It Could Happen Here - Mutual Aid Disaster Relief During Hurricane Ian

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

James and Gare sit down with Jimmy and Rain from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief  (@mutualaidrelief) to talk about rebuilding better after natural disasters with solidarity, not charity.  https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami?

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.

Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's a podcast about the world falling apart and people who are putting it back together. Today we're joined by Jimmy and Rain from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. They are helping to put back together some of the parts of the world that are acutely falling apart right now. My colleague Gare is here as well. Hi Gare. Hello. Hi. And yeah, we're going to get into it. We're going to talk about the response that Mutual Aid Disaster Relief have made to Hurricane Ian. We're going to talk about how we can solve these things without necessarily giving a bunch of money to the wrong people.

And people can help people in a way that is natural, organic and good for everyone. So, Jimmy and Rain, say hi. Hey, everybody. Hello. Hey. And can you explain to us a little bit, first of all, about what Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is and how it operates in these natural disasters? Sure. Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a people-powered disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. And we act as a Swiss army knife for the larger autonomous disaster response and mutual aid movements and work with affinity groups, local mutual aid groups,

and other disaster survivors to help form and foster a communal recovery. That sounds great. That's very inspiring. Can you explain maybe for listeners who aren't familiar exactly what mutual aid means in this context? Sure. Mutual aid is a voluntary, reciprocal, participatory exchange among equals. It's about sharing resources, but it's also about sharing power. I've spent a lot of my life in poverty, and I know that many people in the same experiences would rather not receive something than receive something with a downward gaze. If something costs us our dignity, it's not worth it. And so mutual aid is a way to share with each other, where we're sharing as equals, instead of a powerful giver of aid and a powerless receiver of aid. And it also has a dynamic of addressing the root causes of the need in the first place.

Okay. Yeah, that's really, that's a good description. Thank you very much. What you've done recently, right, is responded to Hurricane Ian, which most people I think will know hit Florida and I think the Carolinas after that. Can you take us through some of the work that you've been doing down there? Sure. A lot of what I've been involved in is supplies distribution. So we're every day loading up vehicles and doing mobile distribution to trailer parks to public housing uh apartments uh and other communities that are hit and historically you know left out of uh top-down uh relief models um and providing tarps uh water food other essentials that people need

yeah sure that's very important. What's the situation like we're now what, like we're 10 days out, something like that from when the hurricane first made landfall, is that right? I'm not sure exactly. Rayne, do you know? Yeah, no time. Time is not a thing when this is happening. It's just kind of like all the days go together or nights or both

yeah um yeah that's yeah that's totally fine so what's it um you know um in some places power is starting to get turned back on gas is easier to find uh than it was you know several days ago um but there's still um you know like a lot of need for solidarity based relief. There's, just like every disaster, there's many communities that are left behind. And it's the same communities that are left behind by the disaster of capitalism and colonialism and white supremacy. And so, you know, even though power is starting to get turned back on in some places, it's going to be months or years, you know, before people recover from this. Yeah, there's a lot of folks that are not, like Timmy's talking about,

there's folks that are renters who, you know, don't know what they're supposed to do with their with the apartment that they're in. The roof isaving in and if the landlord's not responding then what are they supposed to do so if there's folks on the ground they go in and they'll try to like help get the tarp up you know on the roof and things like that so that's usually the kind of stuff I'm involved with when I'm when it's happening more in my area but uh there's a lot of us that are working like remote as well to help support on the ground like doing comms and organizing supply lines through the autonomous supply line chain that we have. And just kind of trying to mobilize more affinity groups in the local areas like Food Not Bombs. Savannah Food Not Bombs came down and helped out and did a food share.

