it's heinously expensive uh but you know i'm happy with it if uh if you struggle to obtain it materially please just shoot me a direct message uh unless you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement because you're a fascist or something in which case please don't bother um okay uh i don't know how you got this

far if you were a fascist i guess uh for now though let's get back yeah yeah i yeah i probably have some uh i don't know uh fuck off nazis i guess i think i think fewer people hate listen i okay my theory i know that we wanted to hear my theory about why podcasting took off um is because it's harder people don't have the attention span to hate listen the same way that they can like hate skim or like hate read tweets and reply and so i've made a lot of different media in a lot of different ways over the past couple decades. And I get less hate mail about podcasts than most other forms. So that's my theory is that people podcast because no one wants to sit there and like hate listen. I mean, people like hate listening to clips.

People hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen to those clip shows where they take the right-wing person and show them saying something that we all think is not an intelligent thing to say and then we laugh or whatever. So anyway, if you're the person who has been put on this earth to hate listen, it could happen here,

in order to, I don't know, make fun of it to your audience, thanks for the listens, I guess. I don't know, make fun of it to your audience. Thanks for the listens, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, we're getting that sweet revenue. I know. Where does that revenue come from? It just appears.

It's like lichen that grows on the side of a wet building. It doesn't come from ads? No, I don't think so. Ads do organically grow a lot like lichen uh it grows on the side of a wet building it doesn't come from ads no i don't think so ads do organically grow a lot a lot like lichen they just start showing up um and replicating we really have no choice but yeah anyway okay yeah it's a fact of nature um if you are that person i will say that my message is uh stop being a nazi uh that's that's me being polite on the night of the 18th, some assault guards, members of an elite paramilitary police force

that was founded by, and sometimes, mostly, loyal to the Republic, went against the orders of their officers and sneaked rifles out to members of the CNT, an anarchist union. That's pretty based. It's the one day, as you will learn,

this is the one day all cops took off from being bastards. Some of them, it turns out, are capable of doing the right thing, or were in 1936, I should say. Yeah, if cops were handing out rifles to anarchists, that would be not a parallel that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes, somewhat unique. it doesn't mean that these people had not spent the past decades killing each other uh it does not mean that

they would not return to doing so within less than a year uh but just for a day everything was hunky dory um it's leftist christmas yeah this pretty yeah this more or less is leftist christmas like uh because there's even like there's gifts uh they call them proletarian shopping trips um but what they do is uh requisition merchandise from stores and uh and distribute it to people who need it are you just are you referring to armed robbery is that that's different thing uh yeah it's only armed robbery if somebody tries to fight back otherwise you just happen to be shopping with a gun that's it and what if there is no law is it really a crime i don't know no one no one can say i will say that they only it

seems like they only robbed uh the shopkeepers who were turds uh people who like lent a lot of money uh at a very high interest rate things like that um and these proletarian shopping trips uh thing which i'm not being against what happened i'm just i'm i'm uh stripping away some of the the niceties yeah yeah if people hadn't gathered uh they weren't picking up what i was putting down yes it is going into a shop with guns and taking things and giving them to people who need them uh yeah whether or not that is bad who can say uh robin hood famous villain in history yeah that's right uh yeah bad bad dude uh sheriff of nottingham on the other hand would have been big into crypto i'm sure all around legend so when i said if there is no law i wasn't really joking uh like at this point luis compans who's the catalan leader

he's a liberal leftist politician and earlier that evening he'd refused to open the armories he realizes that things are out of his control and And so he sets off for a walk and he walks down the Rambla, right? If you've been to Barcelona, it's this big old street. Now it's full of the kind of restaurants that have photographs on their menus so that German people can understand what they're going to eat, which is much of Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people who don't speak Catalan or Spanish who go to Barcelona can eat very well there for lots of money.

If you've been on holiday, you've probably been there. I did not eat very well in Barcelona. Really? I had almost no money and was vegan, and my Spanish was abysmal and my Catalan was non-existent. So I mostly hung out and cooked pasta. There are not a lot of cities I've been to where it's harder to eat vegan than barcelona

yeah that is that is a challenge maybe belgrade yeah where the nat where the national dish is 30 pounds of meat on a plate yeah um sophia no sophia so i can't remember how to pronounce the name of the capital of bulgaria um also a hard place to eat vegan. That was hard for me. Oh, yeah. That does not surprise me. Yeah.

Yeah. Surprise meat is a big part of the Catalan cuisine. You'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm having some lentils. And then they'll be like, psych, there's a pig in here. We put a whole fucking pig in this thing. We did reverse vegan. We made lentils out of pig. I just ate falafel. Everywhere I go of pig yeah i just ate falafel everywhere i go yeah yeah falafel you can crush some falafel um one of the catalan national

dishes is called capipota which means uh head and foot uh because those are the ingredients and it's uh it's the bits of a pig that no one else wanted actually one of the american national dishes is also the uh head and feet of the bits of a pig that no one else wanted. One of the American national dishes is also the head and face of a pig, but they call it a hot dog. At least the Catalans are honest about it. That's true. But yeah, it's better now to eat vegan.

I'm vegan and I was there in 2019. Okay. Just have to move among the right circles. Okay. But yeah, on the Rambambler it would be hard um so that night companches walking down the rambler he's got his hat across his face so no one could see him and he's pulled up his collar kind of like an old-timey private eye and up and down the rambler uh anarchists and socialists are stealing cars and welding armor plates to the front of them. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Another time-honored anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of War is the improvised technical. So what they do here is weld these steel plates, right? And then they write the name of the union on top just so people can know who's killing them. Well, and so they can keep track of their stolen cars. Yeah. That's right. Like, you don't want anyone stealing your stolen car yeah yeah there comes a point in the next couple of weeks where uh some of the more ideologically

committed anarchists uh will stop uh or take down traffic signals because they feel they're an unwarranted restriction on individual liberty. There's Twitter discourse. Yeah, yeah, get on that, tankies. Yes. Time is a flat circle. Yeah, it's very funny. I'll bet there was a contingent of them that were taking down libraries, too, for gatekeeping knowledge.

Libraries are cops. Libraries are book prisons book pigs yeah they burned them just in a classic anarchist fashion we all know that libraries are better served under a free market system like that one guy tweeted yes Amazon should run the library and every book should cost you $10

yep that's the only way we can uh grow as a society um if you don't like it weld something to front of your truck also if you have an idea that's based on a book and amazon owns the copyright they now own the idea that's the only thing that's fair no thinking without proper copyright is it okay to use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owns words? No. Does that mean that we're going to be fighting the next one of these situations with instead of spray painting C&T, someone's going to come by and spray paint Amazon Basics onto them with a third choice?

I'm doing that tonight. I will be up-armoring my truck as soon as we're finished. Yeah, and spray painting Amazon Basics and then just going to the beach after that. Actually, what they painted on them, there was CNT, there was UGT, there was FI. These are CNT, Confederación Nacional de Trabajo, National Labor Confederation.

This is an anarcho-syndicalist union. FI, Federación Aneration anarchist iberia is the uh iberian anarchist federation they're a group within the cnt that is more committed to a hardline ideological ideological uh anarchism the ugt or a socialist union uh you have other groups too uh the poem is probably the only other one you need to know. They are not Trotskyites. Anyone who tells you they are either doesn't know what they're talking about or is consciously misleading you. They were in open beef with Trotsky, right?

Like they are writing letters to Trotsky, beefing about whether they should exist, which Trotsky is a no on that question. So yeah, they're not Trotsky beefing about whether they should exist uh which trotsky is is a no on that question um so yeah they're not trotskyists they just get called trotskyists by stalinists because everyone who they don't like is a stalinist right but they are anti-stalinist marxists um is what i will call them uh okay what some folks do though uh is they paint UHP on top of their cars. Unidos Hermanos Proletarios, I think it stands for. United Proletarian Siblings, I guess.

And that's important, right? Because these groups had been fighting among themselves and with each other for a very long time. And having what appear today to be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things, but they were important. And then, you know, this ideological commitment

is what gets them through this period of time. But the UHP comes from Asturias where anarchists and socialists had come together to fight against the state, right? To fight as part of a miners' strike. Miners' particular love for dynamite, by the way. That makes sense. Yeah, kings of the dynamite throw.

That's how they dealt with the local garrison, really. Actually, the first use of a combat helicopter was against the popular front, the UHP, in Asturias. And that strike was eventually put down by one francisco franco who we'll learn about later nice guy no problems with him that's a lie uh yeah shocking i know turns out to be a total turd of a human being yeah he was a wasn't he um oh no i'm going down a rabbit hole wasn't he like some sort of vaguely, wasn't he like a right-wing syndicalist for a while?

Yeah, he had all kinds of sort of, I don't think Franco had any convinced political views other than like that he wanted to be in charge. But yes, he was like a radical syndicalist. I said right-wing syndicalist, but. Yeah, no, but so a number of officers, I don't know if franco was with the but there were like i don't know a group called the radical party who were oh okay

i see um i'm not sure if franco was one now that i think about it i try not to learn too much about the person of francisco franco because he is a turd he he does pivot and he pivots when he's in power right from like a sort of more totalitarian project to this national catholic project uh to sort of yeah he's a problematic dude uh with yeah with no clear ideology other than he should be in power and he doesn't care who he has to roll over to get there um that's a common political ideology it is yeah it pops up a lot on the right uh something something there with dudes on the right that maybe we should think about uh no it's never happened again and never in this country of

course okay fortunately that's our saying it could never happen right where we are yeah that's yeah not in my backyard that's the real name of the show right yeah america is different i think is the uh subtitle and special uh okay so sorry no no no i'm just sad though anyway the people in barcelona that day were even more numerous and diverse than the already bustling city was used to the 19th of july was slated to be the start of the largest anti-fascist spectacle the world had ever seen. That's a direct quote from a publicity article about the popular Olympics, right?

As I said, these games aim to show the strengths of the popular front with a series of events. Some of those events are the ones you might expect, but some of these events were designed to reward nations with a healthy working class rather than nations with a few exceptional athletes right so we look at the olympics today uh having one or two exceptional athletes especially in certain areas can like vault you to the top of the medal table right um medal table of course invented by the nazis to illustrate eugenics uh whoa really yeah yeah before 36 there was no

olympics table uh not in the formal way that we see it now so much of the pageantry that we associate with the olympic games uh was uh invented by carl diem uh the torch relay uh the parade of flags in the opening ceremony like yeah the the olympics are fucking nuremberg like with the rainbow rings it's wild how much of that shit is cribbed straight from nazi pageantry cool um the book called the nazi games pretty good on that if you want to read it um lots of books about the 36 olympics but yeah um i should just acknowledge that the uh the uh international olympic committee did fund a lot of my research for reasons that may be becoming clear have since ceased uh also if they just didn't think i was very good i guess but uh anyway uh institution that has some shit to deal with that it hasn't dealt with i will say um and yeah

it was on its bullshit heavily in 1936 right um so one of the things they did at the popular olympics was they had a 10 by 100 meter relay and it's just like uh i don't know do americans have school sports days yes i try to well i i don't remember anything about public school sporting events okay uh at the risk of uh sort of unveiling more trauma uh what happens here no it's fine okay uh what happens here is that uh you line up right in groups of five and you just run back and forth uh passing a baton to each other um much like school sports day with the caveat being that the people in this event had to already be entered in other events at the games um so like you just get like weightlifters and uh there was a chess event at the games right so you

get the chess athletes uh and they're just hauling ass as fast as their uh chess playing legs can carry them uh back and forth to prove the uh like superior health of their nation's working class can we call them chess chess chess fleets chess fleets yeah chess fleets yeah thanks yeah i really saved that one yeah you pulled it back yeah i'm proud of you um yeah they uh they didn't have any mathletes uh yeah sadly yeah they did have people who built human castles that's another event um really wait wait wait a castle made out of humans whoa wait you are not familiar with castles the uh like the great catalan tradition of building human towers no no okay like pivot uh it's fucked now uh one of my friends wrote her phd on these uh

holy shit about something that they just made up just now listen okay a you can write your history phd about literally anything as long as no one else has written it before that is the scenic one on of history phds uh and uh i wrote my phd about the ante for olympics right i wrote my master's about proletarian shopping trips uh that's cool yeah i thought so um at the time uh the yeah so castells right you you get your people at the bottom right and they sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist, and then they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware that I'm biting my shirt, and this is mainly an audio medium. But they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right, men and women, non-binary people, I'm sure, too, to form a big old circle. And then the next layer, climb up them, right, And stand on top of them, the slightly fewer people. And the people get smaller and the layers have fewer people in them, like concentric circles, right? As you get higher and higher.

And then a small child wearing always a horse riding helmet for reasons that are not entirely clear ascends. And this shit is high. Like if you're standing on your balcony, like you are eye to eye with this fucking toddler who climbs up the top get to the top like arm in the air and then climbs back down um and these groups and people do this and people do this all the time yeah uh look america's national sport is is this thing where

like uh young young men give each other brain damage so oh i'm not anti this i'm just uh it what i'm actually impressed by it because we do the human pyramid thing which is the same thing only not nearly as impressive or interesting no i check out castles um the uh the cool thing about them is they exist within communities right these calls uh these groups of castellers are groups of people who do this uh from a neighborhood? So they'll all be from a certain town. The Tarragona group was the one near me. And my friend's dissertation, Ida Ribot, her name, you can probably look it up, was about how this practice has been integral into

incorporating migrants into Catalan-ness, right? Like catalan identity by being like yeah come and come and stand on us or be stood on by us and you too can be catalan oh that seems like that would uh yeah that would bring a community closer together into a heap on the ground yeah it has all kinds of other uses right cat stuck up a tree just call those guys um yeah want to rob a house yeah famously ladders are banned in catalonia uh because they're for cowards yeah yeah just all day castells but yeah this was part of the popular olympics right uh human castles so uh i'm glad we went there uh for everyone who didn't know people googling that it's part of like the uh un like united nations protected human patrimony or something like it's uh it's it's important um so do you ever just like make

up stuff to tell americans about and then and then we believe you because you have an accent i mean we have an accent too sure but like yeah yeah yeah luckily your accents are all neutral and vanilla yeah exactly the unmarked voice yeah yeah um uh let me know i did i think i've told this story on the internet before but uh one time i uh was giving a talk about diabetes in the bronx and this i asked if this kid wanted to uh ask these kids they wanted to ask any questions and this young woman itching to ask a question just goes do you guys really have pies with meat in them like as if she'd been misled her whole life and i was able to confirm that for her i savory pies like fucked me up when i was in france i was completely unprepared for the existence of these things i volunteered to cook for a bunch of um

a bunch of activists who were busy having their meeting. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll come cook for you. And I figured I would just show up and make pasta or burritos because I'm an American. And they gave me a le menu, and on it was a tarte de legumes. And I was like, I know what those words mean. That means pie, vegetables, and that doesn't exist. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. This is not a very interesting story story and now everyone's heard it but i i learned how to make a vegetable pie on no notice because that was what the menu insisted upon and yeah i i feel for this

person in the bronx who wasn't convinced that you were telling the truth about meat pies. Yeah. If they're listening, I was. I promise. Look it up. Now they've got Google. Yeah. The lesson we've learned there is don't cook for French people.

So at the games, one of the cool things is that nations competed instead of states, right? We can fucking go off on the difference between nations and states uh state is the entity the that has political control and exercises monopoly on legitimate violence in a geographic area a nation is an imagined community that exists across space and time that's the shortest i'm going to do that i'm not going to say anything what's a country between those uh a country is essentially, it's a geographical area that a state controls. Okay, cool. Sometimes it's mapped onto nation as well, right? Like Catalonia being a good example.

But for most of the time, people use it synonymously with state. So countries aren't competing. Nations are, right? The exiled Jews of Europe are competing, right? Because if you're Jewish and it's 1936, you don't want to fucking get like marching there with the german flag i would imagine yeah it doesn't feel good yeah like negative vibes so they don't do that there they are the exiled jews right um the uh anti-fascists who are exiled from germany and italy they also come in

with their own different flags right um initially there was some rumblings about the naacp sort of competing uh but in the end the united states team uh which is made up of trade unionists uh had uh black and white folks on it um the organizers were actually so invested in like um the i guess including oppressed black people from the united states within the remit of people uh who sort of uh anti-fascism wanted to advocate for that and they threw this whole olympics together in like three or four months it was shoestring budget it's funded by the french government the spanish government the catalan government individual donors and some trade unions from norway and they took their

very sparse money and were like we will pay your way uh if you if you're black people from america want to come over here because we understand it's shit over there uh and if you want to come and play with us and that's fine which is a cool like fuck you to the fact that because the whole olympics is a fuck you to to nazi germany right And so it's cool that it also was like, and fuck you to racism in the United States also. Like, I like that. Yeah. And like, it's also worth noting, actually,

like while we're saying fuck you to the Nazis, and that the people at the popular Olympics, like ran faster, jumped higher, were stronger. Like the Olympics were extremely gatekept by class. We see that kind of crumbling, like with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that, right? But at this point, there was still worker sports and bourgeois sports, and bourgeois sports went to the Olympics, right?

