It Could Happen Here - Rural Organizing Part 1 Ft. Andrew and Black Flower Collective

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Andrew and Mia talk with two members of the Black Flower Collective about organizing in rural communities and the conditions that make it different from urban organizing.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. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. Once again, hosted by myself, Andrew, as we talk about whatever. Today we have two special guests, Sprout and Sherian from the Black Flower Collective,

and they're here to talk to us about the dichotomy between urban and rural political organizing. I mean, as we can all recognize in this day and age, being politically active is incredibly important. There are a lot of vulnerabilities that we are all facing under this intersection of systems. And we are looking for ways to get out. But it can be difficult to navigate, especially when you don't know exactly where to begin. That's part of the focus of my channel.

And it's also something that these folks are here to talk to us about. But before we delve too deeply into the meat of that discussion, let's begin with a quick introduction. You know, who is Black Flower Collective? How did you all begin? And what are some of your goals as a group? Hey, this is Sprout. And we got started organizing with the Black Flower Collective through previous organizing projects here in Aberdeen, Washington, such as the Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network. That collective got started after the Black Lives Matter rebellion in so-called Seattle and was started by feeding the movement out there in Capitol Hill and Chaz

and then brought that organizing effort back to the community to start a Food Not Bombs here in town. Through those meetings and relationships that we formed, we got to know the local homeless in town and started getting to know their needs as we tried to fill them with our mutual aid efforts. And out of those conversations over meals, we learned that one of the biggest needs was some sort of home base where people like us trying to support the community could come together and cook other types of organizations or collectives is imperative because we face a lot of backlash from the reactionary politics around our town being in the kind of the heart of Trump land and the type of people that show up in the big city protests to mow people down with their trucks and whatnot. Right. And how has that affected your outreach efforts? What'd you see? Thankfully,

not too harshly, but we've definitely had some scary situations. Uh, there was one, uh, time at the, uh, homeless camp. We were told about by the campers there where somebody had tried to like run

down a tent, uh, that somebody was sleeping, sleeping in. And they made to like run down a tent uh that somebody was sleeping and they managed to like jump out uh that like you know before they got hit and they jumped out of the truck and was like waving of a like a police baton or some sort of like a stick or something or something around threatening people somebody got like a bigger stick which prompted them to get in their car and start waving a pull out a pistol and start waving that around before they end up driving off yeah sometimes when we get new volunteers there can be a bit of hesitance from people to like you know take food or supplies because there's a bit of a relationship that needs forming there

of trust because of those actions of right-wing actors in town. So it's kind of like, you know, what is, why are you out here feeding? So there's a bit of hesitance there, but once they realize they're with our group, we've established enough of a reputation that, you know, that name drop is usually enough to reestablish that trust. Right, but it's good that you'll have somewhat established yourselves, you know locally and built up a reputation would you say that that has been one of your major goals as a group to

build that trust in in the community and where you'll see you see that trust go in from where it is now i've always seen that personally as our only asset we don't have a lot of money obviously we're not funded by anyone so all we really have is our reputation in the community. And in the wider community, our reputation has led to some of that backlash that Sherry Ann was talking about. But within the actual unhoused community, we have a reputation of doing whatever we can to help people and always showing up

consistently and you know always being willing to go the extra mile when someone needs something in crisis that's fantastic that's fantastic so having had some experience with um like you mentioned, working in the various movements that were happening in 2020, what would you say are some of the major differences that you've noticed between organizing in major cities and in urban areas compared to rural political organizing? Well, I'd say the majority of the issues we've noticed depend on the material conditions of the town that we're in.

Being a small and rural area, there's a lot more poverty here. And so those material conditions lead to a lot of differences between urban and rural areas i found before coming to the area i was involved with uh occupy oakland back in the day so i had a bit more of a running with the larger city larger city's way of doing things uh what about you sherry Well, I've grown up here in this town my whole life and haven't really left outside of it all too much. This type of organizing is always something I heard about more so through

rumors than anything else versus actually seeing people on the ground and doing things. Once we got our Food Not Bombs chapter started during 2020, it opened kind of just a new world for not just myself, but a lot of people around here.

Right. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since 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. So one major difference that we've noticed that is the dichotomy of electoral politics in the town. Most of the opposition that we've faced has not been from the city, but from grassroots initiatives. grassroots initiatives. And so some of those people over the course of the last two years have taken positions on city council, but the police that they control are still

demonstrating an unwillingness to attack their own community in the way that far-right politicians would want them to. Yeah, so take the police that show up in big city protests or whatnot. They'll bring in police stations from all surrounding areas, people who aren't familiar with the community who, you know, it's just a job to them, which helps sever their connection to that area. While here, it's the same people dealing with the same people every day.