And so just trying to get everybody who's close by to be able to address the immediate needs and start planning for the long term because jimmy's right it's going to take years yeah that's really fascinating i think you're right that often like i think we should contrast actually that like that they sort of don't their large global non-profit model or the the service provider model that they contrast with this right which often kind of floods an area with resources, whether or not it needs them, and then withdraws kind of once attention has gone away and people are left to rebuild their lives kind of on their own, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Time and time again, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Maria, you know, rain, you know, and Louisiana has experienced a number of hurricanes, you know, in recent years. You know, time and time again, we learn over and over again that the state is not coming to save us. The market is not going to save us. The nonprofit industrial complex is not going to save us us we have to save each other we have to take care of each other from below yeah i think that's very true i remember like in i suppose 2018 when the last set of midterms came there was a large migrant caravan that came to tijuana which is just south of where i live

and there were a number of like these international nonprofits, but they weren't actually allowed to enter the area where these people were. So you had these people in a football stadium, and you had large nonprofits outside, and they'd cut off the water to the place where these people were because they wanted them to go somewhere else. And it was this bizarre scene where you had tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars of resources sitting outside. And then you had little children who hadn't had a drink of water that day sitting inside. And it was really illustrative to me of how these massive nonprofits can raise a shit ton of money and still completely fail people when they need help the most. So it's great that you guys are out there doing that. Can you take us through some of that?

You mentioned Hurricane Katrina, you mentioned being in New Orleans. Like, can you take us through some of the other natural disasters and how you've helped? Well, in 2016, when we first kind of got our paperwork official or whatever,

we had the flood in Baton Rouge, louisiana and it was one of the most historic floods since like the early 1900s and it barely made the news and there were several of the major floods that happened climate caused floods in the midwest that um summer that barely made the news and now people are starting to talk about it right starting to talk about climate change because it's inevitable every single disaster is, you know, just more and more frequency or higher intensity storm, more rainfall in a shorter amount of time. And so we had that flood and we hit the ground pretty much running, just doing lots of mucking and gutting and organizing a lot of folks coming up from Texas and South and like New Orleans area and, you know, east from Florida

all the way over Mississippi. And then, like Jimmy said, we just kept getting hit and hit. I can remember everything after that. I know there was Irma and we responded to Irma. We had national comms running, which was really cool. People were signing up for work shifts and helping out on the ground while people were running around and getting transportation and getting people out of places, delivering supplies, helping, you know, again, with tarping or like things that might have

happened to homes. And then we've had Maria. I went down to Puerto Rico for that and helped out with some of the solar and water issues there. And then we had Laura and Harvey. And I cannot even remember all of them at this point. Fiona, they just all they're all going to keep coming either into the Gulf or they're going to head along the East Coast because of the way that the climate has affected the currents and the surface water temperatures in the Gulf and the Atlantic. Yeah. And like you say, they're going to have a disproportionate impact on people who are already marginalized. What is it?

You were talking about people signing up for work. That's interesting. So do you, it seems like you're mostly a volunteer organization, do people who have special skills just go up to a website and say, hey, I'd like to help? Or how does that work? It happens in a lot of ways sometimes folks will reach out via the email on the website um or they'll reach out on one of the social media or they'll know somebody and be like hey i want to get involved um it's really grassroots some people are on the ground there's a lot of folks

that have gotten involved more long term because um you know there was a response on the ground there's a lot of folks that have gotten involved more long term because um you know there was a response on the ground in their area they kind of got into it just because that's you know what ends up happening when there's no one else around you rely on each other and you build that community it's kind of it's kind of just what happens yeah that makes sense so what's your sort of national do you have a sense of how many people, how many volunteers you have on a national, I'm guessing like 100 or 200. But then we're very participatory. And so when a disaster happens, you know, there's a lot more people involved, hundreds and thousands of people that participate in one way or another. And like in Louisiana, we've had a lot of different like DSA groups or SRA groups come out and help out like mobilize on the ground and kind of come out as affinity groups and do different jobs or help out with different homes.

And so really, it's just like it's a network of facilitating anyone who's interested in ensuring that all of us have what we need when we know the response is going to be slow from those that are supposed to be handling that, quote unquote. Right. And then you guys can connect people with skills or people with time to people who need help. Yeah. So really anybody who has an awesome skill of any kind or not is welcome. That's great. Yeah. Where can they find that? Do people do want to sign up? I guess the easiest way would be via, I don't know, Jimmy, you want to answer that?