Like the Olympics still had an amateurism rule. If you got paid for exercising, you couldn't go. And so, yeah, which meant that like working class people right like if you don't get paid time off and don't get paid time off it's 1936 then uh they can't go and compete right like if even if you work full-time and i say hey margaret i'll pay for a couple of weeks you know i'll make sure i take care of your rent so you can go and do the olympics nope uh if you run a benefit race after the olympics they will take your medal away holy shit tom longboat who they did that to they do that a whole lot to people who aren't white shockingly yeah um

so yeah uh olympics not great actually maybe we'll do a whole earth bird and we'll have the olympics do some bad shit um but yeah these people come from america right uh on the team is charlie burley uh charlie burley goes on to be kind of a legendary uh boxer right he's biracial man uh from pennsylvania uh and dot tucker uh she's a black woman uh she ran her union in the bronx and she ran 100 meters as well yeah if i could plan that one out yeah i love a good written into the script uh like planned out it's good don't we that sounds sarcastic but i actually mean it really honestly no it's good you can appreciate the joy that i'm feeling right now yeah um so uh that games brings 20 000 anti-fascists

to barcelona right um some of them are watching some of them are competing uh some of them are staying in hotels the hotel olympic is where most of them stay but. Some of them are competing. Some of them are staying in hotels. The Hotel Olympic is where most of them stay, but they ran out of space. So about two weeks before the games, they went around random houses and were like, hey, can you have someone to stay? So lots of the athletes are just like crashing with people. It's kind of cool. If you go to the archive in Barcelona, you can see the little forms where they'd go up to a house and be like, OK, this person has two beds and they can take care of breakfast and that's two athletes who can stay here oh they they went door to door yeah it's

heartbreaking seeing that shit and then knowing what happened um oh i was just thinking it was like a better way to um oh yeah like that's what airbnb should be you know yes yeah and it gives the airbnb yeah if we compare this to the Berlin Olympic Village, where the Condor Legion stayed before they headed off to bomb people in Spain. Cool. We will see that one side is better than the other side. Yeah. So these people are staying all across Barcelona, right?

They trained in the stadium the day before. They distributed all around the city. So on the morning of the 19th, Raquetes, these are kind of hardcore Catholic conservatives, they report to the San Antonio barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the Pedro Albe's barracks, officers get their troops up,

I think it's at four in the morning, serve them a ration of rum for breakfast and tell them that there's been an anarchist uprising in the city that they have to put down. And so they send my right this is a lie yeah the uprising is in fact what they are doing as they march into the city um it's telling that they lie because the troops are conscripts and are not really bought into their nationalist crusade at this point um yeah uh and it's worth always remembering that like working class people get trapped up in wars often not by their own choosing well so it's kind of like how they're like you have to go out and fight antifa you have to go out and do a coup against the

united states because otherwise antifa who are all stalinists are going to turn the u.s into the ussr yes yeah yeah that's uh yeah there there's no parallel no that's that's not a parallel sorry oh okay no it could never happen here and that's that's our big message for today yeah so these guys they start heading down a vignola diagonal right towards plaza catalonia at the heart of the city the cavalry are on a different street caritara gona there are dragoons on a different street. They leave a little later because the Spanish army is something of a clusterfuck. And they all plan to join up,

but they never did. Instead, all across the city, sirens sound the alarm in factories. And where these troops have been planning to meet up with one another, they met up with sniper fire and those homemade bombs we talked about. Yeah.

Yeah. This is where shit gets gets good uh at the barricades they met men and women armed with everything from modern machine pistols to blunderbusses and slingshots yeah the blunderbusses are pretty cool you can find some pictures um many troops were forced back into their barracks. Some made it as far as a telephone exchange and the hotels Ritz and Cologne in the middle of the city. What the troops, who were incredibly poorly trained conscripts with little or no combat experience and even less willingness to fight, ran into was the most unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's nationalists had governed the autonomous region since the declaration of the republic in 1931 they formed a broad leftist alliance called the escala republicana de catalonia that means

catalan republican left i'll just call them the erc to avoid the it's a bit of an alphabet soup but uh i'll try and explain where i need to uh so before the popular front existed they're kind of a proto-popular front they combine liberal and leftist parties um who share agreement on autonomous and progressive catalonia and they tend to be either aligned with or to the left of the government in madrid most often to the left of um they don't have the support of the anarchists right that's important um luis compans who's the uh the leader right there um the catalan leader of the generalitat at that point has been a lawyer for the anarchist before so he may have more personal support than a party as a whole has

among the anarchists um for decades right the police in barcelona have acted on behalf of capital against labor um they do violence for the people who own stuff against people who make stuff and even under the republic this has continued right they called it the republic of order um but margaret i think you covered the uh like the pistol right the years of the pistol in the 1920s yeah yeah but um it was yeah they liked shooting the anarchists in order to yeah bring about order they and they it wasn't like a legal thing they weren't like oh it's our legal strategy it was just a like we're in charge so we will assassinate the anarchists and then the other thing that like i feel like is like worth thinking about because if someone's hearing you

might be like well why does the government care if the anarchists are on their side and it's to my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong the anarchists are like a huge chunk of the working class of barcelona at this point so it's like they actually do care because it's a huge huge swaths of people the anarchists by the end of the night will own the city right and and they have always been the majority of the catalan working class in this period um they they control the way elections go right when? When the anarchists abstain, then the right wins. When the anarchists, they don't say don't vote. Like they don't, they're not like, yeah, go vote. They're like, don't, maybe consider not abstaining.

Then the popular front wins, right? Yeah, it's very funny how they use words. But yeah, the anarchists are the working class for most of the industries, most of the unions are anarcho-syndicalists, right? So you don't have but yeah the anarchists are the working class for the for the most of the most of the industries most of the unions are anarcho-syndicalist right so you don't have to support the anarchists you don't support the working class okay um yeah in the 20s uh the cops killed the anarchists the anarchists killed the cops right uh this is how we get uh the famous affinity groups right uh los solidarios los quijotes del ideal and uh nosotros being some famous ones right and

we'll talk about them a little bit in the next episode how that works and what they mean uh so in 1931 the declaration of republic was a massive boost for the anarchists um more people joined anarchist unions they felt safer doing so uh primo de rivera the previous dictator had been very harsh on anarchists uh they actually briefly in the out your brigade secured uh like libertarian socialism they took over some towns uh and uh like they they uh seized weapons from the cops and abolished currency for a week uh and it was just like yeah it's on it's anarchism so for five days Figuols belong to the people of Figuols and this is before

we're talking about before the coup and all of that yeah this is in 1932 the republic begins in 1931 so there's a number of these

early on in the republic when the state is less violently postured towards anarchism the anarchists really fucking send it you see it in Casas Viejas you see it in casas viejas

you see in figoles um so yeah they more people join because they feel safe for joining and that leads to more open conflict with with the sort of civil order i guess but with the threat of fascism looming the cnt establishes defense committees uh and these become like a quick reaction force for the city right so by the time the troops leave their barracks activists within the cnt were ready for them barcelona's ravale the densely populated district just off the more tourist friendly rambler had become known as a bari chines um that means chinatown not because chinese people or people of any asian extraction live there uh that's because they watched gangster movies about chicago's chinatown and they were like oh yeah we're we can go that hard uh okay they just called it that uh chris elam has a great book on the construction of chinatown

uh now people have been shooting each other in those streets for decades right but uh for once everyone in the rival was pointing their guns out. Every balcony in the Reval becomes a sniper's nest. And by the time the sun came up, it was an impenetrable fortress of the working class. And at this time, the state would find itself begging the anarchists for support and not the other way around. I think that's maybe where we'll end it today

so that people can be sort of teetering on the edge of their seats to know what happens next thank you very much for joining me margaret yeah would you like to plug anything do you have any pluggables uh well i have a book that's available for pre-order it's called we won't be here tomorrow and if you like a trans woman who robs guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover or you like the um the dead and valhalla coming back and joining in an american civil war to fight against nazis then you might like this book um actually i think i read that story on this podcast the viking one you did um fucking ruin the next episode because that's what happened

as well i know i know well actually there's a different um story that i didn't write i think oh no there's one about um uh velociraptors in the spanish civil war um that okay that um anyway that's completely unrelated okay so that is so that is where the book is currently available for pre-order. And if you get it from AK Press or a couple other different independent bookstores, then it comes with a free art print that comes from the book. And so if you like that, you could consider getting it or ask your library to get it. And you can follow me on the internet at magpiekilljoy onoy on Twitter and MarjorieKillJoy on Instagram. That's my plugables.

Do you have any podcasts? I have a podcast. I do. I actually have two podcasts. I have a podcast called Live Like the World is Dying, which is an individual and community preparedness podcast. And I also have a podcast on this very network. Really? I do.

Yeah. You all haven't noticed it yet. I do you all haven't noticed it yet I've just been kind of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff which is all about history but in a fun way

about stuff that cool yay I'm excited to get this dirt right now thank you very much thanks for having me. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah! ah welcome back to it could happen here this is part two of it could happen here the podcast that fucks all right that's my job done today okay part two of james's congratulations robert on the spanish civil war and the uh the Antifa Olympics. That's right. Yep. Civil War week closing out with this one. Why did the Antifa Olympics hate freedom, though, is my question.

The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of the malls. Yeah, they're taking your children. Bus loads of black-clad athletes are showing up in your cities to play sports this does make me think back briefly to when a couple of different anti-fascist groups in seattle and portland played soccer and it became a whole thing because yeah there was oh i used to play anarchist soccer in new york city yeah and oh that got that got canceled hard to play anarchist soccer in new york city yeah and oh that got that got canceled hard well it's important that it got canceled hard it also um because it was in new york city there was a bunch of like semi-famous actors who would come and play anarchist soccer but then couldn't be like

visually associated so like people would all mask up in solidarity whenever camera people would come by because like some famous actor was playing anarchist soccer in the park that's very funny yeah that's outstanding more of that needed um yeah these anarchists of course were just busy doing the traditional anti-fascist thing of starting forest fires in oregon before oh okay before the civil war so anyway pick picking up from the last episode where we left our heroes, we're talking about the heroes, right? So, with the military marching towards the city and every balcony in the working class revolve quickly becoming a sniper's nest,

every rifle was needed at the barricades. The Spanish and Catalan tops took an unprecedented break from being bastards and instead significant elements of the Mossos de Escuadra Guardia Civil and the elite paramilitary assault guards grabbed their handy carbines, rifles with names like Tiger and Destroyer

and took, yeah, none of them are called Roberts sadly and took to the barricades in defense What a missed opportunity This is why the Spanish lost Get me my Robert I can see it now I'm prepared to help you with the advertising at no cost.

Just going to bob them right up. That's why they called them bobbies. Yeah, famously. I think it needs to be some sort of nine-barreled electronic volley gun. I want to... Yeah. Something that could take out at least two Japanese prime ministers at once. You only need two barrels for one prime minister,

so you could get up to four. Yeah. Yeah. Shoot through space and time. Yeah. All right, so they- Go back and get Janshiro Koizumi. Finally.

Bring him to justice. With a nine-barrel pipe gun. Okay, so these people, so the cops and the anarchists are fighting alongside each other. Is that what you're telling me? That's correct. Yep, the anarchists are pulling up paving stones,

building barricades, which they had learnt in previous conflict with the state could stop light artillery, and they are welcoming the cops. It's worth pointing out that the heroes of the day are not cops, and the heroes of the day are very rarely cops. Instead instead it's the ordinary people of catalonia right everyone from liberals to left libertarians runs to the barricades but the anarchist affinity groups the anarchist uh defense

committees are the mortar that holds together the resistance right they are experienced they have plans they provide impetus and inspiration to the working class they are experienced they have plans they provide impetus and inspiration to the working class they are ready when their liberal government is not um they had a pretty good handle on fighting in the streets of barcelona too this is their home turf right um incidentally we see this shit a lot like people who are good at fighting the cops become integral in fighting the state it happened in the maidan happened happened in Tahrir Square, both with ultras, football fans, people who go to football games who also like fighting cops. So it's not unprecedented that the folks who are good at fighting the cops become integral at fighting the state when

state turns bad. Turns bad. In many cases, they also have more experience manipulating their weapons than the poorly trained conscripts, because it would be pretty hard to have less. There's a little bit of a debate, a discussion about causality here. Does the coup fail where it does because the cops remain loyal? Or does the beachhead established by the working class allow the cops, who were sympathetic but not convinced, to safely remain loyal? So across Spain, it's not quite the same as the US. who were sympathetic but not convinced, to safely remain loyal, right?

So across Spain, it's not quite the same as the US. The cops are better trained and better armed than the military. But they often hung back until the working class had taken decisive action, right? See which way the wind's blowing. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes, occasionally, they will do some sort of king shit like uh in one city they uh the couple of the assault guards are their officers side with a coup so they get shot by their own men just just you love to see uh in other places

they sound to nothing in some places the soldiers come for them where they're like fuck it it's on now but in other places they join with the working class as they do in barcelona the civil guard is older and the civil guard tends to be in more rural places where the coup tends to be more successful and civil tends to be less loyal to the republic the civil guard in barcelona waits until noon uh the coup is really defeated by noon by noon the soldiers are holed up in a few buildings and it's very clear that they haven't won and then they come in on a horseback clip-clopping down the street doing the raised fist salute uh like just milking it uh to announce their sort of loyalty to republic they did have better guns and better marksmen so they were helpful in assaulting the buildings that came next all right all right everyone we're here we saved the day yeah here we come thin blue line

so what happens all across barcelona is that the tremendously poorly organized army meet well organized well entrenched resistance and they're killed a turn back um so i want to give uh one example of this from avenida icaria it's related by beaver in his book now what they've done in icaria was taken out huge rolls of newsprint like the stuff that you put newspaper on and rolled them into the streets to make a barricade right um so yeah the degree to which people were like ready in like amusing ways is uh it's a great part of this but you know that was what they had available to them seem to be stopping bullets so lots of layers is the way to stop bullets so it is yeah lots of layers of newsprint um don't put it pretty fast yeah different places

so yes it was yeah yeah uh and certainly seemed to work here and they had uh big old guns like uh spanish mouses so the fighting stopped for a second and a small group of workers and an assault guard closed the distance between themselves and two 75 millimeter field guns but they're holding their rifles above their heads they signaled they wanted to talk and not to fight and so for a few minutes they give a passionate speech informing the soldiers they'd been lied to, that the anarchists were not in revolt, that they were in fact part of a coup, and that they should not fire on their proletarian brothers.

It's not exactly clear what they said, but whatever they said, it worked. And very slowly, a seed of class consciousness was planted, and it bloomed in about the time it takes to turn a 75mm gun 180 degrees, load it, and fire it at your officers. turn a 75 millimeter gun 180 degrees load it and fire it at your offices which again it's just so good like that these powerful anecdotes of like someone just being like huh yeah now that you phrase it like that we're on the same team let me turn this artillery gun around yeah i also just love to think of the guy

who's just been like, previously like, for God and country. Yeah. Gets vaporized by a 75 millimeter gun. Yeah. Truly magnificent stuff. So,

the popular Olympians are still in town, right? They turned up to show off as anti-fascist but uh they didn't really expect to be showing off their anti-fascist bona fides quite like this but lots of them were winning participants the americans were down by the bocadillo market you've probably been there you've been to barcelona you've probably bought an edible arrangement um that's what tourists like to do um and they watched the streets around them turn into battlegrounds you can see the bullet holes in the hotel where they

stayed and some of the cafes around there and but some of these bullet holes that should be mentioned are from a sadder and altogether different battle a year later and but this day they popped out of their hotel rooms to take a look at what was going on got shot at and then went back inside and then popped out of different balconies well they had this thing of popping out of different balconies I don't understand what the fuck is going on in their heads where they're like people keep shooting at us

let's continue to try different balconies I could see doing that just being so curious right like yeah yeah and they'd all made friends with Spanish people right they were just they were not the athletes of today like they were out late drinking every night and they were really bummed very quickly very upset they know what we need to get stuck in like you know we're young healthy people um and their diaries they also write about

seeing the Spanish women at the barricades and just being like oh fuck yes like this is outstanding yeah um yeah they're just like uh because they're very committed right like these these anti-fascists are very committed to uh to gender equality like they really are uh and it's it's demonstrable in all the communications about the popular olympics when they send stuff to unions and unions like here's a team it's 10 dudes so like well that's fucking disappointing like where are the women what are we doing here hey how are we making the world better with just a bunch of dudes exercising together like um so that it really is i think a very genuine commitment for them and yeah they're just so pumped uh so when the fighting lulls uh these guys come running out

uh and they saw those cavalry horses right the cavalry horses that they'd expected to parade down the rambler in the victorious coup had now been stacked on top of each other as barricades and sorry the horses yes uh they used the horses as cover you can find pictures of this i mean yeah okay yeah it kind of sucks because the horses didn't want to be fascists. Yeah. But I think we can take some solace in knowing that the people who were riding them also got killed. Yeah, that's true.

Well, you say the horses didn't want to be fascists. This is in the intersection of shit you enjoy, Robert, actually, yeah. Yeah, shitting on horses and hating fascists. Yeah. Which are the same. No, but see, horses would be very good at shitting on fascists. From a great height. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. R.I.P. horses. You did nothing wrong. Paul went out for the horses. So, Charlie Burley runs down into the street, right? He's pretty accustomed to fighting he's a boxer he is a mixed race kid who grew up in pittsburgh uh he's refused to go to the 1936 olympics because he doesn't want any of hitler's bullshit and he doesn't speak spanish so all he

needs all he knows how to do is pick up a crowbar start levering up paving stones and helping to build a barricade yeah so that's what he does universal language yeah breaking shit um and so uh he just gets stuck in and now i'm rhythm do right uh these barricades he built like i said they were so strong that they would stop like art hillary across the city whipped and snaps of bullets cracked across the wide boulevards that cut through the regimented grid of the exemplar snipers were stationed in the bell towers of churches they picked off the newly formed people's militias they dashed between the barricades carrying ammunition and food a french athlete right wing snipers that's correct yeah yeah um

so that you will definitely read that they were priests but they're not i don't think uh just a way you know if you're going to put a sniper you want to put someone up there who knows how to use a rifle but um yeah that makes yes yeah so they probably weren't priests that doesn't mean the priests were not abetting them i'm sure they were at some points um but yeah uh this is why the churches get burned yeah it's one of the reasons uh a group of german exiles suspected their company's diplomats might be involved uh so they raided their homes and found massive stashes of weapons which is great uh the republic had very liberal asylum policies so you have a ton of german italian anti-fascists already in town and elsewhere people found each other in the streets or joined up

with pre-existing affinity groups to form centuria centuria is a latin word for units of 100 soldiers they're broadly based on language and they're named after some famous leftists like uh tom man uh carl marx or um ernst salomon right their founder of Antifa, with a capital A. Later, these would become the nucleus of the international brigades. But the international brigades were the army of the Comintern, and the Centauri weren't. Comintern means basically under Soviet control? Yes, that's right.

They're Soviet-controlled communist internationals, so they were doctrinally Stalinist, more or less. and certainly like you can read a shit ton about the international brigades going from a broad popular front leftist alliance to uh straight up stalinist and what that does to their their desire to fight and their ability to fight and uh i would suggest that it's not great but it's a story as old as time. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah. Draw your own conclusions. Cecil Albee is very good on that, if you want to read his book.

So these Centuria don't have officers and they certainly don't have commissars, right? And off they roll to fight the Nazis. By 11 a.m., General Goddard has landed from Mallorca. He was hoping to command the city, which the nationalists thought the Barcelona would be the easiest city for them right they thought it was a soft target um they were wrong i don't know what again uh yeah not smart uh it was only through the intervention of caridad mercader uh her son incidentally killed trotsky uh that his life was

spared he holed up in the headquarters the headquarters was overrun they wanted to execute him immediately she intervened she says no you know we gotta we gotta do this pretender justice so we put him on the prison ship uruguay and then he's killed a little later after a court-martial he's executed a few weeks later in the monchouit castle that day in the monchouit castle the troops had shot their officers the ends and the ncos had led a raid on the armory where they began distributing guns to anarchists again yeah very cool oh yeah yeah love to see it the catalan left and the catholic church uh had some historical disagreements right uh the church had a long history of violence towards the left and the left had an equally long history of violence towards the church the church had been part of

brutal oppression of the working class right victimization of people especially of working class women and uh as troops withdrew from the city in july 1936 anarchists began to take revenge against the churches nuns corpses were disinterred priests accused of collaboration were executed by the afternoon the sky began to fill with smoke churches burned all over the city sometimes they had these things called checkers which were like revolutionary tribunals where they put the priests or the churches themselves later outside madrid there's a famous photo of them like executing a giant statue of jesus trice after putting it on trial that's what's in the future for robert evans his that is that is a pretty funny bit

oh it's good there's a firing squad and everything uh that is like a pretty good dedication to the bit you gotta whether or not you agree with it you have to respect it yeah the uh yeah i uh it's a good t-shirt maybe we could you know return to merch uh and have that that image but yeah some catholics rebuilt it sadly it's uh it's no longer riddled with bullet holes in its face well it's time to... Well... You know what that means. Yes, it's time to kill God. Storm heaven. Yep.

And redistribute all the stuff. Harps for everyone. Yeah. Oh, people wore robes, actually. This became a bit of an issue because people would be like, lol, look at me, I'm wearing a robe, I pretend to be a priest. And then other people would be like lol look at me i'm wearing a robe i pretend to be a priest and then other people will be like fuck you priest and shoot them yeah don't do that actually robes for everyone bad idea you know at a time of

anti-clerical violence uh what you can do is drink all the communion wine which is what they did uh i'm sorry all the blood of christ is what they drink yes yes i'm sorry actually i guess it only becomes that in the stomach yeah no i'm a bad catholic i don't remember any of this or it's just wine until uh they until they do the thing yeah okay and say the words and then something special happens that's that's that's the uh the eucharist so it's the pre-blood. Yeah, it's pre-blood. It's just sweet wine. By the 20th of July, the military was all but done for inner city, right? But some of them had retreated back to their barracks immediately.

They came out, promptly got shot at by a shit ton of people and went, nope, and pulled a 180, returned to the barracks. So smarter than the tourists at the hotel yes although uh i don't know about that because these guys end up dying there and the tourists do not well that's because they're side one but yes yeah yeah true well i i would be lying if i said the tourists do not because one of those tourists does uh a guy called albert alchakin uh they called him chick he was a coach of the team community college professor actually uh and uh he leaves goes back to america uh and just can't deal with like missing it's not so much

the guilt of not being there it's uh and i think some of us maybe can relate to this in a way right like the missing of being there too yeah the phone like that yeah and how special it feels robert's off uh robert can can relate to this right like sometimes it's sometimes you feel the most alive is when you're trying not to be dead but also like this was a fucking awesome time right like the cops have joined the working class the churches are on fire uh the bosses are running for the hills and the army has just had his ass handed to it by like a bunch of men and women in blue overalls like i can imagine it felt pretty cool um so he goes home and then he decides to come back uh he comes back with his wife uh his wife runs the first art therapy program uh for

children uh traumatized by conflict yeah the the um the pictures are at ucsd uh i used to go sit with them all the time uh just kind of i don't it feels like a special place like a nice connection yeah that's the kind of stuff that gets like left out of history too much too right is these contributions like and these like developments that come from political radicals that are like not just the the the gun the robert you know or the uh you know seizing of workplaces but the developing of art therapy for people dealing with traumatic event that rules yeah absolutely right like these people made home weight bombs but they also like made it easier for kids to process their trauma yeah and like that's what anarchism is folks um but yeah uh jenny berman uh they hyphenated their last names uh berman chakin uh yeah advanced yeah highly

progressive 1930s yeah his wife uh jenny was definitely the radical and she she sort of brought him on and he was like yeah fucking you got it um so yeah he goes back uh you can see the pictures uh at ucsd they're online too but al dies in in the sort of chaotic retreat to the international brigades no one knows where right uh i'm trying to write a book about him i have some of his diaries just an inspirational guy in a lot of ways very nice guy uh he's also like he sort of draws a lot of uh disdain from the other passengers on the boat when they're crossing the first time uh because the passengers keep getting mad that the black folks and the white folks are eating at the same table at dinner from the popular olympics

team uh and he's just like super mad at this and it's like why would you be that way so just keeps like getting and he is a wrestler right like he's a collegiate wrestler he went to olympic trials just keeps getting in people's faces about it i guess um which like yeah is i guess being an ally or something but um does the war yes jenny berman is in uh there's a film called the good fight okay uh which is about the american volunteers and you can see her talking about him cool um yeah i think it's it's obviously a pretty difficult experience for her talking about him but uh uh and i'm sure the whole thing it's pretty rough given you know the uh things that happen afterwards but yeah uh again a wonderful person she's passed

away now but yeah actually it's it's the interview it's the full interview with her that i'm waiting for so i can write about him and but yes she does uh look up the good fight it's a good film so on the 20th of july the anarchists are assembling outside these barracks right uh they had the support of the police but they didn't want it anymore and so they assembled their own troops instead right garcia oliver abad de santillan ascaso and doruti are on some chad shit and uh they do what the anarchists did at this time which is uh they lead a frontal charge on the barracks where there are still machine guns um so uh they are brave but perhaps not tactically astute i've read about this where basically one of the problems that

people had like strategically about the anarchists is that the anarchists in spain were so fervent in their beliefs that they basically were like hooray soon i will be a martyr and like all charged at machine guns and like weren't always the most strategic does that map to your understanding yeah in the early days of the civil war they're like because they have been raised for decades of propaganda of the deed yeah right uh and like propaganda of the deed is saying like you know like you can die as a hero and become an example to the working class and like propaganda of the deed is saying like you know like you can die as a hero and become an example to the working class and you will elevate the cause it's as close to martyrdom as you can get in an atheist political belief i think and yeah so they would just ah i don't like

like ascaso ascaso is a famous anarchist leader uh ascaso is a guy who dies uh like literally leading the charge frontally on a machine gun at this time at this barracks right he dies in less than 24 hours after the war has started um and he's a member of this uh nosotros group with daruti and others and garcia oliver and uh he's the one who gives his name to the pistol right so uh in terrasa uh the cmt the um the anarchists anarcho-syndicalists take over an arms factory uh take it over the workers run the factory and they start making these pistols with his name on yes it's like the only gun that is not in some way morally compromised so i guess in that sense he goes on to kill a lot of fascists um yeah but yeah they they don't want

the help of the police they don't want the help of the police they don't want the tactical advice deruti actually later is very good at this he has regular army officers embedded with his column and he listens to them and that allows him to be more successful than the other anarchists okay um but yeah he uh their battle cries adelante hombres del cnt cnt which is like you know forward men of the cnt they had women too uh but i guess that's not what they were going for and they took the barracks along with 30 000 rifles wow pretty much all of those would be in the hands of working people within a couple of days wow yeah that's a vast like this is a decent slice of the republic's weapons right yeah until they get

resupplied later and interestingly the soviet union and mexico supply them but they the republican government in madrid doesn't want people supplying the anarchists so only um cz or vizor the czech uh gun company are willing to illicitly violate two different arms embargoes to supply the anarchists later in the war. Yes. Yeah. Based CZ. Yeah. Maybe we can have them be the advert for this episode. Finally, a solid case for the hammer-fired

arm in modern days. We have to honor the legacy of CZ. Yeah. Again, the only morally correct firearm to buy glock wouldn't have done that motherfuckers nope no yeah don't see any glocks in anarchist hands uh yeah buy a 32 acp because it also killed hitler it's the most anti-fascist

gun that you can do you could own hitler killed hitler but you know we don't have to go there the real if you can fascist critical support to adolf hitler or you could say yeah well you know who else tried to kill hitler hitler he did once before uh in 1923 after the failed munich putsch but his friend putsy hans stengel's wife who he had a crush on, stopped him from killing himself, which was a mistake. Yeah, she let the team down. So, see, that's where CZ came in, giving him

an efficient way to kill himself with no wives around. He did have a wife around, didn't he? Thank you, CZ. Hitler's dead. And with that, let's go back to spain uh catalonia i guess um so the french popular olympics team left that day uh they sang the international aisle uh from the deck of their boat as they pulled out the port a few days later on the rambler parade was organized

the various nations of the popular olympics marched down the street led inexplicablyably by some bagpipers who had arrived with the British team. Hell yeah. That's how you know they're international, bagpipes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? I love that some anti-fascist bagpipers had been recruited by this point.

They all sang the international on their own languages, did the raised fist salute that would become the popular front salute. And they heard a speech. And in the speech, they were told, you've come for the games, but you've remained for the greater front in battle and in triumph. Now your task is clear. You'll go back to your countries and spread the word, the news of what you've seen in Spain. So some of them went back and some of them stayed. All in all, about 200 of them actually stayed to fight

or came back to fight. Some of their names are Bill Scott. He was an Irishman who came for the games. He went back and forth between Spain and Ireland a bunch, wrote some letters to newspapers to encourage other people to join. His big slogan was, a victory for fascism spain is a victory for fascism in ireland um the that's the same slogan that the other side used too right yes but the uh the irish volunteers who fought for the fascists were fucking exceptionally useless yeah yeah

may have excelled more than irish volunteers who fought for the anti-fascist killing fascist um which i guess critical support to them um he fights in the battle of madrid bill scott where he gets shot in the neck uh orwell style so there you go robert maybe they really were sticking their necks out um you got otto bosch uh otto bosch was a lover of novelist and poet muriel ruckheiser uh he was a cabinet maker sprinter uh and literally an actual card carrying antifa member uh and now he was a soldier um he also died uh the sad part about this part of the war is everyone dies uh pretty quickly afterwards yeah and yeah it's really sad uh these people are you know as good as people come and uh they all end up dead but let's not

talk about that i want to focus on the victorious part um okay so that evening right doruchi garcia oliver and abad de santillon go and meet with companions ascaso is dead uh right because he was on his heroics um they're still in their monos they're still covered in blood and they're still carrying their weapons uh which is the way one should meet with a uh a politician um so he gives him this little speech and i like some people say it's apococryphal. I don't really give a fuck. I think it's nice. I'm going to read it. It's not very long. Firstly, I must say that the CNT and the FI have never been treated

as their true importance merited. You have always been harshly persecuted. And I, with much regret, was forced by political necessity to oppose you, even though I was once with you. Today, you are the masters of the city and of Catalonia because you alone have conquered the fascist military,

and I hope that you will not forget that you did not lack the help of the loyal members of my party. But you have won, and all is in your power. If you do not need me as president of Catalonia, tell me now and I will become just another soldier in the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand, you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige could be of use, then you could depend on me and my loyalty as a man who is convinced that a

whole past of shame is dead. So that's nice. That's intense. That's cool. I mean, it's interesting, you know? Right.

It's fascinating. I think it's the clearest we get to a person at time being like, in the last 24 hours, I have gone from president to a guy who has to ask the anarchist for a rifle so I can fight. Yeah. And, like, it's, you know, people get on that Zelensky stuff, but this is kind of different, I guess. You know, like, it's good to find someone who cares about a cause more than power.

Yeah, as a rule, if it's your job to be in charge of people, I'm probably not a fan of that job existing, but if when it comes down to it, you throw down rather than hide in a bunker or flee the country to live in exile in, I don't know, whatever friendly country, then that's better than the alternative. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd agree. And I think, yeah, being more attached to this and to your self-preservation or your power, I think is admirable. For example, if Joe Biden had burned down the third precinct himself, I think a lot of people would feel more positively towards him. He did, though.

Robert, we're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast, guys. You're right. This is... Yeah. We're keeping that one under wraps we're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast guys you're right this is keeping that under wraps until the midterms really start to heat up yeah that's an October surprise and we released a video of Joe Biden with a firebomb

I was told that he had a can of Axe body spray and a lighter that's how he normally rolls when he's in block. Alright. That image is like so cursed that I'm like Joe Biden in block.

Doing the smile like he's in the Camaro but just holding the axe body spray and a cigarette lighter. But everyone can figure out it's him because he keeps touching people and everyone's keeping He's sniffing everybody's hair. Asking if he can smell the inside of their balaclavas.

Uncle Joe. A hero. A true anti-fascist. Are you going dark Brandon on us? Oh, God. Are we going to have to explain what dark brandon on us oh god are we are we gonna have to explain what dark brandon is on the pot eventually i don't think we need to i don't think that's ever going to be relevant no i think we'll just say let's go look it up kids just type

dark brandon into your twitter search bar and see what happens and educate yourselves i'm gonna do this right now but please continue yeah please do because i don't have a fucking clue no i have no idea what they're talking about yeah i'm not on the internet enough uh uh and i don't think i'll ever want to be um so things go differently on across the country right um the navy i'm waiting to hear margaret squeal or scream or cry i uh i just don't understand okay i think it's that he's a vampire yes go fucking go ahead tell us about dark brandon i don't know it's just weird memes it's scary i don't want to know uh yeah you don't need to know it's fine okay it's it's a good time it's it's it's a good time on the internet. That's all the dark Brandon is.

Alright. The Navy doesn't fall for the coup, right? This leads to this spectacular exchange between the crew of Jaime I, the James I battleship, right? And the Ministry of Marine. Crew to Ministry of Marine. We have encountered serious resistance from the commands and officers on board. Crew to Ministry ministry of marine we have subdued them by force urgently

request instructions as to bodies ministry to marine to crew lower the bodies overboard with respectable solemnity what is your present position so what they've done there is the officers have declared for the crew for the coup and the minute the sailors on board the ship have killed them and thrown them over the edge. Subdued by force. What do we do with the bodies of the people we have subdued? Just the most amazing radio message.

The officers turn out to be chuds, and then, like, brief pause. What do you want us to do with their bodies? Again, king shit. So it's a few days before the battle lines really get drawn uh as to who is where who's on what side of the spanish civil war it's a few days before it becomes clear that this is a civil war because without boats the rebels seem to be in trouble but the fascists came to their aid with planes to airlift the troops from africa the republic had more troops and more

access to supplies and it looked like they were going to win a war of attrition. That doesn't work out because France, the UK and the United States abandoned Spain and the fascists do not abandon Franco. But I don't really want to finish there. I want to backtrack and think about how many times in the past or the present the working class of a city is spontaneously organized to prevent an army from entering that city and especially in the age of the tank and the bomber i can't really think of any and i don't know if you guys can but i couldn't come up with one i got nothing yeah anyone i mean other than kiev kind of yeah yeah some of it was at least spontaneous but yeah

Kind of. Yeah, yeah, true. Some of it was at least spontaneous, but yeah. Yeah. It wasn't against their own army. Like, they had an army. No, that is, yeah. I mean, you could, there are pieces of that,

and it was not as organized or clearly successful in, you know, the Holy Week uprisings and the Watts riots and stuff. Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, pieces of it. Yeah, yeah. Pieces of it. Yeah. I mean, even like, uh,

in Minneapolis, right? Like, uh, yeah. Pieces of it in Minneapolis. Where the state didn't exist for a while. Yeah.

uh, but, uh, this, this revolution is somewhat unique, at least in that, right? And what happens afterwards,

uh, and what happened in the civil war, isn't what i want to end on you can see this kind of idea in ken loach's film land and freedom uh that that this was a romantic failure and i don't think that's true i think that they the only way for the civil war to succeed was doing what it did for the republic to succeed was doing what it did well and what it did well with harnessing the enthusiasm and passion of the working class people to build a better world for themselves when it became not worth fighting and dying for something then the war was already lost for a lot of people trying to mask behind a conventional war effort doesn't make sense when your enemy has every advantage in a conventional war effort. But I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on the last

week of July 1936, when the city's in the hands of the people, when there are no cops and no bosses, but people go back to work as collectives, when there's no money, but people distribute food to people who need it. All across Spain, and not just at the barrel of a gun people collectivized they collectivized in castile and they socialized industry in valencia and it's a remarkable moment in human history and it doesn't last more than a year but i think it shows us that uh this this other future was possible right the uh the path we took from 1936 to the present day was not the best one uh Uh, but I like to think that just for a, just for a little while, we could have done better.

Um, and, uh, I think that's where I want to end really is thinking about how we could do better. And, uh, if people want to read books,

this, this has already been a long episode. I will say, uh, Helen Graham's very short introduction is very good. Anthony Bevor's newer book is good and you can get an audio book uh julian casanova is one of my favorite writers in spanish and some of his stuff is translated into english uh augustine guillermod's book ready for the revolution on uh the affinity groups of the cnt and chris elam stuff on barcelona is excellent um if you're in barcelona

nick lloyd's walking tours are excellent um but yeah that's hope that's enough there uh you can watch ken loach's film you can watch uh i think it's called parallel mothers that's on netflix um a couple of good films uh yeah thank you so much margaret again for joining me to uh and hear me drone on about the Spanish civil war for an hour. Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm into it. I, um, I didn't know, I, I've only been learning the details more recently, you know, I've always just heard about it in, in broad strokes and the like, you know, a lot of people like talking about what it means. Right. But talking about

what it means is cool. But the stuff that's like really interesting to me is the stuff that actually like makes it matter is the person who shows up and, you know, develops ways to deal with trauma by art therapy and the people who bravely steal dynamite and become named Rosa the Dynamiter. What what was what was her name yeah rosa yeah yeah she loses a hand yeah it's better than rosa the riveter i mean no offense to rosa riveter but rosa the dynamiter is is is doing well um what aiter, go after all of the libraries keeping the books imprisoned.

Free knowledge. The gatekeepers of thought. I really like librarians. Take them down. I don't want to get canceled, but I like libraries and librarians. You all aren't ready for this discourse, Margaret. Live Margaret Killjoy take. Librarians are problematic.

That's how we know you're a CIA asset because you're pro library stats. Yeah, exactly. Classic capitalist infrastructure. Look, where did the CIA train all those people to overthrow governments? The School of the Americas. What does every school have? Books. See, I think school is the problem.? The School of the Americas. What does every school have? Books.

See, I think school is the problem because that's the School of Americas. There's two things wrong with School of Americas. It's school and America. Most of the problem is the school part. I think the real problem with School of the Americas is that it had school in the name and we can't have that.

That's an oppressive hierarchical system of learning unbelievable if americo vespucci never came here maybe things would be different maybe even better wow anti-italian slander i'm here for it well let's all end on that note fuck italy yeah and fuck traffic lights margot do you have anything to plug? I do. People can pre-order my book that is all about why traffic lights are bad. It's called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, and it's written from the point of view of a traffic light that knows it's about to be abolished.

It's out from AK Press, who uses the red and black flag as the logo, and much like the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War who developed the red and black flag, which is to reference, of course, the negation of the red and black flag as the logo and much like the anarchists in the spanish civil war who developed the red and black flag which is to reference of course the negation of the red because the red in the traffic light is what stops you um and so the black is the negation of the red in this in this case yeah and yeah that's what happens when you disconnect a traffic light from power it goes black yeah no one's disconnecting shit robert people are shooting the traffic light and you know what ak do you know what ak press do you know do you know what ak press sells a book okay oh well books and and books where do books get kept

that's right that's right it's all it's your everyone is in on it okay well if you don't want to be part of the evil world, you can do what is clearly good, which is listen to podcasts and create parasocial relationships. Yes, the unproblematic medium of podcasting. And if you want to create a parasocial relationship with me, you can listen to my podcasts, one of which is called Live Like the World is Dying. It's an individual and community preparedness podcast.

And the other one is called cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about people who defend libraries from people like you. And anti-learning nihilist radicals. Yeah. Anti-library action. That's right. That's right. That's what the ALA is,

isn't it? That's, that's what that, that is why I fly the black and gray. I'm just making fun of people now. Never mind. All right. Thank you, Morgan, for joining us.

My friend did once make me an anarcho-goth flag that was black and then black lace. That's great. Thanks for having me. I would fly that. All right. Well, thank you for listening. I would, I would fly that. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for listening.

Uh, James, where can people find you online? Uh, I'm all over the internet. Uh, you can just put in my name at James Stout on Twitter. Um,

sometimes I write things. I will talk about them there. Great. Well, you can find me at I write. Okay. You can follow the show on, that's right.

At, at cool zone media and happen here pod and send any complaints to at, uh, sorry, no, send, no,

send any complaints to add. I write. Okay. Uh, okay. Yeah, it's okay. I don't read responses.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHe Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters. To bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. natural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

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app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Texa Lee New episodes every Thursday. from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. it could happen here is the podcast that this is where we talk about things that are happening here generally things falling apart um sometimes things getting put back together today we have a story that i wasn't sure if we were ever going to cover. In brief, we're going to be talking about a group called Black Hammer that is, on its surface, a leftist, anti-colonial political organization and in reality is more or less a cult. The reason we're talking about them is that someone is now dead,

connected with them. The story is interesting and messy and says a lot about the way social media works today and the way that the United States is essentially like 40 different colts in a trench coat. So today I'm here with James Stout and we are talking with journalist W.F. Thomas. Thomas, what do you what do are you, what are you, how are you doing today? Today is the day. This story is, stuff is still coming out.

Yeah. About an hour ago, charges were finally posted for the cult leader. But that's further along in the story. If you hear chirping in the background, those are four live chickens. So my apologies. Aw, little babies. I just got rabbits that I have now living in my chicken facility, and they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having little animals around.

All right, so who are Black Hammer, and how did they get to the present position? So I think we should probably start with, I don't know, 2019, right, is kind when these these folks sort of start to come on the uh the scene yeah um you know you could take this story back a lot further okay let's do that um so sometime in the late 80s um augustus romaine jr is born um this is the person we're commonly known as gazi codzo um they use they them pronouns who would go on to be the leader of this group um you know codzo grew up in stone mountain outside of Atlanta, um, and in the early 2010s had kind of a lifestyle blogger YouTube thing going on, um, was a self-professed Cosmos biggest fan and generally seemed like they were trying to get famous. Yeah.

Like influencer style famous, right? This was not at all political at this period. Yeah. Yeah, like influencer style famous, right? This was not at all political at this period. Yeah. Yeah. And that's going to be kind of the red thread through this story is Kodzo, I'm going to refer to them as Kodzo,

Augustus Romaine Jr. Wanting to be famous is kind of, unfortunately, the main thing that drives most of what has happened at some point, you know know in the mid 2010s um kodzo took this turn and started making more incendiary videos um i don't have them directly in front of me so i don't want to misquote them um but kind of like going out pushing this concept like white people are evil, going for this very specific type of leftism. And Ghazi Kadzo gets taken under the wing of, and I'm going to mispronounce this name, Omali Yeshutela.

And this is a person who is leading a group in saint petersburg florida called the african people's socialist party um and african people's socialist party was part of this larger thing called the uhuru solidarity movement this i don't know if they're still around but you know their their ideology was third world communism, African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is, let's talk a little bit about the word Uhuru, because that's something, if you've ever been in and around Proud Boys, first off, I'm sorry, it's not a fun experience generally, but they like to shout Uhuru. And I understand that that's kind of related one way or the other the other to this yeah so um i don't have it directly in front of me what a huru means but you know the reason probably say that is because of gazi codzo yeah there were times several times when codzo

spoke made appearances with gavin mckinnis uh founder of the proud boys and kazo generally became and still is treated as a lol cow um kind of this target for derision to poke at to see what is this person doing which is still happening right now, unfortunately. Yeah. You know, Kazo rose through the ranks of this group and then eventually found out that this is basically a cult. The African People's Socialist Party had a specific focus on membership from colonized people, people of color. But it turns out this was being steered entirely by a group of white people. So it's out of the ashes of this experience, this abusive experience, this cult-like group,

CODZO, along with some other people, leave this group and they go on to form Black Hammer kazo along with some other people leave this group and they go on to form black hammer in february of 2019 which the original name is the black hammer organization um and there's some really good write-ups um especially red voice uh yeah yeah yeah uh definitely recommend that um and there are i think you broke out for second. So the title of that article is the devil wears a dashiki. It's like six, seven parts, but it is, it's really good comprehensive. And that gets into a lot of what I, that's where I get a lot of this information from. And there were additionally,

what would happen to some of these people who founded this group, Black Hammer organization, who are also parts of the African people's socialist party would disavow Ghazi Kaza, would disavow Black Hammer and have kind of their own statement about here's what happened, you know, in which they say, hey, we never recovered from this experience in this traumatic group, in this cult-like group. And instead went on to found this new one. And we're very, you know, it was kind of failed from the start

to become this other cult-like group so just to clarify on the uhuru thing that it comes from the african people socialist party right and then he's they have taken it and run with it in the uh uh black hammer organization so the african people's socialist party was part of this umbrella group called the uhuru solidarity movement okay and this group is still around if you look at like the um channel five with andrew callahan has a video where they go to this march for reparations and that group is the uhuru solidarity movement got it okay if you're familiar with that yeah yeah so we get this organization founded and kind of from what my perusal of because i've also you can go to their website black hammer has like a new site um they are kind of building huh oh yeah yeah Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. They're kind of...

For now. For now, yeah. They kind of build themselves as, like, an anti-colonial organization that is specifically, like... Like, one of the things they do is they have, like, a white people's auxiliary that, like, is for the purpose of people paying reparations.

They have, you know, they carried out a couple of actual direct actions during 2020, including like handing out masks and whatnot. But for the most part, they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to themselves and thus donations via social media fuckery. And yeah,

that's, I think if you've think if you've personally interacted with Black Hammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've seen someone on the internet talking about how Anne Frank is a Karen or something like that. Let's get into it. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Yeah. Great. Yeah, so I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned, you know, in these comments from the people who founded the organization and left the organization. These were, these are still true believers who believe in this cause of decolonialization of African internationalism and who do want to build a better world and do good things. You know, in talking with people who have survived the cold, it sounds like Kazo probably never was a true believer, but there were true believers around Kazo who believed in this cause.

And because of that, we're able to be abused, to be profoundly abused by Kazo and the people working directly under Kazo at Kazo's behest. So April 30th, 2020 in a tweet, I believe, Kodzo calls Anne Frank a Becky,

follows it up by how she's a Karen, which, one, is a ridiculous statement, two, is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that, you know. Back at this time, there was acceptance of the black hammer organization in leftist circles in that kind of online communist community um

and there were people who came out kind of like oh no let's hear what they're saying about this you know talking about how victims you know the term genocide was invented to describe the holocaust but that term wasn't used to describe slavery that kind of thing yeah which to be clear is not the conversation that kazo was trying to have that was not no and that is a worthwhile conversation to have is like why you know like why is that not why is the the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number of African people not seen as an act of genocide? Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not at all intersect with Anne Frank or how we think about the Holocaust. yeah and uh because we were living in hell yeah this fake you know kind of propped up not a real discussion it's meant to just piss people off is back again oh good what a great time yep based on documents that have come out that are purported to be from internal black hammer documents this was part of their Operation Storm of White Tears.

Jesus Christ. Which was seemingly this, and again, don't know for sure if these documents are from them, but these documents that are purported to be from Black Hammer lay out this strategy to cause division, to kind of bring other groups down to elevate Black Hammer's own status by putting themselves as the center of attention in all of this that is happening in this online fiasco. Because again, the ideology is not the point.

The attention is the point. The control is the point. Along this way. There's, there's, you know, there are a lot of allegations out there. There are, you know, for example, allegations, uh, that false false allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left the group, people who spoke out against the group that they were recruiting people on

Tinder. Oh, cool. Yeah. So along the way, some more chapters form. There's one, I believe, near Aurora, Colorado, or at least in Colorado. There's a New York City one. And kind of the group continues to rise as almost, you know, your typical revolutionary communist cell that we have quite a few of in the United States going on right now. Yeah.

of democratic centralism as some of these other groups do um which to dump things down a lot and there's probably going to be left is screaming at me right now um was this idea from lenin where a group takes a vote and then if that vote passes they all agree to go along with that platform yeah with usually about 50 percent um so that there's not kind of the splitting off of faction so it can lead to this very centralized and hierarchical control structure that's certainly what happened in black hammer um there are other democratic centralist groups that have been in the news lately who use a similar strategy. But what this meant is it allowed CODZO to run this group

with an iron fist. On paper, there was a group of people leading the group. Someone else was in control of the money, but in fact, it kazo controlling all of this um they also had you know shared living spaces where members of different chapters of black hammer lived hammer houses um and that's always going to end well. Yeah. Generally, it's a good rule not to go live with the revolutionary cell you just joined.

Yeah. If you are joining a political party and they want everyone to live in the same space that is controlled by that political organization, you may in fact be joining a cult. Yeah. And, you know, there's there continues to be kind of trying to get more attention. At one point, you know, Kodzo starts beef with a local anti-fascist crew in Colorado. You know, another thing to mention about this group is it's a lot of queer people in the group. You know know gazi identifies as non-binary there are you know several many members who love people of the same sex and you know one of the things that happens as gazi is beefing with the local anti-fascist crew is something that people

are probably thinking of when they hear the name gazi Kodzo is this bizarre video of Kodzo running around in Joker makeup. Oh, geez. Talking about white anarchists and anti-fascists, which the background is actually even more fucked up than you would think, having just heard that. As outline Red Voice goes into this specifically, there were members of the group who were, you know, practitioners of Yoruba, an African religion. And one of them was a trained, I don't know the correct term, so I'm just going to say practitioner of this religion. Had gone through an education process in that that took some time. I had gone through an education process in that that took some time. And this video of Ghazi running around in Joker makeup was Ghazi's idea to channel the deity Eshum.

And my apologies, I'll mispronounce now, which is a Yoruba deity, you know. And before this happened, apparently Ghazi had brought this up to the person and the person said, that is extremely disrespectful of my religion. Don't do that. And Ghazi did it anyway. And this is, you know, another one of the things where this gets sent around all the time as, you know, treating Blackhammer as a lolcow. this was going on there was this abuse that was going on as well and people being preyed upon by this group in 2020 black hammer announces that they are planning to build hammer city which is supposed to be this utopian settlement in the rockies um you look like you have something you want to say well i mean look look, it's a perfectly normal dream to want to build a utopian settlement in the Rockies. There's some downsides to that. One of them is that the Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number of people to live.

And this is why repeatedly, I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements out in that part of the world, and they don't tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns but it's it's it's always interesting when folks try when folks want to do a commune type situation and then they immediately go for a place like that because like the mountains is the hardest place to do it if you want to have a self-sufficient commune, like fucking Kansas, you know, uh,

Arkansas, like somewhere where the soil is good for growing stuff and you can get like a flat track, track of land that can grow food as opposed to high Alpine elevations where very little is going to anyway, whatever this is compound talk. Um, so yeah,

um, there's, there's, if there's one thing you take away from this episode don't build your compound in the Rockies don't build a compound in the Rockies look that's all I got that's the message of this podcast

unless you're the tenacious unicorn ranch in which case go right ahead and then you gotta think what they're, which is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like growing crops, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I don't actually see any advanced. I was just looking at their at the Hammer City website. They just talk. They just say sustainable farming.

I can't see advanced plans for perhaps there weren't any. They did raise one hundred and12,000 so far. Yeah. According to their website, they raised $112,000 so far. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Educate us more on this project. Yeah. Real interested to know how much money they actually raised. Maybe it was that much. The point is we don't really know because there's no kind of open record keeping within this group. And it was CODSO who was in control of the money. So the group found land to buy, and they actually began the process of a land deal in early May, 2021. They, and this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado Sun article about the whole Hammer City thing that I also recommend if someone

wants to read more in depth about this. So as the land deal was in the process of going through, a portion of the group moved out there. So about two dozen people. This was remote, but it wasn't on top of a mountain. This was in a subdivision that had parcels for sale, which leads to some problems. This is a subdivision with a homeowners association and strict limits on land use as well. So they didn't have water rights for one thing.

Yeah, exactly. They didn't have water rights to land, which I have not started a compound, but I imagine water rights is something you want to have figured out. If you just want to live on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want to grow crops, then yeah, having the ability to irrigate said crops is kind of important. Yeah. So another thing at this time is Black Hammer tends to be a pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out to this land. They were camping out. They're basically squatting on the land that they did not own and brought their, you know, armed security along with them. And we're also like blocking road access for residents of the subdivision.

So they, they had neighbors, you know, and at one point this leads to an altercation with a neighbor with three armed Black Hammer members and a neighbor driving his car who, according to this Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and there's a standoff. off. This could have been one of those things that went really bad. It went about as good as you can hope a situation like that can go where nobody got killed. But while this was happening, the member of Black Hammer who was responsible for the land deal forgot to sign or didn't sign the paperwork on time. And after information comes out about the standoff, the land deal completely falls through. There is no Hammer City that is going to be built. And Kodzo is maintaining, and Black Hammer as a whole, is maintaining a super active social media presence

at this time as well. So, you know, one of the other things that gets brought out is like this video of them talking about oh we built this bridge on our land uh which is kind of a bunch of two by fours across a ditch yeah are they planning to buy it um in in as like a organization or as cards are planning to buy it um in in then as like a organization or as cards are planning to buy it themselves as an individual do we know they this is actually something i did some research on um they did this fun thing uh they created a front group a front organization to buy the land nice which they called hammerstone industries Incorporated yeah stealthy one of the prominent members was responsible for that

the power of Google I also found their Bitcoin wallet while we were talking and it has never had any donations and remains empty oh my god that one hasn't gone well so after this land deal falls through hammer city is not being built a lot of people get really fucking pissed they also it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign on their way out of the subdivision

so on on the 17th of may 2021 is when the group leaves Hammer City. So going back to what Robert mentioned earlier, the group took a very, I'll say, interesting approach when COVID-19 started, which is the belief that COVID-19 is real, that people should wear masks and be protected, but that they should not take the vaccine and that fauci was a liar which comes out a bit later so so they were doing for example there's a there's a news article uh and with a video of them doing you know mutual aid distribution of masks and food in colorado so lots of people are real fucking pissed when Hammer City falls through. There's also been, you know, these allegations that have been coming up again and again. And at this point, several chapters break apart from Black Hammer, break away from Kodzo and kind of go off and do their own thing um and kazo is left with this core group of members um kind of true believers and says fuck it we're moving to atlanta so the group does a marathon drive from colorado to the southern suburbs of Atlanta and outside of Atlanta is where Kodzo grew up on the east side, um, around the Northeast. Um,

and they, they keep going. They rent a house where everyone lives together. Um, another one of their hammer houses, I believe at this time there is another active chapter that is still connected with Kodzo and theolinas as well um but you know this is a when prophecy fails moment for codzo um and the people that are left behind are these true believers um and codzo doesn't take this well doesn't take the failure of this deal well becomes even more paranoid than they already were, more controlling and more abusive than they already were. So there's the red voice gets into some of the really wild allegations that come out at this time.

Allegedly, Kodzo has members sign over control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint as people reveal personal information at gunpoint. Again, these are allegations. I'm not saying Kodzo did this. That we get some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people to sit and listen to kazo kind of preach having people constantly working not getting enough to eat um having you know love bombing where got where kazo makes you know deep eye contact with the person talks about how important they are how much they love them and uh the consumption of psychedelics as well cool that's good great yeah yeah you love to hear that um yeah just a bunch of heavily armed people uh being cops for each other and drugging each other in support of a i don't know charismatic seems like a weird word for gazi but it must be right, clearly it works on some people.

Yeah, I think they are charismatic, right? Like, I don't think it's necessarily good to be charismatic, but they seem to have attracted these followers. Some people seem to be responding to their, I don't know, the way they present themselves. It's so, I guess that's always the way with cults, right? That, like like to the outside, the cult leader is always an obvious cult leader, but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable to. And for some people that's, well, and I also, I think a lot of it is

they have like presented themselves differently in different periods. And I think from what I've been reading, it sounds like a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of most deeply wrapped up and have been with it for a while. So they've kind of followed along with Ghazi as they've, you know. Yeah. And this is a group that. The hill.

You know, preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people, preyed upon unhoused people, preyed upon people of color who are at the intersections, you know, of oppression in our society. you know of oppression in our society um and this group like most cults it offered them a cause a purpose something to fight for something to do friends a roof over their head even you know um yep which is a huge part of it right because if you if this if this place is not just your social circle but also your safety net, and like how you keep a roof over your head and how you stay fed, and you don't have close ties to family, or maybe your family aren't people that you can trust, like, I mean, again, it's not a different story than you get in a bunch of other cults. But like, this is, yeah, that's, it's, it's a very frightening situation for those people to wind up in.

And of course, one of the things that is unfortunate is that so much of the stuff that the Black Ham organization said and did is so absurd that like it leads to this kind of mockery of anybody who gets wrapped up in it and the people who are very much victims of it, which I think is also one of the things that makes it harder to leave, right? Is that siege mentality for those inside. That's where the term cognitive dissonance comes from yeah specifically people right you know when when things that go according to plan stick with this group and you know have already given away so much of their time so much of their life so many of their connections that they just roll with it yep yeah and then there's uh i'm just thinking back to a story i

wrote years ago where i was fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert on these small cults um and they had actually been a survivor of a i think it was a trotskyist cult so they were very familiar and they'd like this group exhibits all those patterns right like the charismatic leader that you mentioned the use of their own language, the control of their relationships and their contacts inside and outside the group. Yeah. And then they mirror this like very positive. It seemed like I was just looking at their aesthetics after you mentioned it, but they're definitely sort of seeking to mirror that like Black Panther Party aesthetic, right?

Which is obviously something that has for good reasons, very positive associations for a lot of people so I can see they've constructed this very appealing package and now there's a body now a person has died connected with this organization so yeah let's talk about this

so in Atlanta is where things get really wacky basically as is often the case with Atlanta as is often the case with atlanta as is often the case with this beautiful beautiful city owned by coca-cola and home depot with with i have to admit it as a texan the best barbecue in the south that's true excellent uh ethiopian food as well i was there this weekend yeah yeah oh fucking amazing fucking amazing ethiopian ethiopian food um yeah yeah big refugee population that's besides the point yeah um yep so you know

kazo has found themselves in this city without a ton of money um and so needs to get more attention needs to appeal to more people so this is when kazo announces that black hammer is forming a coalition with the proud boys which is one of those things that comes out in really sensationalized headlines but doesn't actually happen what happens is kazo goes on a podcast with gavin mcginnis and they talk about we have so much in common and there's you know a little toast evidence of actual organizing or work together between the two groups but with this group like this no especially because gavin doesn't do organizing anymore on paper not involved with problems anymore yeah what was

the podcast they went on instead of interest dan'll cut that and add in the entire audio from b movie condensed into a two-second blast like we talked about. You know, the group gets more attention to that. They start talking about how great Trump is, how much they love Trump, how Fauci is evil. Because again, ideology is not the point. The attention is. And this is how you continue to get attention, by acting ridiculous, by asking Trump voters to donate money to you. And at this time, they also began an extremely aggressive fundraising campaign in the city of Atlanta.

there's a park in downtown Atlanta called Woodruff Park that has a huge unhoused population because our city is bad at being a city and it's just bad. But Black Hammer, there, there are other groups, other leftist groups that do mutual aid that help people out in the park. Black Hammer says, we're going to do this too. You know, so they'll go there and have these sessions where they're screaming into a megaphone about whatever um and you know handing out clothes and some food to unhoused people and they also start sending their the members of their group pretty much every day of the week to go out into the city of atl Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets

in their matching branded Black Hammer t-shirts and masks. A sight to see and yeah, so this is what they call their Robin Hood campaign. They specifically target college campuses, georgia state university and georgia tech especially um with the idea that college kids have a lot of money to give away not a great idea um but they do this aggressive fundraising where they you know follow people and if they don't take no for entrance to say, Oh, you don't care about homeless people. You don't care about unhoused people. You know,

you just have so much white privilege and really attacking people. Which is great when you're coming home, you're riding your bike home, and then you keep passing black hammer members you're riding your bike home and then you keep passing black hammer members outside of, uh, you know, on your commute home, not fun. Yeah. And they appear, you know, on the belt line, which is this kind of public green space and shared walking space in Atlanta. Um, they do this outside of concert venues you know i went to see the dead kennedys and as i was walking in the venue a black hammer guy asked me for money i have to explain to the guy in front

of me handing them five dollars this is an anti-semitic cult you don't want to do that and they they're also taking in unhoused people. There's this video of one of the lieutenants saying, we want to get you, the unhoused people, to come fundraise for us. If you come fundraise for us, you can keep half of it 50-50 split, and whoever fundraises the most in this week gets to come live with us at the Hammer House. So it's pretty fucked up. You know, there's a case where a professor at Georgia State University. Because these people, the Black Hammer members are out there every day, all day.

This is what they do. This is their job. This is how the group makes money. You know, calls them out and says and says hey stop asking for money here i know you're a cult and a member follows the professor and films her you know and specifically films her license plate and says we got you for example members are arrested for having a megaphone in Woodruff Park and get some of their guns taken away when the rest because they're in the park with a bunch of guns. Cool. You just have guns out.

Yeah, yeah. It's Georgia. Which sometimes is cool when the Proud Boys show up and anti-fascists have guns, but it's not not great when Black Hammer is doing that. Definitely tracking, following people who criticize you and taking pictures of their license plate to try to dox them online is not at all cult behavior. It's like low-rent Scientology stuff. They attack ex-members.

They leak the addresses of the family of ex-members and their social security numbers as well because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint yeah they seem to get very close to encouraging people to shoot cops in a couple of pieces on their website as well um yep they talked about killing white people a lot eventually in yeah in 20 early 2022 they have this rally outside of the CNN Center in solidarity with the January 6th political prisoners. Along the way in 2022, Ghazi claims to have found Jesus, and Black Hammer becomes a religious group. They turn their mutual aid distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church,

which of course is filmed and live streamed. They have several live streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are mandatory for members to attend. There is corporal punishment going on within the group of people living at the house. And the people that they're picking up off the street, it's not just adults, it's kids as well. Kazo claims to have this 16-year-old that they have adopted. And, you know, Kazo posts these videos of them giving the 16-year-old guns and money and clothes to wear. The kid gets taken into state custody before the current thing that we're talking about. And this is going to be important later on in the story. Yeah. So there are also these

stories from members who have escaped, who have to do these elaborate escape attempts to get out because they're not allowed to leave, who have to kind of run away in the middle of the night with none of their stuff through a thunderstorm to get out. So this is what we're dealing with. All right, everyone. It's James here. And I just wanted to correct a couple of things from the episode or add to them. One of them was the date of that shooting,

be it murder or death by suicide. That was the 19th of July, not the 19th of February. And so it happened about a week ago at the time that you will hear this if you hear this on the day that we put it out. Secondly, I also just wanted to give some context to the word Uhuru. It's a Swahili word, means freedom or independence. It was used as part of a backronym, which is when a group has a name, then they create an acronym that fits to that name. And the word Uhuru was part of a backronym for a group called the Mau Mau,

a revolutionary anti-colonial group who existed in Kenya. And the word Uhuru was used a decent amount in anti-colonial struggles in Kenya. And in the backronym, the backronym is Mzungo enda yulaya Wafrika Apati Uhuru. Let the foreigner go home. Africa should be independent, will be independent, I suppose. I just wanted to give that context.

And obviously, it's been appropriated now by the Proud Boys. But that is part of the etymology of the word. And then we get to what happened on February 19th, 2022. You know, this is an ongoing story. So the facts, what we know might be changing. But early in the morning, someone calls 911 and talks about being held hostage by an organization, by a group.

They don't give the address, but the police are, the authorities are able to track the number to this house in Fayetteville, suburb south of Atlanta, and show up. And they see someone is outside walking a dog who runs away. That person gets arrested. That's a member of Black Hammer. They see someone kind of waving from the garage, seemingly in distress. And the police are able to get that person out. um about 10 people come out and uh one person remains inside now by about 2 p.m um with the use of an explosives ordinance with the use of an eod yeah a bomb robot um the police enter the building um the SWAT team goes in and they find one person dead of a gunshot wound to the head which we at this current time we don't know the full details on that we might not ever hopefully

something comes out Kodzo is being held you know the group is kind of like sitting around outside, not in handcuffs, but being held by the group. And Kodzo does what Kodzo does and starts to live stream. So here's a clip from this 30 minute live stream Facebook live that Kodzo does. Look, there's a lot of media out here, so this is just going to build me up at the end of the day. So thank you for that. So if you think that I am concerned or anything like that, you're out of your mind. At the end of the day, there's still breath in my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party.

Our community is effing with us. And now all these news channels are going to want to interview us. And we're going to get to communicate about all the great work that we are doing here. So this is great at the end of the day. So if my chicken's coming home to roost, it's more media, more followers, more advancement in the world, more movement, more greatness. And so be it, sweetheart sweetheart things like this have not stopped movements or readers before so not even overcome this is a great moment right comrade this is a great moment a moment where no our voices will be amplified and our mission and cause will be informed. Well, that's cool.

I like that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of a human life. So I will say this is probably before, depending on what actually happened. It became clear that someone was dead. But the point is that this is exactly what kata wanted was this attention yeah they seem pumped they seem pumped and also like deranged yeah yeah yeah that wasn't how i'd envisioned them speaking at all it's sort

of very almost like calming and they seem very very calm in their tone of voice yeah i mean calm but like i don't know i see an edge to them but maybe that's me reading yeah um so do we know more detail about like what happened with that person who died so i don't want to mention the name of the person. This is a minor too, right? This is so 18. The person who was killed, who's dead now was not, was not the 16 year old. The 16 year old was already in state custody a few weeks ago,

I believe. This is an eight, according to the what the group has said and other survivors I've spoken with, this is an 18 year old. The group took in off of the street. This is a kid, you know, who wanted to be a rapper who had dreams.

Yeah. You know, according to black cameras, own media, they made this person their minister of defense. That's a good job for an 18 year old. It was dead now because of this group. Yeah.

Potentially from a self-inflicted gunshot wound which that is the case came about because of kazo putting that 18 year old in this situation yeah so dirty south right watch broke the news they have a really good thread that i also recommend about they do have a good thread this happening it seems like the local news they started covering the story uh in the am when it was happening but didn't quite make the connection yeah there's there's one article that's out there from a local news site that just interviews gazi kazo homeowner of the house oh no yeah so that happens one of the members of the group is immediately charged and booked uh it's a really fucked up situation you know there yeah there's like an unhoused individual who that who who other good activists were in touch with who

are at the house when this happened because this person had no other choice but it was live outside or go with black hammer oh god went through all of this happening um and then it was still on how it was still on house after all this happened kazo was arrested and booked um the charges didn't come out until about an hour before we started recording. The charges are two counts of participation in streaking activity, two accounts of aggravated assault, two accounts of kidnapping, two accounts of false imprisonment, two accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I'm going to talk about this one, one account of sodomy, which in Georgia, crime and i'm going to talk about this one one account of sodomy which in georgia the sodomy law refers to non-consensual oral or anal sex or oral and anal sex performed with the minor

got you so one way or the other they are being accused of sexual assault yes yeah the other person arrested um was charged with the same crimes except not sodomy uh officer obstruction instead presumably because they fled and that's where we're at that's where we're at right now cool well that's rough yeah it's it's a pretty bleak story but i don't know at this point we will probably be hearing more as this case blows up and there's always the chance that you know the right's going to wind up adopting it to try to you know make it into a uh left-wing bad kind of deal so when we already have. aware of because this kind of thing isn't going to get less common as shit continues to unravel yeah and um if there's some takeaways if someone can leave this with you know a few points that the people who were in this group were they were victims in the situation they were preyed upon by this abusive person because they were in a vulnerable state. Anyone, this could happen to anyone

who falls on hard times, who has a bad enough day and then someone comes in and offers them this, that they say yes. You know, the other thing is to know about groups that are out there before you get involved. Do your research.

Listen to voices that might be critical of the group and know what you're getting yourself into. There are other ostensibly leftist groups out there who, while not as abusive as Black Hammer, have cases of abuse coming out of them that gets covered up yeah it might be good for us just to um just to suggest that if folks you know find themselves in a difficult situation on someone they know is in is in one of these situations like maybe we can uh uh link to some resources in the notes or something yeah um the problem is there aren't

yeah go ahead time yeah there's not there's not a whole lot of books that was recommended to me that i've been trying to find it's probably uh steven hassan's book which um hassan is also he's an expert in the field but he's also the guy who talked about how tranny, you know, mind control porn was cult. Yeah, he's got, he's problematic. Yeah. Look, I mean, part of the reason that this is such a problem is that there's very little in terms of good resources or good writing. One of the things that is like, there's good writing analyzing cults. One of the things that is like there's good writing analyzing cults. Very little of it will give you much that's useful in terms of how to get people out of cults for a couple of reasons, including the fact that, as we talked about earlier, what makes people vulnerable? People aren't vulnerable to cults broadly. Usually, I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like, as a general rule, people who get trapped in a cult get trapped in a specific cult because it is something that they are specifically vulnerable to. And so if you don't like, it's more or less a matter of like,

if you want to get someone out of a cult, um, are you close with that person? Like, are they someone that, you know, are they someone that you have a deep relationship with? Because if so, like that relationship and the care that you have for them is primarily the thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out, which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet. But like, there's no reliable way to get people out of cults. Yeah, I'm a, I do, I do 12 step recovery stuff for different reasons. But the closest analogy that I can think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drugs and alcohol in your life you can't force anyone to stop you can't make anyone leave when people talk about cult deprogramming what that entails is kidnapping someone and then putting them through more abuse so there isn't a magic bullet yeah a lot of extremely problematic

shit gets offered to people who understandably are concerned for their friends and family members and just want to help. The best time to get someone out of a cult is before they join, you know, is to raise awareness about abuse in communities and share that information and take these things seriously. I truly believe so much of how this was able to happen is because people were just laughing at them and didn't take it seriously that this could get someone killed, that this was ruining lives. That's still happening. People are treating this as a joke. Not. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things if you're like, I don't know, a parent or somebody who otherwise works with their interfaces with or is raising young people and you're trying to think about how you can make them less vulnerable to this.

It is a mix of educating them about cults, and not in a way that's like laughing or mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually discussing the very real reasons why people fall in for this stuff. Because that's the important one of the most important things is the same as covid really one of the most important things for protecting yourself is not thinking that you're immune which is a natural thing most people who have fallen into cults earlier in their life when they heard about cults said well that's stupid as hell i would never get trapped in something like that and then they did and that's a basically a hundred percent of cult membership you know um because uh yeah if there's if i can recommend some resources for parents of course shannon fully martinez uh

who is on twitter is you know was involved in extreme right skinhead stuff, and left it and has committed her life to helping people leave extremist movements. The same things, you know, that are going to make someone easily preyed upon by a cult and by an extremist group. Those are the same things. And Shannon has some good resources out there. She has a Patreon as well. The resources are available for free. You don't need to join on her Patreon. Awesome. Yeah, Shannon is awesome.

And other than that, you know, don't try to avoid falling for a cult. Except for, you know, this podcast. Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of your life. Have no friends other than us. Form parasocial relationships with us. Uh-huh.

Well, we're the only people you can trust. I think that's clear. Yeah. Would you like to plug anything before we cut you off here, Thomas? Yeah. I'm at Twitter at W underscore F underscore Thomas. Don't be weird on Twitter.

Um, have empathy for the people around you. Uh, I'm also going to plug. Ash to unhoused people because they know what best can help them. Yeah. Fucking provide people with options for housing so that they're not yeah about that having a cult be the best thing they can do but yeah yep on that happy note thanks for having me

yeah yeah check in on your friends just abandoned people when they're in difficult times Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

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I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app,

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Uh. It could happen. It could happen here. That was my Robert Evans impression. Nice job, Andrew.

Thank you very much. Hopefully that wasn't an assault on your eardrums, but here we are. Here are i am andrew and this is it could happen here and this is the podcast where we talk about stuff that happen in places and i'll be guest hosting this episode this is the andrewism, where I talk about whatever comes to mind. Crushed it. So, I'd like to open up this episode with a question. Honestly, genuinely, how are you all doing?

Well, there's a lot of stuff going on right now. You know, not the best time inside inside this country or really around the world. Um, so yeah, not, I would say not ideal. Not ideal. Yeah. I'm, I, everything bad is happening and also being compounded that I have been, I have been once again awoken at a genuinely egregiously early hour by someone pounding a hammer about 8 inches from my head which is

fun and good and cool without context without context that'll be a wild thing to say I am giving no context about this this is literally true so yeah basically it's like that but for everything yeah I am giving no context about this. This is literally true. So yeah, basically it's like that, but for everything.

Yeah. I respect that. Not ideal is the perfect explanation. Yeah. Yeah. Not ideal. Not ideal. Personally, I feel like I'm constantly being pulled in a bunch of different directions and it's exhausting and i mean just to say up front i do have the privilege of having

more control over my workday than a lot of other people do and that's not something i take lightly i'm very appreciative of that um shout out to my patreon supporters but you know between all my online responsibilities and my online responsibilities and my offline responsibilities and obligations and demands on my time, it really is not easy. And that's not even getting into, like, the social and political state of the world right now, to quote Jaden Smith, you know?

That's something I think we can all relate to on some level. Yeah. I mean, some weeks are much harder than others, but the through line has been stress. And that is the subject of today's episode. That's so stressful that we're going to talk about stress. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.

A discussion about stress. It really could happen here. Stress is not something that's new to me or really to most people me personally my personality is very much lending itself to that um sort of outcome because i'm constantly like spinning a bunch of plates at the same time and every time like i drop one or i put one down i pick up the next one and i'm not very good at relaxing usually i i've basically been going non-stop for a long long time and um i'm not alone because 43 of adults suffer from chronic stress and 75 to 90% of doctors visits are stress-related

and it's trash you know you feel it in your skin and your muscle and your bones I remember this one time when I was working at that same winery I was talking about in a recent episode I was in um and I was just sharing my experience it really felt like my blood was running to water like I was barely eating I wasn't getting enough water I wasn't being perfectly hydrated and I was just going we call that a reverse Jesus

when you're I mean I think when Jesus was stabbed he did like bleed water for some reason sure did yeah I mean, I think when Jesus was stabbed, he did like bleed water for some reason. Sure did. Yeah. Tree rings, you know, they tell a story.

And I think our bodies tell a story as well. And for a lot of us, that story is stress. Whether because of events or thoughts or circumstances, that leads to frustration or anger or nervousness. You do them with stress. What would you guys say is some of your main stress triggers? I was gonna say

family. Most of it's probably work related based on the type of things I surround myself with for over 12 hours a day yeah i think for me it's work and then it's a lot of just sort of like personal life stuff i have to do stuff which is just like like i'm trying to move right now and that's like incredibly stressful and yeah and also medical stuff that's been a that's been a for sure holy hell yeah we are excited that chris is finally moving out of the hammer factory into this into the into the electric

drill factory so the audio will still be a bit weird i mean look if if if it's if it's anything like college it'll be uh 12 hours a day of a guy with a jackhammer directly below my window which you'll all get to hear an incredibly large amount of it's gonna be great yeah that's fantastic that is i mean i think that's a perfect encapsulation of exactly the topic we're talking about it's like a jackhammer on your brain constantly i mean that's not the only form of stress i mean there's a stress that comes from like loss uh stress that comes from like social drift stress that comes from like this consumerist rat race um you know mental illness just general Just general uncertainty and change and grief and guilt and trauma. You know, the 9 to 5 dictatorship that a lot of people are subject to.

And of course, climate change. Good old climate change. i think more and more people need to realize though is that stress is a symptom of like systemic violence you know when we are dealing with these headaches and sleep problems and muscle pains and digestive problems and sex problems and blood pressure issues and moodiness and restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all these other responses and consequences it's just the outcome of daily systemic violence of the way that this system deprives us of support and care that how it atomizes us how it controls us and really squeezes us forward with i mean it's not to say that like

there's no stress outside of capitalism or that stress is a capitalist invention absolutely not i mean stress in small doses to be a good indicator uh in certain survival situations that need to change a situation um motivation to act you know but and the capitalism is really pathological and yet you gotta keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending that everything is okay. I mean, we all know how deeply unhealthy this society is. How deeply unequal this society is. How many people are dealing with stress-related illnesses.

How many people are dealing with, like, hypervigilance. How we are constantly scanning this urban jungle for threats of insecurity and decimation of public life and of entire economies and sectors. And it's like we're held in captivity. I will say one thing, and that is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress, it also alleviates stress by producing an economy organized around the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices of all these different vices that people pick up. the roots of capitalism and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation economies in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas

you know growing like sugar and tobacco and you know producing all these spirits and chocolate and coffee the thing that that helped bring capitalism to fruition and helped fund industrial capitalism is the thing that people are using to self-medicate in response the effects of

the now global capitalist dominance and people love off their chocolate and their coffee personally i'm not a big fan of coffee. I think it tastes disgusting. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I tried it once and it was like, it tastes like the sensation of burning. You know, I just wasn't having it. I like the smell for some reason,

like the smell of coffee beans, but the actual taste is like, nah. And surprisingly, I actually used to not like chocolate as a child. It was only when I matured my taste buds that I actually came around to it, ironically. And of course, we don't think of these things as, you know, vices or medications, but they're like small pleasures that help us get through our day. Practically everybody is some level of alcoholic these days.

And of course there's social media, which is like algorithmically tailored and tuned to keep us on it, to keep us like, it basically like a puppet master controls the highs and lows of our emotions on a daily basis. It basically functions as an addictive drug.

It just, the drug is just, is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain, but it's manipulating your brain into causing that to happen. But it's, it's a very similar addictive process that has like, you know, a reward system. You know you know this that's why like

around a decade ago a lot of social media companies changed their um loading style to be like you like scroll it down and it flicks back up which was specifically machine it was specifically copying a slot machine because it is it's it's like an addictive pattern that's ingrained into what we find pleasurable so it's it's all like none of this is this probably isn't new information to a lot of people but like it's all obviously very intentional to why it's designed to be extremely addictive yeah and this is just like this is just like what like most of gaming is now too where it's like i mean okay like you're playing a video game right yeah but like yeah it now it now literally like the the revenue model of the gaming industry is selling gambling to children uh you know that is my one complaint about casinos is that eight-year-olds

couldn't spend thousands of dollars of their parents money on skins uh but now thanks thanks to the wonders of gaming eight-year-olds too can basically just live in a casino in their own bedroom all the time ah modern society okay there's there's there's conflicting accounts about this but uh there's there's a new like free-to-play diablo diablo game and oh yes i heard about that the the amount of money it would take to get like a max level character in this game i have seen okay i i i've i've the the latest calculation i've seen is saying it would take over five hundred thousand dollars the the lowest range calculation of how much it would cost i've seen was about fifty thousand it's probably at least a hundred thousand

dollars to literally get a highest level character in these games it is like like this is 500 this problem is exactly where why this problem is exactly why um the only mobile games i play are sudoku and minesweeper and even those have ads yeah i did have a brief foray into among us though but that um that period has has ended and plus this is also why i tend to you know sail the high seas if you know what i'm saying the funny thing is that we don't have to do this and i mean it's kind of obvious it's kind of like it's a phrase i'm looking for like it doesn't need to be said but it also kind of needs to be said that we built we built this society and as people within it, we do have the power to change it.

We don't have to work as much as we do. We don't have to, you know, structure and attend school the way that we do. I mean, even under capitalism, there are people who are starting to shift from that eight-hour workday, which we had to fight for, a lot of people died for um to you know three to six hours a day which or four hours per day it depends um so one experiment was like six hour days four days a week or something like that but despite you know studies coming out and saying that humans can only be so productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted it it doesn't matter you know despite the fact that

you know productivity decreases it's not like productivity rises with the amount of hours you work it doesn't matter i mean i remember when i was working in a um an insurance company i was a paper pusher just like scanning documents and uploading documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading those documents and then every once in a while i got to print documents exciting um but i was dealing with like a backlog of documents and i was typically able to get like a decent chunk of the work done within like the first two to three hours as in like having it fully sorted, completed, you know, but unfortunately,

I had to be there for eight hours. And so I had to drag out my day, you know, typically by listening to like the Communist Manifesto in audiobook, you know, or the Conquest of Bread in audiobook. I had to find things to do to make myself look busy or to divvy up my tasks and extend them and artificially stretch them out

because instead of doing this BS job, instead of not doing this BS job at all, or instead of doing this BS job based on tasks completed rather than time spent, I had to rely on the time spent and the contractual hours. And of course, the pay was terrible. But I mean, that was expected at this point. But the whole point is really to squeeze all our time and energy

so that we're stressed out, so that we don't have any leisure, so that we look for out so we don't have any leisure so that you know we look for convenience and convenience is profitable i mean who really has the energy to fight for their rights when they don't even have the energy to cook a meal when they get home you know and it it wasn't always like this the social bond was broken by capitalism and replaced with the bond to money and until we like sever that bond nothing's gonna change so the question is how can we address stress right and so capitalism has an answer um and there's like an actual proper real systemic answer i mean personally i deal with stress by just not thinking about it um

but i mean what what do you guys do be really sad I'm talking about like mitigation strategies you know like I don't know like when it's nice I go take walks walks are nice yeah I have a shark that I got from somewhere

that's like it's like the squishy foam material but it's a shark it rules do you have an ikea shark chris no no no no it's one of these it's one of these like it's like it's like a stress ball but it's a shark we're about to just like oh yeah that's very funny no i don't have a whatever the like i don't know what the lodge i don't know that i don't know how to say it either I don't know I've been trying to get back into doing more parkour training when I'm stressed

but honestly it's a lot of the time I just do stuff that I know I'm capable of which often times is the same things that kind of caused me to get stressed in the first place looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it of, which oftentimes is the same things that kind of caused me to get stressed in the first place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it, writing about like different like philosophies around doomerism and like, because those are things I just, my brain can just do with little effort.

So it's almost, it's almost peaceful in a way. Almost therapeutic. Yeah. It's, it's, it's bizarre because In some ways you would think that these things are what's causing me to have problems, but also in a lot of ways it kind of calms me down to look at a whole bunch of this type of thing or to write about it or to try to just do formatting inside a Google Doc about it.

I don't know. It's like sorting out the stuff. It's almost like... There's this idea... This is a thing called a knolling. It's when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done with Lego a lot. If you dump a giant box of Lego,

all these different Lego pieces, if you're going to knoll them, you're going to take all the pieces that are the same color or size and sort them into their little places it's it's it's so it's i kind of do that but with like ideas um and like and like with writing projects i dump out all the things i'm currently thinking about into like a spreadsheet or a google doc and sort them into related topics be like okay here's how this thing leads into this thing and i just i it's like that kind of organizational thing.

Right. Organizing is kind of like a therapeutic thing. I can do that with all of the random stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try to just sort it out. Even if it doesn't get turned into a work project, it's still an external way to sort out my

thoughts. Right. Sophie? Sophie? I have a dog. Very good dog. I have a dog. We listen to music. We go outside.

We like to go to the park and listen to music outside. You know. That's the basic. I work a lot. but work is also like if i don't work i'm more stressed exactly exactly yeah i i definitely relate to i relate to that which is which makes me sound like a lapdog for capitalism i know right it's not something i'm like proud of but also like you know i'm lucky enough i think i think that's indicative of the problem right like it's not that people don't necessarily like to work don't necessarily like to labor the issue is like not having autonomy yeah for it you know because i mean if i imposed most of the

things i do for work now are things that i've been doing for years unpaid because I was just interested in them. So, you know, if we're talking about theorizing about a post-work world, yeah, people are still going to do all kinds of shit. Obviously there's questions around tasks which are not the most fun to do, as we've had

discussions on anti-work stuff before. But for a lot of stuff, everyone has little interests and little skills that they find kind of slightly therapeutic. And also like, you know, it's in terms of tasks that no one wants to do. Like I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a few weeks ago because my landlord's not going to do that.

So like, you know, people, when you have to do something, you kind of become capable of it. That's fair. I think one of the most popular responses like distress is capitalism imposes is like this concept of self-care you know this way of escaping from the grind of it all and sure dealing with you know with issues by like getting to bed early and eating well and physical

exercise which i've been doing a lot of lately um yeah andrew rock and all that we're gonna we're gonna have to change your little drawing into like into like the chad version well i actually did that recently oh that's great uh yeah it's lovely you know this's also things like like journaling and meditation and yoga and all that jazz I mean I've never really got into meditation because I tried it a couple times and every time I do I kind of fall asleep I definitely do some meditation stuff um but that's what's kind of slightly part of my like metaphysics interest. Um, and I mean, also in like, in terms of like self-care practices in that vein that can help

you kind of relax, there's obviously stuff like, you know, mushrooms or MDMA, which if done in, you know, proper, you know, it's spaced out, not, not doing them all the time, but doing them at certain intervals, um, can definitely be, intervals can definitely be therapeutic in their own way. Audrey Lord, one of the foremost Black feminist scholars of our time, once said, and I return to this quote a lot, caring for myself is not an act of self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. Self-care used to mean preserving yourself in a world hostile to your identity, community, way of life.

It meant not weakening yourself to an ugly grave, practicing saying no, and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers. and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers. And then, you know, as white corporate feminism does, white corporate feminism appropriated it and turned it into an industry now worth a staggering $11 billion. Yeah. I mean, now self-care, when people think of self-care, it's all about intelligent cosmetics and luxurious parties

and overpriced candles and going on expensive holidays and subscriptions to social media apps that are about like and it's it's turned into this own like grifting industry almost like the the self-care industry there's like self-care influencers and self-care content creators and like it's just like it just gets it gets the same icky derealization feeling that everything else under capitalism is slowly getting yeah i mean they even have like their own self-care funds like if you notice a lot of self-care content has a very specific visual style yeah yeah you know i mean hashtag self-care on Instagram is just like a bottomless scroll of graphics and product placements. It just makes me feel kind of

unsettled. It kind of has this uncanny aspect to it. Yeah, because it's almost as if self-care is inaccessible to those who are created to help the most. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's that fundamental part of the uncanny is that disconnect where the fundamental part of the uncanny is that

is that disconnect where the the gap between the phenomenon and the thing is really is really big and you can't really understand why it's uncanny but if you think about it it's because that gap between the thing what it's supposed to be doing is so large so yeah this thing that's supposed to help all these people is now a white millennial like like up like middle upper class like aesthetic now um and that sucks exactly i mean these days the people like it's mostly a salve for like white collar workers whose jobs also suck them out their time managing creativity but the people who actually you know the blue collar workers they often don't have the time or money to be able to invest in themselves in that way self-care and workaholism are basically two sides

of the same coin right it's preserve yourself so you can produce more it's a solution to capitalism within capitalism the solution doesn't actually alleviate the conditions of stress, but lines pockets and fuels the economic system that creates it in the first place. I mean, if you're selling self-care, it helps that you've got a constant supply of customers living in perpetual anxiety and unwellness. Rather than a means of resistance to the system system it's been weaponized by the system it's become this performative thing we put on this

image of put togetherness where you carefully curate your feed and your instagram stories and your highlights and it is an individualized solution to systemic issues. It's like the system telling you to calm down while it continues to denigrate and exploit you. None of these things address stress systematically. I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad to address stress individually because everybody has their own personal conditions. But without dealing with the broader material conditions,

without addressing people's lack of free time, lack of access to social connection, lack of access to housing and healthy food and affordable medical care, you know, it misses the point. And I haven't read much um in the field of i believe there's some anarchists who spend a lot of time writing and talking about it but i haven't read much in the field of like psychotherapy and that sort of thing but it's it's kind of a realization of me that therapy is basically focusing on fixing an individual to adjust to a sick society rather than healing the society itself, fixing the society itself. I mean, so much about therapy is about, you know, addressing things that are impairing your functionality

to complete your work. Your productivity. Yeah, it's all, the base of mental healthness is, is it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's when it becomes a problem. And the only way to solve it is through, what deems a success is if you're able to complete your job at a high level of functioning again.

It's not actually about your mental state. It's about how much you can produce under the capitalist framework. Yeah. And I mean, not to say that medication doesn't have a tremendous benefit in people's lives and, you know, helping them get back on track and take control of their circumstances. and take control of the circumstances. But, you know, when you have a society that has distress and misery and loneliness woven into it, into its core,

trying to adjust people and adapt people to that is just responding to sickness with more sickness. And you know me, I like to try and keep things on the practical, helpful, positive side. You know, it could happen here. Genuinely, with a smiling face. Like it could happen here. And so I just wanted to put forward some recommendations,

I guess. I mean, obviously we can't afford to wait until capitalism has been abolished to be happy. That's just ridiculous. I mean, that's long-term cure for a lot of the maladies and issues people are facing. But in the meantime,

understanding the roots of our stress in these systems can make the personal political and drive us to act and connect with people who can support us. I think that in organizing spaces, there needs to be special attention put towards creating support groups that allow for solidarity to be special attention put towards creating support groups that have allow for solidarity to be built you know allowing people to share their feelings and work through the challenges together self-care kind of frames things in a way that makes it seem as though

healing is done on an individual level when healing is communal like you don't have to go through all this alone healing is an act of communion and the world must be forced to change to reflect that we recognize that we have each other and recognize that self-care and community care are inextricably linked. And once those facts are at the forefront, once we put communal care at the forefront, outside of the claws of the market, accessible to all, I think we can find hope. And really, it can start with something as simple as just reaching out,

grabbing groceries or doing dishes or watching kids. hope you know and it really it can start with something as simple as just reaching out you know um grabbing groceries or doing dishes or watching kids a lot of the care work that is swept to the side when we think about organizing and what it means to organize but whether in your home on your neighborhood or at work or at school because i i think in especially neighborhood or at work or at school because i i think in especially neighborhood settings developing that sense of neighborliness could certainly help even something like a community garden being able to connect with nature again or at all for the first time it can really help life hard and we don't have to make it harder for each other And we don't have to make it harder for each other.

So you can follow me on Twitter. At Under Discourse St. Drew. On YouTube. Dot com slash Andrewism. Patreon.com slash St. Drew. And. I have been your host of It Could Happen Here. Peace. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

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And this, lucky you, lucky all of us, happens to be one of the latter kinds of episodes where we talk about good things happening. We talk about good things happening. With me in the studio, which is more of an ephemeral concept than a physical studio because there's a plague going on, is James Stout and Garrison Davis, co-hosting the podcast. Hello, fellas. Greetings. Hi, Robert. about. We had about a week or so, two weeks ago, a couple of representatives from the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Dallas, Texas come in, and they had been providing armed security at a couple of different Dallas area protests against Christian nationalists. I do recommend checking out those episodes. This week, we have one representative from that organization back on, and what we'll be talking about is there have been a series of attempted sweeps in Dallas at a homeless camp. And if you're not familiar with the concept, basically people who are experiencing homelessness set up encampments

in order to live with some degree of comfort and have, you know, their stuff with them. These are generally in places like parks, under overpasses, that kind of situation. And periodically, the city will come through and sweep them. The city's language is always very much focused towards we're trying to help them get into some sort of situation where they can find help. But what usually winds up happening is the city takes a bunch of people's stuff and throws it in the trash, often before extreme weather events. It's a really gnarly thing to experience. And activists in a number of cities have experimented with different tactics to try and stop and delay sweeps. And what we've had happening lately over the last week in Dallas is representatives of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club have been showing up armed alongside activists with Say It With Your Chest Dallas.

And the kind of thing that's been spreading on Twitter is, of course, the fact that activists have shown up with guns to stop the sweeps and the Dallas police have not shown up to do the sweeps. The thing that often gets missed in this kind of Twitter-level discourse, although is covered in a manner that allows them to do so with like dignity and comfort and not get their stuff thrown out by the city or experience violence from the police while it's happening. So that is the broad situation. I'm not going to say any more myself. I want to introduce Danny from Say It With Your Chest Dallas and Bubble from the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. Thank you both for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having us.

Was that a broadly accurate summary of events? Yeah, for the most part. The city has actually been sweeping several, they're cracking down on houselessness right now. Right. Very, very aggressive. And so it's not just that one camp that we were defending the other day, but the Monday before we were defending another camp. And I've never seen this many sweeps happen at one time. And I've been doing this for a little

over two years now. I want to actually go a little bit into how your organization formed, but before that, do you have any kind of, can you posit why the city has suddenly ramped up sweeps so aggressively in Dallas? So, normally, I'm talking to the residents. I've never seen it happen like multiple times in a week. Usually, they'll do one uh wait a little bit we'll hear a notice one yeah a couple months later or something but uh multiple in a week at different spots is definitely um definitely new to us um as for why the typical reasons are like you know the state fair comes up in october so they'll try to sweep then um or they'll do it um usually before like a housing development um and things like that where like the land is bought up or you know something but recently um the motivations have been a little bit more unclear with the aggression. It's kind of the city in terms of how they execute sweeps. It used to be that code compliance could not touch people's belongings.

Recently, it has shifted to take everything, throw away everything. But yeah, we still don't know why all this is happening yet. It is certainly like part of a nationwide trend because we're having the same things happen in Portland increasingly. And obviously Portland and Dallas aren't the only cities where sweeps have been ramped up. And of course you also have, oh gosh, I just ran across the article today that like there's discussion in certain cities about like, yeah, somewhere in Florida about like putting houseless people in like essentially an island compound and whatnot, like basically an encamp, like a concentration camp. Right. Yeah.

That's been also mentioned by people affiliated with like the Portland City Council and the mayor's office. Yes. Like essentially getting a concentrated collection of homeless people in one closed off area. And you're like, huh, I wonder what they mean by that. Yeah, it's unsettling. So I'm curious, because obviously I think what y'all are doing in Dallas right now is extremely important and you've been having a lot of success so far. I wanted to talk a little bit about how your organization, because we chatted with the John Brown Gun Club folks a couple of weeks ago about how they started organizing. How did Say It With Your Chest get off the ground? So that was interesting. Say It With Your Chest originally

started along with a lot of orgs and mutual aid orgs in Dallas after George Floyd was murdered back in June of like 2020. We started, I was in Plano at the time, which is like a suburb. That's where I grew up. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in Plano at the time and, you know, I, me and my friends were kind of like, these suburban people can turn off their TVs and not really have to worry about the protests going on downtown and things like that. So we would protest on street corners and just yell at, you know, white people in their Mercedes and, you know, make them uncomfortable on purpose. Then we started linking up with other mutual aid orgs in Dallas and, you know, was distributing food, trying to carry that stuff up North.

Um, and then, uh, then we, um, well, I started going to Camp Rhonda, um, which was like, uh, probably the first and like it was a very solid example of a self-sustaining houseless encampment where people were just allowed to be and left alone we're helping people a lot of them are in recovery and things like that and um everyone looked out for each other it was a really great community uh before this that was such a rad project um not to derail it too much but i want to tell you guys about camp ronda yeah like politically organized unhoused camp the organizers the outside organizers were there every day helping the camp itself was organized amongst themselves they had political theory meetings they had community meetings to solve issues and resolve interpersonal problems fucking rad um and it

stayed together for nine months it was it lasted for a minute i know it was a approximate it was over six i believe but yeah it lasted for a while at one location and then it had to move. And then the next location we ended up moving all the people to. They stayed there for a solid 10 months before the city sold the land in like some under the table deal and showed up and swept everybody. showed up and swept everybody. It reminds me quite a bit of a place I worked at in Seattle for a while, Nicholsville, which was a plot of land a couple of acres large where houseless people had set up, basically built like a tiny home village for themselves. They provided solar power. They had arranged their own like trash pickup. It was safe and very well organized and very comfortable, like an actual fairly high standard of living. Good level, like good good wastewater treatment and all that kind of stuff, which existed for a couple of years before the city came in and swept it and destroyed everybody's houses and forced them into, again, kind of a series of camping situations.

Yeah. you know, into, again, kind of a series of camping situations. Yeah. Yeah, which is, you know, you get these, it's very frustrating, because there's this understanding that, like, well, we want them in, and part of the understanding you get from a number of cities is, like, well, we do want them in one place, and we want them in something that's more permanent than, you know, a bunch of tents. But if they set that up on their own and have autonomy and have the ability to exist with any kind of personal freedom, then we don't want that. And we will send armed men in to break it up. Yeah. The city's like, oh, yeah, well,

I don't, I genuinely do not think the city of Dallas wants to house people. Otherwise, the Office of Homeless Solutions simply would not exist. And they wouldn't have a way to just have money sitting around. And all those people would lose their jobs, you know, because it's not housing people. You know, people are like, how do you do that? It's not hard. It's not difficult. The city is spending what two billion dollars on renovating the convention center that could house every houseless person in dallas for years you know but but then we wouldn't be able to have all of the wonderful things someone who lived in dallas 15 years i can one, maybe even two times when I went to the convention center,

what would we do? Yeah. I think maybe one time. Yeah. What's wrong with it to where we have like it's Dallas prioritizes developers over anything else. And that is more than apparent in how they treat the houseless population. They're definitely, because it's like my problem, right?

Okay, if the city is going to do sweeps, that's something that I can't really necessarily stop them from doing on my own. But we can mitigate and alleviate some of the effects of, you know. and alleviate some of the effects of you know um but when the city is sweeping people in the heat like this we're in the cold elderly disabled people it's like y'all really are just telling them to die yeah um and the least you could do and i've emailed marcy jackson who's the community outreach chair for OHS. And, you know, she's been like, well, they can go to the shelter. It's within three miles. And I'm like, you're going to walk three miles. You're telling somebody who is elderly and disabled to walk three miles in 107 degree heat to get to a cooling station that is only open to like five yeah well uh there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the city just for a little bit of reference too

because like we have cooling stations and stuff up in portland and you have similar problems one thing that is a benefit to folks in a place like oregon is after 5, 6 p.m. when like this cooling station start to cool down, it actually does cool down here. Like it gets cool at night, even when it's 100 outside. That doesn't happen in Dallas during the summer. No, it's 99 at night. Yeah, I've literally had it be triple digits at midnight in fucking Dallas, Texas. Like that's the place it is.

It doesn't cool down. No. So you're still, it's still a threat to life and limb even when the sun's not beating down on you yeah sometimes there's cooling shelters i know certainly like here we have a bunch of issues with shelters and cooling shelters and stuff like you don't have privacy you can't bring your pets they want you to lock all your possessions up somewhere else um there are like a number of other things that really limit people's ability to feel safe accessing i don't know if it's the same there but like it's not like there's

necessarily a place where someone would feel safe and they're not going there i just want to make that clear pets are a big issue and this is something that again when i was at nickelsville people would point out that like folks would accuse them of being like abusive because they had a cat or a dog you know know, that was living with them in the encampment. And they'd be like, well, number one, like it's okay for me to live this way, but it's not okay for like a cat or a dog to live this way. And also just like, do I not deserve companionship and love in my life? Like this is what this animal is one of the is one of the things that helps keep me. And I talked to a number of folks who got back into housing who

were like, if we had not had our cat with us, like, I don't know that we would have made it because just having that animal with us, like helped, like it's for the same reason everybody has animals, right? Every single houseless person that has a pet has a service animal, has a, that is a service animal as far as I'm concerned.

Would you separate somebody who is disabled from their wheelchair? Or would you separate somebody from their, like their service animal, their dog that they need, you know? And it's like, when you're out there, I know that a lot of people have dogs for comfort, but also dogs are protection. They are security in such a dangerous environment um where people are always you know like it's just it's just it is unfathomable how much trauma um goes into being houseless especially in Dallas in places like Dallas yeah um so I'd like to ask you a little bit so you have been is this kind of the first collaboration this last week or so that Say It With Your Chest has had with the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club? Had you guys been working together prior to this? umph work when um camp ronda first started uh back in 2020 um and we were collaborating on like getting people supplies um tents and things like that i would run laundry um with my org uh

and like yeah we were we just you know always collaborated to make sure like the people could get what they need if somebody had supplies someone was able to show up and we couldn't, you know, just working together, yeah. And I'm curious, could you kind of walk us through sort of how what you see is the benefit of having folks who are visibly armed for this kind of for these kind of actions? are visibly armed um for this kind of for these kind of actions like how did how did number one sweep defense tend to work before y'all were doing that and how has that altered kind of the way in which you're seeing the this activism like take effect um as far as i know, people from members of Elm Fork have always shown up with firearms in some capacity, whether it's concealed or open. But there was a noticeable difference with the open carry. I know that back in February when one of our other camps was getting swept and they showed up,

like afterwards, we had a meeting with the director of um homeless solutions christine crosley she sucks um and uh she was like people were like we were hearing reports of people that were openly armed and we want to we really care about the safety of like the unhoused residents out there. And I was like, they were more afraid of the cops than of the five people out here with, with rifles. And that's, that's something it's like, if you're going to show up with 12 dudes with guns,

what's the problem with some of us showing up with like a little something just in case you know the state should not be the only one to have access to firearms that is very dangerous but also i don't mean that in a two-way kind of way if that makes sense enough yeah that does kind of bring up an interesting point which is is if you're showing, as you're showing up kind of in this capacity with both activists to kind of help folks with their stuff, with laundry and other needs, but also people who are carrying AR-15s and wearing plate carriers, I imagine there's like a degree to which you are trying to give people a heads up before just so they don't be like, oh, suddenly there's folks with guns.

What's going on? Right? heads up before just so they don't be like, oh, suddenly there's folks with guns. What's going on? Right. Can you kind of walk us through the community outreach explaining sort of like how you how you actually go about letting people know what's going to be happening and stuff and what the folks showing up are doing? Well.

When it comes to sweeps and normally I focus a lot on just making sure the people are okay and defending them um when i i do not necessarily like ask for um work to show up with guns i'm just more like i assume if y'all are going to be there they are going to be sure um you know and sometimes there was usually the residents are like the residents have some of the residents have firearms themselves you know so they're like well aware um there are some cases where like people will get a little bit anxious about it and you know we kind of have to be like if you really don't want the guns here then that's fine we can move them but in the past with this track record like usually the city kind of backs off a little bit when they know that y'all are actually protected you know because

um the city is the city is a bully they really do like picking on people who the most vulnerable of us you know um and so lately the guns have been seeming to like have them back off a little bit i know when they pulled up like when elm fork pulled up and hopped out the car with the rifles all of the cops literally squatted up into like a little little i don't know pig circle and they started talking uh and they were genuinely like what do we do hold on i mean yeah yeah and it's i mean that's kind of the that's kind of the story as we're coming into it right now which is there was supposed to be a sweep. What is it? Five days ago now? Friday. Yeah, almost a week. And y'all have been showing up a couple of times in that period to help people get their

get things together and whatnot and get get moved, which is an important the fact that you're helping them kind of move and doing it more in kind of their own time frame as opposed to the city shows up and you've got to like grab what you can or lose everything, um, is important. Cause you're also, you're not just showing up with activists with guns and saying like the, the city, we're not going to let any, like no one's going to move. And we're like, we're, we're drawing a line in the sand, which is not, would not be a particularly safe call. I wouldn't think. Yeah. My, um, my my main priority out there because there's a lot of black and brown bodies out there yeah people is making sure we are safe and um even before this last one like a lot of us were concerned about the guns because like we didn't want things to escalate

yeah and we never know with police sometimes they get really excited and then sometimes they back off it's really uh uh we really don't know um so we were also taking that into consideration um and i was kind of like laying on fork now like listen there's a lot of black and brown people out here and we don't want to escalate anything and, you know, put people in danger. Um, and it seems like this time the city didn't really want to mess with that. So that's good, but it's always important to keep that in mind anytime you have firearms. Um, population. And I a vulnerable population. And I'm curious, Bubble, can you talk a little bit about how this kind of organizing

is sort of different than the stuff you've been doing at counter-protesting events? Like, what are kind of the different things that y'all are keeping in mind as you make action plans for days like this compared to when, you know, you're showing up at a protest to kind of counter groups of Proud Boys or whatever? Yeah, it's pretty different in that when we're

doing security for marches or protecting pride events, it's not like a direct confrontation with the government. So it's, it's a bit, it's a bit different. It's a little bit more high stakes. Um, when we do stop the sweep things, you know, we want to, we want to push back, but at the same, um, you know, not be the first to cross any lines. Um, so it is, you know, it is, it is a more sensitive situation. I think it requires different kinds of planning. And of course there's, there's all these bystanders, there's all the residents there who were there to help that we don't want to endanger in any way. Like Danny was saying, I actually had what ended up being a pretty cool conversation with a resident afterward. But he was kind of an organizer in the camp and he was talking to me and he said, you know, I don't think we want the guns,

like we don't want any trouble. And I leaned over to him and I whispered to him, look, we're just here with guns to try to get the cops to back off. I think they're actually backing off now because we had actually just heard the cops were going to leave. I said, I think they're backing off. We're gone. Don't worry about it. And he said, wait, wait, you know, don't leave yet. Wait till they leave. And now that that's a, I am interested, like as the, the actual folks showing up armed bubble, do you guys have kind of a like standard set of responses and stuff that you work through ahead of time to kind of explain things to people and make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of how they're doing it? Yeah, we have some of that worked out.

That's an evolving thing where we're trying to standardize. Yeah. Work long time with a core group of people that knows each other really well. So we have seen each other kind of standardizing those responses and, you know, Oh, okay. We went into it thinking like, this was a good idea. And it turned out that like, that doesn't work very well. So we've had to do this, like just things that have kind of, um, best practices that have kind of evolved over time doing this. Um, honestly, a lot of it, a lot, when, when tensions are really high like that, um, cause usually when it comes to sweeps, I'm the one kind of dealing with a lot of overseeing and stuff like that.

And when tensions are really high like that, honestly, the best thing is harm reduction. Harm reduction is at the pinnacle of, it's at the core of like whatever we do. Um, and part of that is meeting people where they're at, um, and making sure that we, um, help the people I show up. I, I shit you not. One of the best things that we started doing is showing up with packs of new ports on God. It makes it a lot, um, you know, when you're going through trauma like that, um, and someone hands you a cigarette, that's something that not only helps you kind of regulate yourself when you're experiencing this high stress situation where you're being evicted from

your home and you're going to lose your stuff and you're afraid people are going to steal things and it's a whole lot that helps bring people back and it makes it a lot easier for us to um work with people and um still maintain the bonds that we've created and maintain the levels of trust that we have with the community. Literally, simple things like handing out cigarettes during, because that's a way that we're like, hey, we're here for you. We know what you need. Yeah, and we're not, we're also, we're not here to, like, judge what's best for you, you know, and do some, like, nanny state shit. Like, you need a cigarette right now, right? Like, it's stressful. Yeah.

Not really, like, hell, I would need a cigarette right now right like it's stressful yeah not really like hell i would need a cigarette too you know at that point um there was somebody who was like you're asking people for newport you need to stop doing that like that's really unhealthy and i thought you were trying to save these people and it's like i'm not trying to say yeah for starters yeah um we're not captain america we're not no avengers okay we are regular people fulfilling a responsibility and that responsibility is to be there for our neighbors that's how movements happen that's how anything happens and all of that is rooted in you know indigenous um communalism and theory and stuff like that

that I think is really important, is just fulfilling that responsibility and being there for people. And when it comes to, because we always try to provide folks listening in other towns and stuff who may be inspired by this with options for how they might move forward on trying to replicate some of Yale's successes. If people are looking at, okay, I would like to help do sweep defensive, I would like to do, you know, work kind of like this in my own community. How do you recommend, because obviously there's, you know, how to build

organizations is another matter, but like, if you've got a group together to help folks, how do you recommend kind of starting the process of introducing yourself? Because you can't just like show up and be like, hey, like, certainly not with guns, but yeah. That's what cops do. And it doesn't work. You have to develop a really, really strong rapport with your community first. And you also need to make sure that it's your community. Like, community first. And you also need to make sure that it's your community. Like, you know, I, I spent a really long time curating relationships with the unhoused populations of South Dallas. And that took literal years, you know, expecting people to trust you off the bat and expecting people to just like be like oh you're one of the good guys it's not going to happen especially if you're white

like honestly if we be in if we keeping it a buck because like there's a whole lot of black and brown people out there in these vulnerable communities and usually the white people that they see are the white people who are talking down to them and not treating them as human beings the main thing that people the people out there need most is consistency from you. Even if you don't, even if one day you don't have anything and you can just hand out water there with them and developing community that way, you know, and one of the things that people tell me a lot is that just, it's been very shocking to me how much I've heard it is people are like,

you don't talk to us like how other people talk to us. You talk to us like we're people. And the sheer amount of time, I was really shocked by how many times I've actually heard that because I'm like, you know, I don't really think I talk much differently from anybody else. But then when I go out there and see other people, just random people handing out McGriddles or whatever, you know, there's definitely a switch. Like if you were talking to a pet or to a child, you know, like you pity something. People will not want you around because honestly they don't want your pity what they want is bottles of water you know if you're just only showing up when shit's going down um you don't actually have the people's trust and i think if anything that that hurts it a little bit

because it's like oh i am only here to make you feel good about yourself. You want to be the one saving everybody. It's like you got to dismantle your savior complex first before you do anything. And I think it's good to talk about kind of how this actually how these actions actually look on the ground, because, again, the thing that sort of has gone semi viral on Twitter has been the fact that like, you know, people with guns stood off the cops but if you're imagining some sort of like big armed standoff like that's not how this is looked which is the thing i liked about the dallas morning news article um which we will do you mean the article or the opinion piece sorry yes what's the title of the article

um i am pulling it up right now just to to have that we'll have it there's an opinion Sorry, yes. What's the title of the article? I am pulling it up right now just to have that. We'll have it later. There's an opinion piece already? Oh, anytime unhoused people pop up in the discourse, someone is ready to write. I can get up and go on the opinion piece. The article, Armed activists block Dallas workers from cleaning a homeless camp.

That's unacceptable opinion. That's, camp, that's an acceptable opinion. That's, yeah, that's not the one I was talking about. The one I'm talking about is titled, and it is a news article, Dallas Delays Moving Homeless Camp After Activists Show Up, which did a good job of not kind of overemphasizing the armed part and talking about the actual work y'all were doing in the community. I was kind of impressed with it, especially given the Dallas Morning News' most recent general trends, shall we say. And considering their opinion piece they published yesterday. Yeah, I hadn't seen that one. Could you talk a little bit about how these actions have actually looked on the ground during the day of?

Yeah, so on the ground, some people arrived very early and you really never know when the cops in the city are going to show up. So Elm Fork showed up close to nine and there were already like four cops there. And that, you know, that's unfortunate. We probably should have shown up earlier. We you know, if we're going to go to protect the other activists, you know, you don't want to leave the unarmed activists exposed to, um, police violence. activist for every armed activist and uh we discussed what to do some people decided to block off the streets with their vehicles um the cops were there for a solid hour and a half before homeless solution or yeah office of homeless solutions and code compliance started arriving of Homeless Solutions and Code Compliance started arriving. So by that time, a good number of armed activists were there and the cops had been discussing amongst themselves, you know, whatever it is that they were talking about. But when OHS and Code got there, they talked with the cops for

about 30 minutes and then they started leaving. During that time, the unarmed activists were packing things up, getting people ready to move if those people wanted to move. One thing to kind of go back a little bit, one thing that we've learned carrying is it's very difficult to do the same things that we were doing as unarmed activists. Um, you know, we, we don't really want to be carrying tents and stuff while also trying to negotiate, you know, having a rifle in our arms. So, uh, you know, there's kind of a division of labor there, but, uh, you know, before two hours had even passed, basically, the sweep was called off, the city and the cops left, and the mutual aid work continued throughout the rest of the day. people arrived uh around noon that was kind of the main switch out point and uh you know a lesser number of people but still a significant amount stayed there until four or five p.m. Whenever UMFORT comes with guns the main thing that I like to have them do is surveillance and be watching so that way we can focus on um having other actually help people, you know, and like have them

help them move and stuff. And the surveillance definitely helps because what happens when the cops leave and when the city leaves is that they'll still have people like watching and driving around and trying to surveil us. And so having more eyes on that situation and having them know like, yeah, we're still here is really helpful great um thank you uh did anybody else have additional questions to ask james you had one or two more things yeah i'm like i'm interested in maybe asking bubble this because i'm just looking at the pictures on the on the dallas morning news story um and credibly they didn't lead with a picture of you all sort of uh suited and booted full battle rattle, which I think is good on their part.

But how do you present an event like this? Right. Like, obviously, I think we should probably mention that, like, I'm guessing it's legal to open carry where you are. So you're not like immediately criming and therefore provoking a sort of violent confrontation with the police. immediately criming and therefore provoking a sort of violent confrontation with the police. Although obviously the police are always turning up armed and that always brings violence into the equation. But are you like masked? Are you full? Like this person I'm seeing is like masked helmet, goggles, plate carrier. Is that generally how you present or is that just left up to individuals i wonder um we try to be pretty uniform but it definitely varies by action i think the last time we came

out armed um we were not in um helmets and plate carriers um but you know everyone has one now and uh we discuss it beforehand we decided to go that way um we try not to park directly where we're going to get seen you know if all possible um because we do need to get out gear up you know walk over in all our stuff. But yeah, I think for a lot of actions now, including security, that's kind of been our go-to way of presenting. The full masks are very important. We've moved from medical style masks to balaclava style masks just to get more skin coverage protect our identities better yeah it makes sense um one other thing i just wanted to ask and perhaps like explain in in a context that might might not be relevant in texas i don't know um in california at least you need two proofs of address to own a firearm right um uh and if you're unhoused you might not have those and therefore people are alienated from what is theoretically their right

um whether you want to see that as a universal right or constitutional right uh is is that the case there or are these people able if they wanted to texas doesn't give a fuck no no texas you don't you don't have to file a 4473 to buy a gun in the state of Texas. My gun literally was just given to me by somebody. I didn't have to do a title transfer or nothing. Guns are so easy to get in Texas. It's actually really scary. If it's a private sale, you can basically do whatever you want.

Yeah. It is hard not to wind up owning a gun in the state of Texas. Easier than owning a place to stay. Definitely. Way easier. Yeah. What a country, man. You're not going to get a house.

Okay. Magnificent. Okay. Well, yeah. Not the case in other states. No. I guess too. No.

And nothing that we've said here should be taken as legal advice, to uh no and and nothing that we've said here should be taken as legal advice re how to protest or partake in armed activism because that can vary that varies wildly based on your zip code and everything we've talked about today is a massive series of felonies in a number of other parts of the united states like you're not you're not going to be providing sweep defense in new york city in this manner you know yeah yeah you do this where I live and Bortak will show up with a drone. Yeah. Into consideration. Yeah.

So take, obviously, I mean, that's a big part of what you're saying, though, is you have to take the situation on the ground. You have to take the situation with these people as individuals into, you can't just go in and impose, like, this is how we're going to do sweep defense. You have to go in there, like, being willing to learn and adapt because this is not, you know, your day to day life. And it is life for folks there. And you have to come in willing to learn and understand what they need rather than like what you think they need. Yeah.

We never know what the city is going to show up with each time. We never know what the city is going to show up with each time. Like the Monday sweep before this past one, it was all marshals. It wasn't even act like regular DPD. It was all marshals. They were ready to arrest. They had bulldozers and cranes and all types of shit. And that was also that was kind of awkward because Iting because I was like wow y'all are being mad aggressive this time I think we just pissed them off too much to the point where they were like

we have to be you know meaner about it I mean but we ain't been arrested yet so yeah fingers crossed I do want to I do want to mention one more thing I know we've talked about how this kind of pertains to Dallas and similar situations on increasing sweeps across the country in Portland. I think last month there was an episode on this show about a homeless encampment in Ohio. And in terms of similar stuff that has happened to kind of demonstrate this is a thing going on

all across the country, there was a really interesting situation in Boise, Idaho earlier this year that we may want to cover more in depth in the future. But in January, when it was freezing outside, protesters and homeless people launched an encampment in front of the Boise State Capitol to kind of both provide, you know, some type of shelter and community to help keep each other warm, but also in front of the Capitol as like a protest to demand access to shelter,

you know, while in the middle of like a pretty bad housing crisis and as it's freezing outside. while in the middle of a pretty bad housing crisis and as it's freezing outside. People at the camp faced a lot of basically nonstop harassment from the state, whether that's police or state police. They also faced a lot of problems from far-right militia groups. The Idaho Liberty Dogs showed up to harass people. There was, you know, militia showing up with guns. So you can see, like, another instance where something that, you know, another instance where armed community defense could be a part in trying to keep situations like that from not escalating if done properly. Obviously, if done improperly, that can escalate the situation. So it's up to, you know, you have to make sure that you're with people who you know, who you trust, and who are responsible.

But it's another instance of stuff like this happening. Antifascists and other activists were able to keep conflicts from these militia groups to be relatively low at the encampment. And after a few months, courts were trying to shut down the protest. That was unsuccessful because of certain laws around camping on capital grounds for protests. But after a few months, the protest was able to end, protests but after a few months the protest was able to end and the city is now been pushed by the protest to open up possibly hundreds of units of shelter in the near future so you see other instances of these types of protests that you know rely on a lot of like radical mutual aid

a lot of resistance to the state violence a lot of resistance to far-right violence of resistance to the state violence, a lot of resistance to far-right violence actually being semi-successful. So there's a lot of places to learn from in this type of thing around homeless encampments and countering state violence. Would recommend It's Going Down, has a lot of good coverage of the Boise, Idaho thing. So yeah, that's just a whole other angle to this sort of trend that we've been seeing the past year. in mind when you're moving in these spaces and doing this type of work is if your goal is to try and be like the guy you know uh that does way more harm than good and that's really important to keep in mind um and dismantling your savior complex is part of that um of course in that case

you know the houseless people uh residents were you know consenting to it and things like that but please do take into account the amount of danger that you are putting very the most vulnerable populations into um it is not necessarily a good idea or a morally okay idea to uh make houseless people into your people's army you know yeah that was not and i want to make sure that everybody you know listening is also well aware of like that is the wrong way to go about this the people's army should be people like us not the most vulnerable of us because they are already fighting very hard. So that means that's like, it's the same thing, like saying white people should be at the front lines protecting black and brown people during protests. It's the same exact concept. You protect the most vulnerable of the group. You do not make them, you know, your army and try to convert them

into something and be the leader of that either. That is that is not the way to go about that. Yeah. If you're if you're if you're entering into this relationship with the plan that like this is a way for us to build power for whatever end, as opposed to we're here to like help these people, then you're you're putting them second to whatever your political goals are, which is bad, broadly speaking. I mean, and I know, I know, at least in the case of the Idaho of in the Ohio encampment that we talked about earlier this month and the Idaho one as well, a large number of people who are like leading up that project and in prominent organization roles were houses,

people who were living at those camps. Like it is very important to have people who are like, you don't want to go in as someone with stable housing and be like, okay, I'm in charge of this thing now. No, it's like the people who are actually experiencing it need to be the like critical role in actually how it functions.

Yeah. And there we've had not we, but like there was somebody who tried to do that. And it definitely did more harm than good. Putting your political goals over just the people is always going to fail every single time. Yeah. Listen to the people.

If they're not leading it, don't do it. You know, like at that point, your only priority should be getting them what they need and defending them if necessary. Trying to lead stuff and, you know, have them putting them into more vulnerable situations than they're already at without like fully being transparent with people or, uh, being transparent with all the risks involved, you know, like it's, that's real grimy, real not okay, uh, behavior. Um, so that's just something I also want to caution people against. And all of that definitely roots back to dismantling your savior complex. And there's a lot of good um resources out there um for starting with that process if you have not already some of them are on your chest instagram

i'll just peek it out and follow us or something yeah yeah do you. Do you want to, I think, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm at out of questions personally. Do we want to, um, uh, end with kind of, yeah, how folks can follow you and stay in touch with what y'all are doing or potentially even support you? Yeah. Um, we are, uh, at say it with your chest DTX on Instagram. I also organize with the Dallas liberation movement, which is a bigger org that mobilizes across the 9,000 square miles of DFW. I run that with three of my good friends and organizers. And so you can follow us at Dallas liberation, MBMT on Instagram. Oh,

if you're willing, able and financially stable, throw us some cash, please. And listen to black women, listen to black and indigenous women. That's all I got. All right.

Bubble, did you have anything to add? I think it's important to have a diverse collection of groups. You know, Danny's a hero. She's out there almost every day. For Elm Fork, we do a lot of trainings. We do a lot of classes that take up our resources, but we have these longstanding relationships so that we can support each other when need be.

You know, take care of your. Take care of your spaces. Take care of your communities, like Danny said. Focus on the people in those spaces, whether that be unhoused people or your own organizers and activists. You got to keep things safe. It's hot out here. there's been a lot of stress and and conflicts and you always have to practice um restorative justice and and accountability um and you know just keep fighting keep keep loving each other

all right uh well that's gonna do it for everybody here at It Could Happen Here today. Yeah, go do something good. 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzone media.com slash sources thanks for listening you should probably keep your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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