And in the minds of police, it does create a sense of community in their mind that makes them a little more reluctant to use the type of violent force that we see in the bigger cities. And it's not to say that force isn't present and doesn't happen here but it definitely doesn't happen on the frequency if i could run back a second by the way this is mia i'm also on this episode um yeah if i could if i could walk back a second ask about something when when you say that most of the resistance uh to what you've been doing

is from grassroots movements is that like like are you talking about grassroots right-wing political movements? Are you talking about NGOs opposing you? No. We have a local grassroots right-wing initiative in town that's been the main brunt of our little group's opposition. And they have, like I said, they have run and won a few city council seats since then, but it started as a grassroots clean up the trash sort of campaign. Yeah, you can still find their page on Facebook. It's Save Our Aberdeen. Oh, God. Save Our Aberdeen, please. Soap.

And they got like little soap bubbles and whatnot, and they're here to Aberdeen. Oh, God. Save our Aberdeen, please. Soap. They got little soap bubbles and whatnot, and they're here to clean up the city streets. Oh, boy. I don't think they're talking about the trash. Not trash as we would define it. Yeah, so this is a place where right-wing anti-homeless stuff

has been their main way to build organization. Yeah. It's a, it's a huge, I mean, I don't really even know Sherry and like what other talking points do they have other than the homeless?

Everything centers around the homeless, even stuff that has to do with like businesses in town and local economics that gets blamed on the homeless, you know, everything gets blamed on the homeless. So it really all goes back to that. Yeah, they are the scapegoat for every problem that the city council faces. Or not just the city council, but businesses. You run a shitty business,

it's the homeless' fault I don't have customers. It has nothing to do with the fact that I haven't sold anything in years and this is just a hobby shop for me because i got a fat inheritance but yeah i'm talking about you all that glitters oh we call the names now so you speak you spoke about how this um right-wing movement has picked up some steam and won some seats in the city council. balance their goals with the uh trust they need to build with the broader public with the uh perception that the public has of them and how they're trying to shape that perception so how would you say that uh the public of Aberdeen views the right-wing initiatives the soap movement as uh you're referencing and how do you think that they have tended to view black flow collective well i think a lot of people um feel scared to voice their opinions if they're on the left in town but we do get a lot of support

for the mutual aid that we do the uh the base of the other the right-wing movement in town is pretty strong and you know i don't see them drawing in a whole lot of new people because of their extreme nature I don't see them drawing in a whole lot of new people because of their extreme nature and their tendency towards conspiracies. But they do have quite a substantial base that whatever they say, they're going to agree with and they're going to go along with. Take, for example, here about a year or two ago, I think it was November of 2021 or August. There was a big anti-trans rally outside of a Star Wars shop here in town that, yeah, they had to bring in a bunch of Proud Boys from, you know, out of town and like fill their numbers from outside, you uh with outside uh help and whatnot while chanting about how antifa was coming from seattle to burn the shop down and kill the shop owner and all this and all this stuff they had the guy during the whole protest they gave him like a

bulletproof vest that he's like walking around did they brought Matt Walsh to fucking town. It was a mess. Wow. Yeah, it's really a classic example of pot meat katsuo with a lot of their rhetoric, in my experience. I think the majority

of the public, though, does care about the issues that the homeless are facing and the fallout issues from that. But it's kind of this tug back and forth between us telling them what's really going on on the streets and the stories of people down at camp. camp and this other more right-wing tendency to just blame things on the homeless and take the simple route of saying, if we just get rid of these homeless people, then our problems will be solved. And local efforts to gentrify the area with the influx of Terry Emmert, a right-wing capitalist who's bought up like 60 properties in town recently. And as well as just the local media landscape in town has a right-wing tinge to it. I mean, where we're at, everything has a right-wing tinge to it.

But so it's hard because there's not a lot of voices, even though there is a lot of sentiment of caring about the homeless, there's not a lot of voices that are actually telling the truth of what's going on on the streets. verbatim by the papers in town it leads to a lot of people forming conclusions based on faulty facts and so they might think oh the homeless did this the homeless did that and we go into the comment sections every time and push back and say you know actually this is what happened and it's actually a lot of times that we get people you you know, opening their eyes and saying, oh, I didn't know that, you know, it's not always just the standard dig your heels in sort of thing that you see on social media because it is a sort of smaller town. Right.

Everyone kind of knows everybody. Yeah. There's a bit more accountability in that sense. If you're going to spout off online, it's likely that all your members are going to know about it. You have to face the person and the grocery line afterwards and stuff. Not only that, but it makes for organizing in general anonymity a lot different of a tactic in how you use it. Because, like, say in the big city, you're constantly surrounded by security cameras everywhere you go. You're constantly being monitored, watched, or whatnot. But it's a lot easier just disappearing the crowd.

Just another face. You can go out, spray paint, ditch, not a big deal. In a place like here in aberdeen for example but like i could mask up and do everything um you know i can but if i get known in any kind of sense of the way if i go out and you know spray paint a wall it's like oh there goes sherry and you know spray painted walls again. Yeah. And once, once you are doxxed or identified,

it's really hard to undo that and just sort of reanonymize yourself. So we've taken anonymity and our, our security

in that aspect very seriously from the get-go. A couple people in our organization who didn't have faced, you know,

public harassment and stalking so yeah it is a big deal so you've managed to maintain a level of anonymity uh despite aldrich affleck's in a small town yes well to a large degree to a large degree okay there's different people in our group uh you know it's not like our group has rules about it. So some people use their real names, some people don't. Um, but those who are concerned about it have been able to, although it's, it's difficult. And, you know, once that, once that identification comes, you know, it's pretty much, uh,

games up. Right. It also kind of has affected our recruitment in the sense that people on the outside looking in may see what we're doing as more dangerous than it actually is because of those security concerns

and they might be scared of retaliation and not want to participate because of that. So we have taken to kind of reducing the fire in our online social medias for some of that mutual aid stuff so that we don't get as much of the backlash on those accounts. on those accounts and we found that it's helpful to have uh ancillary groups that can go and do more autonomous stuff if we need stuff done that or said that is uh gonna create more backlash right so sort of different layers of the organization i remember the afrofuturist abolitionists the americas uh one of the statements they had put out they were

they had used the term move like mycorrhizae in the sense of having different levels of network in place like the above ground level of more visible public facing action whereas you have

that sort of underground fungal network of anonymous and probably more risky action taking place? Yeah, because we have to sort of maintain a certain level of goodwill in town for certain sides of our organizing. Like the police, for example, they're always down at camp. And so having an amicable relationship with them is advantageous in certain scenarios. So yeah, splitting apart roles, I would say. One role being the public-facing side of things, and one role being the more private, autonomous group. 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 Sonora. 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. 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. And how would you say you're talking about your semi-amic couple relationship with the police? How has that been sort of set up you know uh what's the basis of that well as we were mentioning the uh the the structure of policing is a little bit

different since the police in an area small like this is going to hire locally as opposed to in large metropolis areas you generally see police departments in big cities hiring from the suburbs surrounding the area which leads to sort of like a foreign occupation feel uh that's definitely the feeling that i got when i was doing stuff in oakland was that the Oakland Police Department was not made up of anyone who lived in Oakland. They were coming from the surrounding suburbs that were much more affluent and removed from the problems of Oakland, and they were just there to occupy by force. to occupy by force. And so we get more like the Andy Griffith feel out here, where it's like

the cops are the good guys who's helping grandma cross the road and will carry your groceries up the stairs for you and that kind of stuff. At least that's more the public perception anyway.

They also have a small tank and conduct all sorts of drug raids. Right, there's that constant dichotomy. Like, yeah, we're helping you, you know, we're walking you down the road and carrying your groceries in your house for you. But then also... But because of the small town aspects of it, though, being able to like a play on their wanting, you know, for the ones who do want to help but are misguided because they're cops, ACAB. But for the ones who are trying to help, who aren't like specifically going out trying to fuck over homeless people besides their jobs, you know, ones who occasionally go out and buy stuff of their own money or whatever to like help so whatever they'll kind of like rely on us to deal with that side of the population so they don't have to waste their time dealing with the homeless is how and which is allows us to deal with more of the problems in the homeless community in-house versus having to

get the police involved. Right. Because, you know, the police aren't really trained or capable of resolving those kind of issues. For example, like my father, for example, he was in and out of prison his whole life. And after I was born and he got out of prison that last time, he had a moment where he's gonna get ready to have a relapse right uh he went to his dealer's house you know he's there he bought his eight ball he's sitting there you know getting ready to do his thing and there's a knock at the door and they open it up and it's police they're they got a warrant for the dealer they're raiding the house and this one cop you know pulls my dad aside because he knows if the other cop sees him he's going to send him straight to prison and he's like you know hey you know what are you doing here

man and whatever possessed my dad to do it he's like i just want to go home he put the eight ball in that dude's hand and cops kind of looked at him was like just just get the fuck out of here just go because he knew if the other cop you know saw, he would have sent him to prison right then. And again, ACAB, this is the best story you're ever going to hear. It's the best story if a cop is a cop not being a cop, pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Every time.

But you definitely get more of that here, though, that they're advant advantage to take over yeah and we have a certain uh people in our group that can liaison better than others with the police and so we've used that to our advantage as well uh they've largely ignored i want to say the police not the city the city wants to stop us. It's like their undying wish, apparently. But the police have largely ignored or shown tacit support for our efforts, because they're members of the community. And they, at least the older crop of officers, have been working these streets and seeing the same homeless individuals for, in some cases, longer than I've been allowed.

So, you know, there are relationships there, even if it's one mediated by that position of being a police officer. When you see someone struggling for that long, you know, it's hard not to be empathetic as a human. And so we've been seeing a bit of a shift now that all those officers are starting to retire and we're getting a new crop of younger, more gung-ho police because who would sign up to be

a police officer in 2023, you know, other than people who have something going on. Some very distinct politics for sure. Yeah. But for a while there, it was this, you know, that sort of old crop of police officers who had built relationships in the community and had that public image of being the helpful peace officer, as it were, which makes it hard to push back when you're a group that's trying to advance, you know, abolitionist thinking and anti-cop sentiments.

When they are beating people with batons, it's easy for your community to look at that and be like, okay, these guys are clearly the enemy. But when they're just, you're just helping grandma across the street, it's a lot harder to make those arguments. So that's been one aspect that has made things difficult for us. And another dichotomy in just the list of these in-the-mirror differences between the conditions around organizing in a small town rural area versus big urban cities

such as say seattle yeah but despite all of their health helpful nature there they are enforcing local ordinances that criminalize the unhoused despite the ruling out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Martin v. Boise that says it's unconstitutional to do so. So even with no alternative shelter available this year, we have zero cold weather shelters in Aberdeen. They're still out there sweeping people and telling them, hey, you've got to move along when the maps handed out by the city say specifically you can sleep here and you can camp here as long as you leave enough space for pedestrians to get by you can set up on the sidewalks and yet they move along every day yeah as you're talking about you know the different dichotomy is that you face between urban and rural political organizing i would imagine that uh population is certainly uh an issue that you

that you might have to face as you know an organization trying to make a change in a small space uh have you found it challenging to build your base and you know get connections and stuff going? Yeah, for certain. As we said, there's already the issues of us having a more reactionary-based politics in a lot of our population, and that's scaring what allies that we do have here. So it's definitely resulted in us having to do the best we can to network outside as much as possible yeah there's

not a really wide base of radicals to pull from so we have to work with a bit wider ranging group of folks out here although it has always shocked me how many people are willing to get involved in in radical organizing here in town um you know i think the smaller group size has led to a need for more connection and more listening in our decision making processes which has been nice i think we've gotten really good at operating as a small tight-knit group which may be organizers in larger areas where where groups are larger uh have to deal with a little bit differently. You know, there's also the difference in terms of where we socialize. In places like Aberdeen, there's nothing to do in terms of social gatherings.

There's no center of socialization in town. The only thing that we did have was the mall, which has been closed for a couple of years now. So there's not a lot to do in terms of activities. And there's also just not a lot of space, like physical space in which to gather as a community. That's why we are currently serving our Food Not Bomb meals under a bridge because the city has removed all covered

areas in one of the most rainy areas in the country. Yeah, when I go to Seattle, for example, I could walk into any business, any doorway, just about any street pole and see flyer after flyer after flyer for this event, this concert, this group's doing this, these classes are taking place, etc. They straight up have a law against putting anything on the poles in town, let alone there actually being any events happening worth using the poles in the first place. Right. I would imagine

that part of your aims as a collective would be to find ways to bring the community together through those sorts of social events informal and formal. For sure. And that's definitely a big part of our goal with the Blackflower Project

is to create a sort of social center, a place for the community to come for various reasons and experience whatever they might discover. So it sounds like you'll have a good lay of the land in terms of what is happening in the town and what sort of movements you want to be making. In the next part of this episode,

you can join myself and Mia and Sherian and Sprout as we discuss the actions that Blackfell Collective plans on taking in their community and what sort of material conditions they've continued to have to navigate in this space until then I'm Andrew

of the YouTube channel Andrewism you can find me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew and support on Patreon.com slash St. Drew and you can also check out Blackfell Coll Drew and support on patreon.com slash St. Drew and you can also check out Blackflower Collective

and support their work yeah you can find us at linktree backslash blackflower LLC

or blackflower collective dot no blogs dot org you can also find our

content at at linktree backslash AL 1312 where you can find our podcast maltov now and a bunch of our other projects by sabo media thanks a lot guys it could happen here as a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzoneemedia.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. lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me danny trails and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lord of latin america listen to nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast