It Could Happen Here - Still Don't Panic: An Election Response

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

The Cool Zone crew sit down to discuss where we go from here and how we can prepare for Trump’s second administration between now and January.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get

real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. 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. 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. Cool Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. On today's episode, we have Robert Evans, Harrison Davis, Mia Wong, James Stout, Margaret Kildroy, and I'm Sophie Lichterman. This is the post-election episode. Robert. Yeah, it happened here. Is happening. Has continued to happen here.

Yeah. Yeah, this has been a podcast from the beginning about things falling apart, which is a great business to be in, I guess, because they keep doing that. I want to start by kind of talking about yesterday's episode, the one that I dropped before the election, because I thought a lot about what to put out on the day of the election. And I kind of made the call, which, I don't know, regrets the wrong word. I made the call yesterday that like, okay, we've got this new poll from Seltzer. People are starting to feel like, you know, some of this late breaking news is good for Harris. Some of the pollsters are hurting back in that direction. I probably

should do something to kind of like pump the brakes on enthusiasm and remind people that even if she wins, there's still a lot of dangers out there, right? Because that's what I saw as like the big threat model is Harris is likely to win, and then people are going to forget about these constitutional sheriffs and all these different kind of like right-wing ghouls that will still be a problem if we don't take care of them, right? If we don't do anything to actually like hamper their ability to exercise power. So I wrote that episode with that in mind. And it turns out I was being overly optimistic. And I think I was being overly optimistic in part, you know, I tend towards pessimism, which is why this show exists in the first place. You know, one of the

things that's happened is we've gotten bigger and more people have listened is whenever like shit happens in the world, we get bombarded on the subreddit and just like in emails to myself with people saying versions of like, I don't know what to do using language that's like very worrying sometimes about how hopeless they feel. And so I've kind of felt a growing responsibility to like spread calm and hope. And I think that merged to a degree with the, you know, after my dad died, this desire to like, not just be sad and a doomer. And I think it led me to have, I guess, more of an optimistic, like I forced myself into an unreasonably optimistic frame of mind, just because I thought that was the responsible thing to do. And I guess I'm kind of like, evaluating that now, like, what should I have

done differently? You know, if I'd been in a more logical state of mind, and I guess the answer is, I don't know how to be in a more logical state of mind. Like the problem is, there's so much, you know, you've got this hyper object of a political realignment happening in our country in this very dark direction. You're also trying to deal with, and I'm sure everyone listening is dealing with versions of this on their own, you know, people you care about getting sick and dying and, you know, losing jobs or having to start new ones and embarking, you know, starting to become a parent or whatever. Like, everybody's got all these massive things in their own lives and, like like trying to keep a completely rational perspective on the political happenings in this country while remaining unaffected from like the way

in which your own life is going to color your optimism and biases is probably a hopeless cause to some extent, which I guess is part of why we're here to try and as a collective offer people our most reasonable sort of averaged opinion about what's going to happen. So I guess that's what we're going to try to do here. That's what I've got to start with. I mean, hope is illogical, but it is necessary. And I think that's really where we have to start. I'm going to toss over to Margaret real quick. About hope? Yeah. Yeah, Margaret, fix this for us.

Just to say, I woke up today with some hope and I think a lot of that is from my friendship with Margaret and I don't think there's a better person to talk about that than her. Yeah, Margaret. I appreciate that. I often make the joke about the fact that I named myself Killjoy in my 20s and then became a professional optimist. But I think that, and I think that actually it could happen here.

I think folks here do it really well. Sometimes determination is almost sometimes the right word instead of hope, right? Because, or like optimism isn't always the right word because you're like, well, bad things are happening and they're going to happen and they're going to keep happening right and so sometimes we look at like like climate change for example which is the the broader problem you know you're like well no matter what we do it's going to get worse and so the immediate electoral problem in front of us like no matter what happens it's going to get worse before it gets better but we need to um stay aware of that and stop pretending like the bad things

aren't coming while then still looking at saying like, well, what can we do? And for me, the thing that I focus on, I have a therapist friend who talks about how agency is the opposite of trauma, you know, and that the more that we act with agency while bad things are happening, the less that they destroy us emotionally. And so I think that focusing on what can we do is just incredibly useful and necessary. And also the fact that things are in turmoil right now, and that means lots of bad things are happening.

The old status quo is gone. We saw that with the defeat of the Democrats, their whole thing is that they doubled down on the old status quo and people don't want that. People want something different. And Trump offers something different, a very horrible nightmare thing that's different. And the Democrats did not offer something different.

And so I actually think in a weird way, we are in a good position to, on a grassroots level, build something different and say that people want something different. And I think that by working towards something different and say that people want something different and i think that by working towards something different and better well it's the best way to keep our own spirits up you know yeah thanks thanks mac by i absolutely agree james what's your perspective here yeah like it goes without saying that like trump's proposed border policies are horrific

and his proposed migration policies are horrific harris's were also bad i think like that doesn't mean that that trump's are acceptable or the same they're not but also like i think having spent as much time as i have with refugees having spent as much time as i have with people who have gone through things that are horrific and like state hostility um state violence civil war etc like i have a lot of hope that like like margaret said right there's there's this uh quote from derutu that probably isn't real about how like we're not afraid of ruins and we've lived in ruins our whole lives and we'll build our future in the ruins of the old world but like when i think about the next four years like the state will be absent or hostile right now absent at best and hostile

at worst it's been that way at the border for a very long time yeah and we've built our little community and our little world and like when i am sad when i'm despairing when i'm scared i think about the things that we did in the last year right we fed tens of thousands of people by ourselves and in doing that we demonstrated how powerful we are in the absence of the state because the state wasn't there or the state was actively hostile we were able to step in and from nothing we were able to build something that took care of people who needed to be taken care of and that like we're not special or unique you know we didn't have like some incredible structure here before people just showed up to help people and like more people will need to do that now and that will mean that there are more

people in difficult places who need help right but that doesn't mean that you can't do it. If we can do it, you can do it. And having done it has made me less. I just I'm not as scared as I would be if I felt like I was on my own or if I felt like that we can't deal with this because we can. And I know that because we have. And I want obviously that's something we're going to focus on right we have between now and the middle of january i've no idea how many weeks or days that is but um it's a lot of time to organize and it's a lot of time

to put aside some of the differences we might have some of the petty disagreements we might have some of the shit that people have said on twitter.com and like get together and organize and and build a way of taking care of each other that doesn't rely on the state because that's always been what we needed and we need it now even more so yeah speaking of what we need now here's some ads. Oh, Robert, tone bad. What else was I supposed to do? What else was I supposed to do? You just can't stop him. That was just physics.

There was no other way for that to go. An object in motion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. That was like the oceans forming after the moon hit the earth or whatever happened to make oceans. I don't know how oceans came about. Don't ask me that question. They call him Robert Tectonic

Plate Evans. 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 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. 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. and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators,

sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, 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. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.

Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, where it is happening here and Robert still can't help himself to make strange ad transitions. Garrison, what do you got for us? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I am not an optimist and I also put a lot of work into not being a doomer. not an optimist and I also put a lot of work into not being a doomer. I try to be pretty realistic about a whole bunch of my thoughts and analysis on this sort of thing. And I tend towards survival as kind of one of my main priorities. And I'd like to talk a little bit about kind of some of

what we actually saw on election night and some maybe some small like misconceptions going around yeah mainly this kind of idea that the country has like wildly swung to the right like people have like overwhelmingly like more so than ever before have have have voted for like far-right figures have voted for far-right like bills basically wanting this this complete like nationalistic takeover. If you look at the presidency, the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate. And I mean, the final count is still coming in. We are recording this Wednesday afternoon. It's noon on the West Coast right now. And Trump has almost the same number of votes as he got in 2020. I think it's a little bit under

at this point. Now, there is some demographic changes. Certain groups may have leaned more towards or against Trump than in past elections. But the final averaged popular vote number is at this point pretty much the same. Now, kind of why this has happened, why he's still kind of sweeping all of these swing states, is we've kind of had a collapse of trust in the Democratic Party. And you could attribute this to a lot of things. I don't think it's a single thing. It is obviously a confluence of events. I think one of

the big things is like 9% inflation is kind of hard to beat. If people, to Margaret's point earlier, they're looking for something different. And Harris meaningfully was not offering anything substantially different. She's the VP, right? Like it's, she has that legacy. I don't think Biden could have done much more to alter the inflation, but like that, that doesn't matter. People, people feel this and that's, and that's very strong.

And there's other reasons why people have kind of lost faith in the democratic party or aren't as willing to come out in as high numbers uh as we saw back in 2020 and and crucially but back in 2020 in a lot of the swing states the vote was very close although the popular vote swung pretty heavily towards biden in a lot of the crucial swing states in some of the states he was only like 20 000 votes ahead like it was it was it was it was a pretty tight race in some of those states yeah Yeah. Now the other thing I'm kind of seeing, which kind of reflects this idea that like the country hasn't wildly, like the average people haven't wildly become a more fascist. It's that even in states that have elected Trump, they have also passed like a decent

number of progressive initiatives, including abortion rights, uh, voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballot initiatives that will serve to including abortion rights. Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballot initiatives that will serve to protect abortion rights until further laws are in the books. And in Maryland, in Montana, Nevada, and New York, where abortion is legal, and Colorado, where there's no laws restricting abortion, they all passed measures that enshrine those rights into law. Now, Florida, abortion, they all passed measures that enshrined those rights into law. Now, Florida, unfortunately, was not able to do this due to the super majority rules. Even though majority people did vote for this in Florida, they did not reach the 60% threshold. So that did not pass in Florida. But 57% though.

Very close. It was close and it was an outright majority. Yeah. So people are willing to vote for these types of things, even if they're unwilling to vote for a Democrat at the top of the ticket. And like, this is something that is worth considering when trying to figure out what exactly happened here and consider why people have kind of lost faith in the Democratic Party as a reliable institution to improve their lives or represent the things that they believe in. The Gaza issue being kind of the prime example of this in the past year. One other thing I was thinking about this morning when trying to kind of look forward and imagine what the next four years would look like, specifically with the concern

of figures like Elon Musk and RFK Jr. being put into pretty important positions of government, right? The idea that RFK Jr. is going to be in charge of the CDC and determine public health policies for the country is a very worrying prospect. Having Elon Musk in a senior advisory role in some kind of governmental department of efficiency doesn't sound great. But as I was having my coffee next to a beautiful river

in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was thinking about Steve Bannon because beautiful river in the mountains of North Georgia this morning, I was thinking about Steve Bannon because my brain is just fucked up like that. But specifically, how Trump used Steve Bannon to get elected back in 2016, even though Bannon's actual tenure at the White House was quite short-lived for whatever reasons. Like, personality clashes with Trump happen all the time, and he loses friends and advisors at a pretty frequent rate. And I think because Trump is just, like, petty and, you know, ableist and a bad guy,

he might just find RFK Jr. and Elon Musk annoying to be around. Considering RFK Jr.'s speech impediment and Elon Musk's apparent neurodiversity, Trump just might not want to be around them. So even though he did utilize both these figures to get elected, albeit slightly later on in the campaign, it took a while for Musk to kind of worm his way into Trump's orbit, I am not convinced that they will have direct access to Trump for very long. Now, this could happen, but if you look at Steve Bannon,

who was similarly a worrying figure, he did not last very long besides Trump. So something like this could happen. Now, I don't think it'll happen the exact same way. Elon Musk has been positioning himself to have the government be reliant on him for contracting. And he'll probably continue to exist in some form in that regard but in terms of his like direct influence on the white house and controlling sectors of government this won't necessarily be a four-year thing i think that is most of what i had on this topic i guess i i guess the other thing is like it it turns out in in Harris's efforts to kind of court independence and court like Republicans that largely that largely failed. Massive failure. Massive failure. I mean, again, it turns out when you have a party that's running as kind of like a mini fascist party and then you have another party that yeah it's not a solid opposition party like why like this hasn't worked

for like the second time in a row the the stats are almost identical to 2020 on this issue of republicans uh voting for the republican party um in fact it was slightly few slightly fewer of them voted republican back in 2020 more of them voted republican in 2024. I think it's by about 1%. Trying to court the conservative vote means that the conservatives are going to vote for conservatives. Maybe we should have an actual opposition party if you believe in electoral politics. Yeah.

No, I mean, like the lesson people should take from Trumpism, Trump did not get where he is by courting the conservative vote. Trump took over the republican party and made it the trump party and yeah like that is what worked right like and that's that's the actual lesson like the reason why dick cheney was fucking doing appearances with kamala harris was because conservatives what we had known as conservatives prior to trump

coming to power largely are out of the picture right like the new crop of guys are all weirdos that have molded themselves in the image of trump since his rise to power right yeah and one of the things that is like the lesson is not we need to make our own Trump, although by God, some people are going to take that lesson out of this. The lesson is that you have to come to people with a vision, right? Like you don't come to people by saying, well, what if we put a Republican in our cabinet, right? What if it's basically the same as this last thing that you're not really that happy with, but instead with more Cheney, right? It turns out that doesn't drive voter enthusiasm. And hey, like that's, you know, I'm hitting the libs pretty hard because this is like

the most catastrophic failure of any political party in living memory, right? So they do deserve to be hit. But it's not like the left accomplished anything, right? Either electorally or otherwise, right? There is no organized national left-wing movement that is worth talking about in any kind of building power way like it simply doesn't exist and ignoring the blind loyalty that people have for trump yeah was a mistake yeah not considering like targeting that audience it doesn't seem like all of the january 6th uh ads did anything at all nope did fuck all

i mean in fact in fact statistically they did they did nothing they did nothing to hurt trump yeah right if trump gets essentially the same total number of votes they didn't do anything to to hurt him like that like that strategy was not six that was not successful yeah you have to offer something and just the large swath of like electoral nihilism that the Democratic Party keeps running up against continues to be its most like existential threat. Robert, Gare and I at the RNC talked to a variety of people who did not give a flying fuck about Trump's record. Oh, of course not.

All they cared about was no no they had blind loyalty to him i posted this on twitter.com and i'm thinking specifically of the woman that was like compared trump's evil for lack of a better word oh sometimes he's ridiculous like my husband and that blind loyalty and the democrats were going to fucking flip those people. That was not going to happen. They took a gamble. Wasn't even really a gamble. They took a gamble on the wrong crowd.

And that's not effective. But it's not really here or there at this point. It happened kind of like, now what? Yeah. We haven't really heard from Mia much. So I'm going to shoot over to mia yeah and i mean i think i think where i'm at is that okay we're in this moment or one of our biggest advantages is that we're not the democrats right this has been a fairly comprehensive referendum on the failure of the democrats to offer anything we also like screwed up offering a better world right yeah this is you know if you

look if you look at what happened to 2020 and you look at the places that we actually sort of like i mean took power is a strong word but like there are places we ran the cops out and we screwed up making those places like a world that was like ideologically compelling it off to spread. And we're not going to get a third do-over of that, right? We have to be able to sort of... When the moment arrives, we have to be able to actually create a world that is better enough than this one

that we can move. But that's not impossible. Yeah, I think what we have right now is we have a period of time before Trump takes power. And we have this time to sort of quash our beasts. We have this time to organize. We have this time to plan. And I think at least part of what we need to do, and we'll get into this more in other episodes and probably later too, there's the obvious tasks of organization. There's getting involved in things there's getting into meetings I also think and this is something that's I think easier to do like literally immediately is that we've been fighting completely defensively on the cultural front

for four years and it's been a complete disaster and we need to have a large-scale cultural offensive there needs to be something other than fucking tick-tock Mormonism like we need we need stuff alternatives to trad wife shit we need alternatives to this like terrible like the the fucking man fluencer sphere there needs to be something else we need to create that very very fast yeah anarchist

trad wife stuff like mia christ yeah that's what's gonna save us all right yeah everybody everybody go buy a sundress right now get out there both of you to assume we don't have them robot and i'm gonna i'm gonna pull robert evans and speaking of buying things it's time for our last ad break hey i'm jack b 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

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 iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, 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.

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're back, and I do want to get

into, you know, a little bit more specifics of what can we do now? And I just want to say, a fucking lot. The cards are on the table. It's going to be a busy four years. Yeah. You know, I attended Margaret's book signing last week and I've attended lots of our events and one of the questions and Q&As and one of the questions that gets asked all the time is how do I get involved? How do I find, how do I meet people? How do I do these things? And,

you know, I want to get into that. I also want to give some very basic, tangible advice. You know, don't post stupid things on the internet. If somebody tells you we need to go out and engage in revolutionary activity, maybe sit at home right now. You don't want to come into this thing with a criminal record. Nobody is making good plans right now. Go make good ones don't just reactively show up and follow someone with a clipboard in the streets don't post actionable threats on the

internet don't post that picture of that comedian that gave that really funny joke just don't do it there's no reason to it's not cool yeah like don't if if you know what if you know what community i'm talking about you'll get it you'll get it if you're going to you know get messed up use substances in order to cope with things log out of social media on on all of your devices first you know like yeah sounds like that's some advice you were giving yourself i'm'm sober as a church mouse, Sophie. Just coffee and clean mountain air for me. A very basic recommendation that I have for people is to get Delete.me.

Yeah. It is worth the investment. It is a good product. That is what I'll say. Yes. Delete.me is a service that helps purge aspects of your public record

from the internet, right right there's a lot of different sites like yeah you have been involved if you are a person who participates in the economy through the internet right if you buy things through the internet your shit has been leaked right their you know tagline is your private information is no longer private right and so essentially what they do is they scour the internet and remove your personal data from online. And they don't do that once. They continuously do it. This is like a fantastic plug for the product that you're not paying us.

Yeah. Let's just say the Church of Scientology could not find me. Hell yeah. I will say there is some alternatives to delete me that are trying to get up and running. We might do a full episode on data removal in the future. Yeah, we definitely should. It does require you to also do manual inputs. There are certain sites that Delete.me,

when they send takedown requests to data brokers, certain sites will not comply. You have to send requests manually. It's pretty simple, but they will give you a list of certain sites as well to go through this process manually. But I think the last thing we want to talk about is

we have 75 days to prepare for stuff. We have 75 days to prepare for the next four years. In some ways, it's going to be like 2017 to 2019 again, which was a very busy time. All of the right-wing ghouls that have been hiding under the rocks the past few years because of the liberal DOJ will probably start coming out of the woodwork. There's going to be, you know, a lot more stuff going on. And, you know, those of us that are here,

we're able to make it through those years. Some of your friends probably weren't able to. And it is up to us to take care of each other, to try to ensure that ourselves and people we know have a better chance of making it through these next four years and i think i think kind of lastly i'd like to kind of just go around talking about like what that will look like and how to kind of start that process especially during these first 75 days like brunch is over brunch has been over for a while brunch brunch should have never started yeah but brunch is over now so what over for a while brunch brunch should have never started yeah but brunch is over now so what can what can we do in these next 75 days it's uh share your black coffee

with friends time share your black coffee with friends maybe cork the champagne yeah yeah yeah cork the champagne keep drinking that orange juice though you don't have enough vitamin c or when you and your anarchist trad wife friends get together for brunch, just make sure to actually talk about real radical things you can do. Because if you already have a way of gathering with your friends, you should just turn it into talking about more than just how your day is. Absolutely. Yeah.

I feel like I need to put on the record that what I said, that what I was trying to say is we need feminism, not not anti-trad wife i don't know how that was conveyed i was trying to recruit you into my trad wife called no thank you for clarifying me up but that was very much understood um but being being a little bit literal right now is is not bad yeah gare Gare, so true. I just think about like the ways that I've found my people and the way that I have made my community, obviously like the taglines of, you know, talk to your neighbors and things like that are absolutely important. But the recommendation, you know, obviously joining orgs are great. Sure, that's a great talking point. But that's not really how I met my community. The people that are essentially my family now, I met by going to content and different

creators shows and music and different events where we had mutual interest, even if that meant that I had to drive pretty far and found people that liked the things that I like. And it turns out a lot of the people that like the things you like, believe the things you believe. And if they don't, they're usually pretty open to hearing you out. Yeah. And I think it's super important to listen to your friends. And also, like I've said this quite a bit, support your friend's weird hobby. Yeah.

That's super crucial. Listen to the people around you. And it's not easy. I had basically no friends for a very long time because I did not have the right people around me. And it took a lot of effort to find my core humans. I mean, I'm not recommending this. And several of us did do this. I moved to a different state. You save up for it. It's definitely not an affordable thing to do. Definitely not an easy thing to do. But I don't know where I would be without those people. And I love them.

Yeah. Politics and culture do go hand in hand in so many ways. And kind of cultural engagement and ways to kind of grow your social network, especially, you know, in places where there's probably, where there's, I mean, in my case, you know, like trans people, queer people, people that I'm kind of around and people who I'm like, you know, concerned about, like personally, people I like know, you know, going into these next four years. I guess like the biggest thing I was kind of thinking about last night is like,

yes, these next four years are going to suck. And in many ways, it'll just be like, everything will just get slightly worse. But like, I know that myself and those I know like immediately around me will be fine. Like we will be okay. Things will be fine. Like we will be okay. Things will be worse, but we already have networks. We already have community. We have these things built up to take care of each other and provide the things that we need. And this is something that we'll be talking more about in kind of the next few months. Like we have that and that's taken effort. That doesn't just happen by itself. It requires effort and requires resistance to this idea like community nihilism this kind of belief that like community

is like not a real thing that doesn't actually exist which is a very privileged uh thing to believe because there's people out there who rely on this and will continue to rely on this even more in these next few years but there are those without that and that's that's the people i'm most concerned about yeah It's queer kids. It's trans kids who do not have those networks, do not have those communities, people who are isolated. Like that is who I am most concerned about. And I understand the impulse to kind of isolate

and just go online because that's safer than having to go out into the real world, or at least it feels safer. But I don't think that's actually real. I think that leads to its own forms of detrimental harm. So it requires a getting off Discord and going into your community and trying to make friends, which can be scary, but it is incredibly crucial.

I think we should talk about joining actual orgs as well. I think some other people on this call can speak more to that and the utility of those as well. But I think first and foremost, even getting a network of friends outside of orgs is also a very of is a very good it's not even crutch it's just like a life support system that is going to be super important yeah yeah i'd i'd like to throw to margaret for for a second because she looks like she really wants to say something oh and i don't actually disagree with anything that you're saying.

I think that stuff is absolutely crucial. I wanted to just say that, like, I think there's actually a weird blurriness in the lines between an organization and a friend group, right? Totally. And the problem isn't necessarily subculture. The problem is a sort of, if we have this idea that there's a hegemonic subculture, like in order to be a radical, you have to be part of our clique, right? And that's a problem. Whereas if whatever clique you're already part of or any subculture you're already part of, you turn that radical. I think

that is, you know, it's what Sophie was talking about. But then yes, there's a lot of people who have no access to any of that. And some of it, as I think you're saying is, well, if you only hang out with your friends on Discord, like maybe it's time to start meeting up in person. And even if that's very complicated to do, but I also think that there's a huge importance to open door organizing and organizing. Like when I say orgs, I don't mean like go join PSL or any authoritarian cult, right. Or that there should never be a one organization that says, this is the strategy that we have to use to fight this. But instead, if you get together with the people that you want to get together with and say, this is the problem we're dealing with, how do we deal with it? And that is how you can create an organization. And if you do that,

many of those organizations, I would hope, would have open door policies and be public because there are so many isolated people who want to be involved, who don't have any kind of like cultural cachet with which to get into a more subcultural group. I think this is why churches are very good at recruiting, unfortunately, depending on the church, but like, because you can just show up and they'll be like, okay, you have a community now. Right. And that is what people desperately want, I think, right now. And we have to be careful. We don't want to just be like, oh, therefore we should replicate what they do. But I think that overall, what our movement needs is instead of gatekeepers, we need ushers. We need people to help people find their way into the

movement, to help bring them in and figure out like, hey, what are you good at? Or what are you interested in being good at? Here's how you can apply it. And I want to really quickly use a case study that happened from the last Trump election that I think was actually fairly useful. I was living in a small town, a small city with a fairly vibrant anarchist community. And when Trump was elected, we called for anarchist assemblies and they were open door and they were places where you don't get together to plan crime. But all of these different mutual aid groups would come and bring representation. People would say, this is what we're working on. This is what we can use help with. And they weren't decision-making bodies. They were information-sharing bodies. And a lot of

different groups spun up out of it that are still around like herbal clinics and different mutual aid organizations because we just said, hey, everyone who cares about this, let's get together and talk about what we want to do. And I found that to be an incredibly useful thing. And it's like the kind of thing I would pitch to people is not necessarily,

and if you're not an anarchist, don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's what I care about. That's what I'm excited about. Yeah, I just wanted to offer like, first of all, like get outside if you're not an anarchist, don't do it as the anarchist thing. Yeah, that's what I care about. That's what I'm excited about. Yeah, I just wanted to offer, like, first of all, like, get outside if you can. Like, touch grass can be very condescending.

And I don't mean it like that. I just like, I was feeling stressed last week and I went off and I climbed to the top of a mountain and I sat there by myself for a while. And it was nice and it was so quiet. I could hear like this little hawk's wings beating.

And that was really good for me. That's what I like to hear. It would not have changed the outcome one bit if I had stayed and sat on twitter.com for four hours instead of doing that. So I want you to all take time for yourselves and do things that kind of make you feel hopeful. I want to build off what Margaret said.

There are so many skills that all of you have that you could share with someone i think when i started being an anarchist it was largely because i was going to a bike co-op and like people shared their skills with me and i shared my skills with them and we all shared our stuff with each other and i worked out that we could just rely on other people for that shit and it didn't need to be hierarchical or based on some transfer of material goods people just want to help each other and a lot of people have messaged me saying that like they know that i participate mutilated and they want you to if you can't see it then you have to start it and that's okay you can change the world if you make a cooler full of sandwiches

and give them to people who are hungry. I guarantee if you start doing that shit, you will find other people and they will say, hey, what are you doing? Oh, I'm feeding people. Why? Because they're hungry. Can I help?

Yes. It's that easy. And like we can build from there. We don't have to agree with them on everything, first of all, but we can build from there. And I think it can be really scary but like now is the time to start not once things get worse you know four eight years ago was

the time to start but we can't go back and i want to kind of finish up with that that like we can't go back i don't care where someone was yesterday i don't care where they were last week i don't care where they were last year like all don't care where they were last year. Like all that matters is where they are now. Yeah. And we can build forward from here. We cannot go back and change things. And it is not worth doing endless recriminations.

It doesn't matter. It's happened. It's on us to decide how we react now. And you can react in a way that strengthens our communities and that builds ways of taking care of each other, which aren't ways of controlling each other. That's all that you need to do to make this so much less despairing, so much less terrible, and so much less deadly for some people.

And I know that we're doing that here. Check in on my friends. I'm in the Dallian Gap. that here check in on my my friends i'm in the dallying gap i'm checking in on my mutual aid friends and if you don't have that i want you to build that and i promise it's not something that's out of reach like you can do it yeah i want to add one last thing i think a lot of people think they don't have skills you do have skills the thing that i did when i started organizing was i moved chairs around so that people could have meetings by moving chairs and i helped take care of people's kids.

And I helped put posters up. People can do things. You have things that you can do. And it's time to lock in. That's what we have from here. It is time to lock in. It's time to organize. And it's time to get prepared to fight.

Yeah, this is just the first episode after the election in the coming weeks, coming days, coming months, we're going to go into very specific detail on things. We are going to provide different information and resources and continue to defend against disinformation and misinformation. And this is a fucking daily show. We will be getting into all of these topics especially in these next 75 days to help prepare

just topic by topic it's going to be a long four years 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 now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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