I'm on the ground a lot. Check out our website, mutualaiddisasterrelief.org. And our email is mutualaiddisasterrelief at gmail.com. We're on all the social medias as well. And yeah, we love it when folks reach out to us and tell us how they want to be involved. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions,

sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio 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 tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

I wanted to ask you, there are obviously some other organizations who like maybe I won't name and you can if you want to, who have received a lot of national press for doing, helping people in times of disaster. And maybe you can explain why like some folks wouldn't necessarily be comfortable asking them for help or going to them if they needed help. you know, top down organizations, you know, they partner with, you know, uh, police or Homeland security or carceral institutions like that. There's, um, a shelter after, um, uh, when hurricane Michael hit the panhandle, um, you know, people, uh, who had warrants, you know, were, were signed into the shelter and then police came and scooped them up and, and brought them to, um, you know, to jails and to prisons. And, you know, so, you know, um, and also, you know, even with, with, you know, with those, you know, extreme situations aside, um, you know, the, uh, the top down approach is patronizing, it's stigmatizing, it can at some times provide the water, the food that people need, but oftentimes comes at too high of a cost.

And people long for a communal recovery that's how we heal from disasters like this from crises events is being part of you know a communal recovery where we're all able to pitch in and receive what we need and and give what we can yeah can you tell us can you give us an example of a communal recovery like that something that's happened somewhere where you guys have been able to assist a community or a community to be able to assist a family or an individual in recovering? Yeah. One example that I think is really representative of our approach is there's a family who was evicted illegally after a disaster. illegally, you know, after a disaster. And that, you know, single mom was looking after the other single moms, making sure they had, you know, fuel for, you know, their generators to, you know, to power their phone and different devices and that they had diapers and that they had, you know, what they needed to get by, even though, you know, they no longer had a roof over their head.

And so when mutual aid disaster relief comes across people like this, our resources are their resources. You know, so when we both local mutual aid groups, just the matriarch on the block who's taking care of, of the other folks on the block. Mutually disaster relief exists to, to share, you know, this, this network of supplies and labor and, you know, backup and support with, with efforts like that, that are spontaneous, that arise after every crisis okay that makes sense the last thing i really wanted to get to here was like as you mentioned right climate change is causing these natural disasters and the worse that things get than the worst that things get and like you guys have started this organization that helps people to help people. I'm wondering, A, how can people organize to help?

And B, how can people in communities organize to be more resilient in a time when natural disasters are becoming more and more commonplace? So one of the things that I think what Jimmy spoke to regarding like a matriarch on the block, building that community in advance and after, if it happens to just be after, which is kind of what happens a lot of times is when it's that forced. I don't want to say forced, but out of necessity, right? Like necessity is the mother of invention, right? And so there's these iterations of what community can become. And so there's these iterations of what community can become. Every time there's a disaster, there's like a clean slate and there's a vacuum in which something can be created because there may be nothing. And so if you can see an opportunity and if you have any kind of network on the ground or it spontaneously erupts, then that can be the new growth or the light or however you want to phrase it. But I think for the resiliency to happen, that solidarity in the long term is built from those networks on the ground, those people recognizing each other and seeing each other. And I think COVID is so interesting because people had become so nuclear and like isolated with technology and

then forced into these pods of technology and that was the only way people existed and then all of a sudden there was this need to be around people like people like no no I really want like human contact and so I think that kind of speaks to the reality of what we need to survive. And that's going to be through disasters, through pandemics. So building that, building a community garden, like saying hey to your neighbor, finding out who on your street is like an elder and maybe doesn't have anybody checking up on them, like knowing what is in your, what are the resources, whether it's people, whether it's a food bank, whether it's like a water fountain, like what are the resources, whether it's people, whether it's a food bank, whether it's like a water fountain, like what are the resources in your area and where can you spontaneously take over areas

when something happens? There's so many empty lots, different places that are, you know, really on the verge of being gentrified. And when something happens, if you can help really on the verge of being gentrified. And when something happens, if you can help in the areas where you can maybe take over a building that would help maintain that building for the persons who would otherwise be getting pushed out soon, right?

Like we've worked with people that allow us to set up school libraries, for example, in their areas while we're doing disaster response. And we help build that house or that community center or that school up while we're there and creating a community space for people to then run with that concept of what they wanted to build, like what they wanted to put there. The best way to prepare for disasters is ongoing mutual aid projects and groups and efforts. You

know, the more that we can connect with each other, those relationships and those connections, they're the groundwork for a vibrant people-powered disaster response. You got to know who's who. You got to know what people are able to do, wanting to do, you know, what are people's strengths. It really is about that resiliency, knowing who you can count on for something like who knows about, you know, wiring, who knows about plumbing, who knows about, you know, the streets, who knows the area the best, you who knows certain members in the community that are founders in the community that others will respond to or navigate or gravitate to i got you yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense that like i think it's really interesting to contrast this with the model of

like surviving natural disasters that we've seen portrayed so often especially on like tv shows like preppers right which is like i will sit on my own with a shit ton of ammunition and shoot anyone who comes after my ramen noodle castle but what are you gonna do with that when your supplies run out then what do you who are you gonna rely on all we have is each other we're not we're not i mean more power to the you know outlier individual out there that can literally do everything to themselves. But I just don't think that's humanity's function. We have much more when we share with each other than we have individually.

When we pool our resources together, we have enough for everybody. We take what is in our cabinets, you know, as far as food or supplies, we take what's in our medicine cabinets, we make it a liberated communal space and supplies and, and very quickly things snowball and a small first aid station becomes a wellness center or a clinic. And that's the power of sharing with each other and building alternative infrastructure together. And the alternative infrastructure for me

is really important too. I think for us to be resilient, we have to teach each other the skills. We have to start learning the ways in which we will be able to actually build back the way we want the way we foresee our communities to be whatever that looks like but we need those skills if we are going to divest if we are going to have autonomy yeah i really like that model of thinking of your natural disaster as like an opportunity to rebuild in a more equal way, rather than thinking of it as the thing which just has knocked down the amount of stuff you've accumulated or whatever.

Instead, seeing it as an opportunity is really positive. It is an opportunity to reevaluate. It's an opportunity to see each other, to see your neighbor. It's an opportunity to be more sustainable in the rebuild, which is the thing that I really struggle with in a lot of responses, is just the dependency on the existing supply chains and the existing methods of transportation. That also needs to be addressed for resiliency in the future. There's got to be an entire rebuild

of how we respond in some ways in general if we're gonna divest the way we want no i think that's the sustainability thing it's just reminded me of something which like for whatever reason i bought one back last time i was somewhere but uh people can't see this being an audio podcast but uh one of the things you'll often see in natural disasters is these things that are called humanitarian daily rations and it's like a it's like an mre and it comes in a pink packet and everything else comes in a packet and like it's within like two days and obviously this is a time when like it's sort of systems for disposing of rubbish have been overwhelmed within two days these things and the foil packets and little brown spoons are fucking everywhere and it's just it always

strikes me as so sad that like we've taken this time when people are in crisis and we've made it a time when also their their environment is in crisis now as well yeah and so a lot and that's one of the things i struggle with um with water as well water is kind of like my thing. I know the irony, but whenever there's a response, there's a heavy dependency on bottled water and there's other alternatives, but it would require a little bit of advanced skill training, a little bit of advanced infrastructure development, but that response could be prepared in advance. And I think in some cases, there's communities, especially in the Gulf South, where that advance thinking about it's going to happen, right? It's going to happen here, right? It's going to happen everywhere in the Gulf Coast, and it's going to keep going up and up and whether it's a fire, whether it's a hurricane, whether it's a massive tornado, whether it's a drought and a food shortage or a pandemic. but cooperation Jackson is thinking about building their own water infrastructure so that they are not going to be dependent on just municipal water, which is, yeah. I mean, why not? Even if it's small scale,

why not start developing community owned microgrids, water treatment facilities? Why is it just capital, large capital? Like Jimmy said, we're stronger together. So if we pull together in these communities just like old school CSAs, we can do that. Then we can essentially, it's another opportunity to invest, to build it ourselves.

We can do it before, we could do it after. But I think for resiliency, for me, finding ways around those existing models and supply lines is critical to avoid the gap in the disaster and the response. Yeah. Talk us through a community-owned water, a sustainable water project like that like

what does that look like what are the what are the components of it it would so that's fabulous question um but it's also one that i personally can't answer i can because i'm not the entire community so there's so many questions that are involved with that like who's gonna who's committing to maintain it financially, operationally, maintenance-wise? You know, how many people is it going to be used by? How frequently is it intended for all the time use for just as a response and a backup? So there's a lot of things that are involved there.

And also financial structures. There's so many different ways that that can get set up. And like Jimmy knows, I do not like to involve myself with money aspects. I'm just straight hammers and like, you know, solar. But there's a lot of good examples of community-owned microgrids for solar. And that's really the,

I don't know that there's that many, especially in the US, community-owned water systems. But if you look internationally, that is likely different. Yeah. But as far as solar, that's a pretty common thing. Yeah, don't go too far back. And there's a lot of diversity. Well, there's a lot of different ways microgrids can get set up and who could own it.

So, again, it depends on the scale, right? Like who's going to fund the operation at the beginning, if you have a few angel donors that want to do it, or if you have a community that's willing to pitch in an equal amount per person, you know, and how much they want to use for it. So you'd calculate how much you need for each person's use, you know, what's the distribution area, how many panels do you need, and how are you going to get it to everybody? Are they going to have battery banks for autonomous use?

Or are they going to be like tied in? So there's, it's a lot of models that you could do as far as the money goes. Just before Hurricane Ian, Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico, and it wiped out, you know, for a time, the whole island's power grid. But the autonomous off grid solar infrastructure that was built up at the Central Rose de Apoyo Mutual, the mutual aid centers across the island, stayed, the light stayed on. And they were able to continue powering their communities, uh, through autonomous infrastructure infrastructure. Oh yeah.

That's really cool. I know some indigenous nations in, uh, on the west coast certainly have their own micro grids as well. Nice. Yeah. It's a smaller scale. Like how many people are in the communities? Right.

Yeah. The smallish scale, i think like maybe a few hundred maybe a couple thousand something like that that's good yeah it's an area of interest i know for other indigenous people for very obvious reasons right um but yeah that's really cool if someone was interested in that like let's say i'm at home with my community and i hear this and i'm like hell yeah that's what i want to do. Can they reach out to you and be like, hey, help me join together these 15 Prius car batteries? Or would you be able to help them with the planning stages of that?

Or is that beyond the scope of your work? So my main area of knowledge is around water. And I dabble with solar a lot but um there are a lot of folks in the network who have insane skills like we have people working on all kinds of projects so many cool things so i would say yeah reach out um because that's kind of what the network is it is a lot of really cool people trying to just make positive change with super awesome skills. A lot of folks have pretty cool skills. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows,

presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. 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. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore We'll see you next time. Now on the iHeartRadio 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 tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. yeah in the beginning of this interview you mentioned how you felt like times just kind of slowed down or like it's all kind of blurred into one um is that like a common feeling whenever these things happen and people are on the ground, the type of otherworldliness or how everything feels so stretched out? How does that kind of like what's your experiences with with that feeling? Yeah, I think that feeling is partly trauma, right? There's a lot of trauma associated with the work. And, you know, those conversations happen a lot.

And it's really, I mean, personally, I won't speak for everybody, obviously, but personally, I find a lot of support just in our collective network. Everybody's, I feel really focused on the same thing. So I personally gain strength from that but I think there is a lot of I feel like you can get a lot of hopelessness sometimes right like when you start to see the the long-term need and the fading of the spotlight because the next disaster happens and I mean there's literally still people in banruj who still have houses that haven't been fully rebuilt and that was from the

2016 flood and there's still places that don't have electricity in puerto rico right now and it's been like you know i don't know what over a month so you know flint Michigan, just like name a thing. Right. So I think my, my, I don't think I could do this work without the support of other people who do this work, who have that same feeling, who experienced that. And the time, the time warp, I think is partly for me again partly exhaustion partly trauma um partly um like excitement there is so much excitement right seeing seeing and seeing the love like I don't want to make it sound all bad like there's like beautiful moments every day with the love that you have on the ground with everybody. And so, yeah, go for it. Often, you know, Dorothy Day after the San Francisco earthquake over a century ago said,

while the crisis lasted, people loved one another. And what oftentimes we experience after a major crisis or disaster is that our lives before were disastrous. You know, that capitalism and colonialism and the isolation and alienation and the meaninglessness, drudgery of the work and selling ourselves to the highest bidder so that we can survive, you know, all that is an ongoing invisible disaster and in in the moment where the uh the ruins are around us and we see them you know we we come together in a way that

that draws on on on that feeling of solidarity and love and and those those ideas of a better world that we that we protest for that we march on the streets for that we you know envision coming you know sometime in the future in a microcosm they exist here and now in in these local pockets of people taking care of each other against all odds that's true yeah i think that's really that's really well put like it's sort of it made me reflect on like i've reported from and worked in uh lots of natural disasters and like that time when the like alienation boredom and despair that you associate with sort of everyday drudgery under capitalism goes away and you have a purpose and everyone's working together and you're not also on like twitter.com all the time it's very and then time stretches and at

same time compresses it's it's very addictive in a sense like it feels wonderful and hopeful and then it's the feeling that an uprising tries to replicate it's it's it's this moment of peak experience that makes you it forces you to fall out of the kind of the drudgery of collapsing capitalist infrastructure and you're forced to actually live around people and it's the weirdest feeling and it happens when horrible things happen like like disasters, like wildfires, hurricanes. People getting shot. People getting shot, yeah. It happens in the moment of national uprising as well.

It's the same function. And for a brief moment, you're able to actually live the things that you preach. And you're able to see them get applied in the world i think a lot of us getting away from that just being a peak right and having to come back down because i really hate that is to build that resiliency right to to create it so that the lights don't go out and we just keep rolling and if they do go out you know we've got a backup plan like you know there's a wood burning stove and we make some pizza i don't know but you know i think yeah the the peak shouldn't be a peak there should be just a shift right so how do yeah so how do we how do we keep that right how do we rebuild and keep that momentum that that that net

for each other yeah it's i think you got the question that's yeah yeah yeah that's someone calling yeah i think uh lennon had an answer to that, and it did not work out the best. Well, so did Kropotkin. Yeah, and we're still here. Yeah, here we are listening to a podcast. But yeah, I think that was wonderful. I really enjoyed that. I think your point, just to close out that discussion about how you guys have a network that supports people,

some of the most profound depression i've experienced has been not like directly around disasters or conflict but coming home and feeling useless so i think that like checking in on people and and continuing to feel like you're pushing in a positive direction like more people will experience a natural disaster after listening to this and have done before listening to this and next year will be bigger than this year and it will get worse until fuck knows uh but like you will feel elated and that's okay and you will feel devastated and that's okay and checking it on people is super duper important and uh speaking of that network and making connections uh where can people find and support the work that uh y'all do all right jimmy that's you

people can go to mutual aid disaster relief.org or on facebook twitter instagram mutual aid disaster relief on twitter it's mutual aid relief and our email is mutual aid disaster relief at gmail.com uh we'd love uh for more people to join this movement, both Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, their local Mutual Aid project, and other similar efforts. Or start one.

Yeah, that's a question we get a lot. It's like, oh, you guys talk about mutual aid and stuff, but there's really nothing in my area. I don't know what there's to do. Like, okay, well, maybe there's really nothing in my area. I don't know what there's to do. Like, okay, well, maybe there's someone that could fix that problem. I mean, do you have any resources to help people kind of figure out how they would? Absolutely.

On our website, mutualaiddisasterrelief.org, there's a resources tab. And one of the sections is mutual aid about, you know, diving into the subject of what is mutual aid and how to form a group or a project and other resources along those lines. We also have a newly formed mutual aid toolkit, relief toolkit that's on our website. So if there are local mutual aid groups, this is a public forum. So there's a big, bold, like warning about it not being public for intention. We have our own, obviously, like internal threads. But this is more like for folks who maybe haven't ever plugged into mutual aid before, like being able to see where's all the different mutual aid projects and what they're doing. So again, we talk about the resiliency. So

this is kind of our attempt to be able to map for each other a way where we can see where everyone is that's interested in responding and doing what they're doing. So if it's a funeral bonds group or like whatever your mutual aid thing is that you're doing, if you want to join on to that um that's a fun way to see who might be in your area if everybody starts filling it out fantastic well thank you so much for taking time out of the stretched out amorphous concept of linear progression of time to talk with us about the fantastic work that you are all a part of. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly

at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny 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. Apple Podcasts, or help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of

Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything.