It Could Happen Here - The Dual Power Gathering!

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Mia is joined by Shannon and John, two organizers working on the Dual Power Gathering, to talk about how you can join a bunch of cool people camping in the dunes and talking organizing from July 29th to the 31st! https://opencollective.com/tenants-united-south-chicago/projects/dual-power-2022 https://dualpower2022.org/update/2022/03/07/gathering-content.html  Twitter: @DualPower2022See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

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. 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 audio books 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. It's, well, it is the podcast. It could happen here. But for once, it is not about the world falling apart. It is entirely about putting it back together again.

And joining me to talk about putting it back together again is zero of the other people who are normally on the podcast. But I'm joined by Shannon and John Hieronymus, who are part of the team of organizers working on the Dual Power Gathering. Shannon, John, welcome. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Hey. So I guess the first part of the Dual Power Gathering is dual power. And I think we should walk through what actually that is and what our sort of visions for it look like. Because, I mean, I know we've talked about this on the show before, but that was a very, very long time ago. But which I mean, like, probably only like seven months, but, you know, feel feels like ancient history. So yeah, I guess do you want to talk about what dual power is and how, how to do?

how to do yeah sure i'm gonna stop trying to think about what happened seven months ago and i can't okay maybe you said that i was just like oh wow okay no never mind um so dual power john how about i uh go ahead and share with our audience well what is sort of the poetic language that we have up on the website from the the organizers and then we can kind of like break it down and talk about it um yeah yeah that works for me all right so of the website text as such uh dual power is a way to imagine the moment just before our movements converge as the possible becomes the actual. When the seeds of social transformation we have sown for generations bloom, when the old world begins to wither

and new worlds can be born, is a way of thinking about how we got to that moment and beyond it. Dual Power is the project of building self-determination, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct democracy in our communities by creating spaces that empower us all and from which new emancipatory institutions can emerge it's so pretty yeah so what does that mean so what does that mean um first off i want to say like a shout out to i a lot of people have been working on this vision of what dual power is for years and years

now and that includes a lot of groups that we are either in conversation with or have been taking inspiration from one of the biggest and i think most developed groups that's doing that work is Cooperation Jackson, Jackson, Mississippi. And I think the goal is people went out oftentimes when people like hear dual power, if they don't have any other context for it, but they are maybe from the left they've heard about this moment in uh the russian revolution when there were these two competing like uh you know bases of power in like uh russian society while they're undergoing this like revolutionary change and uh lenin wrote a like a pamphlet about it calling it the dual power and

looked at it as like a thing that needed to be like overcome by you know workers in russia um to like establish a worker's state um which they kind of outlined in a book called state and revolution. And, but when we look at what they were describing, we kind of look at this as a thing that emerges in any time when there's a social revolution kind of unfolding in a society where you have various classes who are like changing like social relations. So workers, peasants um different groups of people who like have like a class have come together around a class interest and overthrowing their oppression and they they have to go through stages of building their collective power their collective

identity their um and their uh kind of like overall strategic movement in a particular direction um and they create this tension between the existing state order and a newly emerging like uh like social revolution that's like overthrow challenging uh and overthrowing that like um power so that being said okay we want to ground that we want to ground that a little bit in a like less historicized uh context or whatever we could say maybe that's the work that we're doing to build up the institutions and relational structures that we need to care for ourselves and each other as we move through sort of like different stakes of like institutional organization in the society. Right. So when we're thinking about how do we meet our basic needs together in ways that are not dependent on the oppressive institutions that we're trying to overthrow, we're talking about dual power. taking care of each other or who do the work of reproducing every society, basically build

their own independent power to be able to fight back and to challenge the status quo. So there's a lot of things that are percolating that have been happening in North America that takes inspiration from areas of the global south um but also our own homegrown like um traditions um so that could mean anything from like your local mutual aid network to uh your local tenant union to like a rank and file union of like amazon workers or teachers or care workers um you know whose existence puts them in conflict with the state capital um and like

patriarchy settler colonial relations um you know like indigenous water protectors um folks who are building up places where the more developed it becomes the more it kind of builds its own momentum and you have spaces that are like autonomous fully fully autonomous regions from state power and to begin to pick apart at capital and reconfigure our relations of how we make things and do things and take care of each other in fundamental ways.

And we have lots of beautiful examples of this from the organizing history not even that long ago and people will be familiar with some of the black panther programs or some of the programs that were integrated into the farm workers movement and some of the programs that were put together by the anarcho-feminists who were trying to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through things like mutual aid health care and things like that. So we'll see. There's like a lot of really beautiful examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements. And we're all really excited about what's going on now. And we want to see that just to sort of come together and flourish. that just to sort of come together and flourish.

I think it's important to think about dual power as something that's like, I don't know, like I think there's a lot of people who look at it as sort of like dual power is planting a garden. It's like, I mean, sort of, yes, but like there's, you know, there's sort of two components of it, right? There's this sort of, there's a defensive component and an offensive component.

There's a component that's about taking care of each other and there is a component that is attack, right? there's a component that is the people who are preventing us from taking care of each other need to be stopped from doing that and so yeah i think i think it's important to yeah think about different kinds of like different kinds of institutions that you would not normally think of as doing the same thing as being part of the same struggle. And yeah, I guess that brings us to what you two and a lot of other people have been

working on for God. This has been, this has, this has been in the works for a long time. Yeah. Which, which, which is the,

which is the, this dual power gathering. And yeah, I guess you two want to talk about what that is. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple of years dreaming about being together.

And so I think this is kind of the fruit of that dream, right? Coming up at the end of July, we're inviting everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip. And during that time, we're hoping to see a collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can bring to it, which we know far exceeds the sort of even the scope and vision of the organizing body.

So we're really trying to just create a space for people to come together who are interested in these ideas, who have various levels of experience working with it that will be valuable to everybody, from people who are brand new to this stuff and just want to learn more about it, to people who have been doing it for years, for decades even. And yeah, that's sort of the underlying ambition of it is to get people together in space. So, you know, a lot of us have been to these kinds of events before and felt like the most important thing that we got out of that was the relationships that we were able to that was the relationships that we were able to build and the people that we were able to meet that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues

with and that we could find inspiration uh in in those dialogues and in those connections that would birth new projects that you know we don't yet know are even possible and so this is kind of at least for me like that's the really important and exciting force of the of the plan yeah i think that like they're cool the some of the things about this i think are really like it's been like really a collaborative effort to come up with this thing like we had the discussions about this is a thing that we thought needed to happen because by the middle of 2021,

we were like, look, clearly, we've all been through so many different experiences over the last 10, 15, 20 years at this point. Some of us are getting to be elders. And we need to like um it feels like it's now is an excellent a really great time to have like a actual conversation about where we've where we're coming where we are where we're coming from and where we're going and how do we translate these experiences into like networks of like trusting relationships and sharing um a sharing of all this knowledge it's like we need to debrief like the like the past five years i think in particular have been

like it's like crammed it feels like you know the whole saying like past five years, I think in particular have been like, it's like crammed. It feels like, you know, the whole saying, like some, some years, nothing happens in some, you know, in some months decades happen paraphrasing or whatever. And it's like so much stuff has come, we've all gone through so many things and come to like, and we're seeing people who didn't have like maybe a stance on various political things or are like seeing their communities torn apart by like the the real lived experience of like climate change and wants to and need to do something about it that sort of thing like

bringing in people who have lots of experience and people who have maybe are just now figuring things out and really kind of like using and taking this as an opportunity to maybe to generate new knowledge so that we're going to be like kind of like clarifying what we've gone through and where we're heading and, um, get people like in the same space who might... I do a lot of union shit. So I'm always thinking about how do I get rank and file union radicals in the same space as a neighborhood abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community land trust

and getting all these different groups. Because together and then thinking about how they overlap and support and build off of each other. Because I think the operating theory of many of the people who are involved in this is that every context is different where we're organizing. But there are many principles that can translate across contexts. but there are many principles that can translate across contexts. But the context will shape very... I was just talking with one of the organizers who's 20 minutes away over in Northwest Indiana, like in Gary and those areas. And their context for building something like an ecosystem

of dual power organizations is going to be very different from my context where i'm like down the street from this big uh global center of uh capital that's like university chicago and like and it's doing all in my neighborhoods being gentrified by two billion dollar corporations and i've got a big nurse union whereas they're in the middle of like a neighbor community that's being actively divested and destroyed like just like eaten away at by like because capital is just pulling out and has been doing that for basically as long as we've all been right but at the same time y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere

complications and climate change implications and so yeah we're thinking about the ways in which like the kinds of affiliations that make sense for us to be successful in our projects are like you know look they're not just they're not just local they're not just national they're not just continental there's like a lot of different things that are going on there. And that the only way for us to really like sort out who we need to be in coalition with on any particular issue is to know everybody and to try to understand better their specific context and their specific experiences.

And I think there's like, you know, I think, you know, to, to John's point about, you know, how much has changed in the last, you know, handful of years or whatever. I think one thing that we've all come away from is the pace of change is pretty humbling, you know? I think we definitely all, we got to, we got, we took in a bit of the, of humility around, around that. What is it that we actually need to do? We are definitely not prepared for it. And it doesn't matter how many decades we've been doing this organizing work. We just are not ready

for how quickly things are changing right now. And the only way for us to get ready is to make sure that we shore up and strengthen the networks of people that we can rely on to produce kind of positive interdependence as we move forward with the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah. I mean, and then part of this is also like thinking about, because the way this is structured,

this isn't just like a series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers have curated, like you're going to listen to, you know, uh, so-and-so who's like, you know, a prominent tenant organizer or so-and-so is like a prominent,

like, uh, like in like climate change, direct action work. Like the goal is, is that we like specifically chose a format. And officially, it's called Unconference. But the way I think of it is,

which comes out of tech, which I find kind of irritating. But the core of the idea of the thing is that we're coming into this space and generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who we designate as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that people who don't have a lot of experience and the tradition of like Palo Frere and like, um, everybody learning together is like,

it's like taking those principles and kind of like doing them in parallel in various circles where there'll be a circle here of like cooperative, uh, organizers or people who want to get co-ops off the ground. There'll be a circle here of people doing land trust work there'll be a circle here of like unionists there'll be a circle here of uh people doing like abolition uh work and or intra or people who are interested in all those things are getting those sorts of things off the ground and as they work through like a like they present tell stories share ideas do debriefs on the various

things that we've all been going through over whatever, how far back our timeline is, depending on how far, which elders decide to attend. But then taking that knowledge with our facilitators and then being like, you know what, I think that these two conversations are happening kind of like in parallel would be better if they were merged together and beginning to kind of like build that sort of like, and so the idea isn't to necessarily come away with like a pre, like we're not setting up like a,

like a predetermined set of conclusions for people. We believe, and based off of we've been having set of conclusions for people. We believe, and based off of, we've been having monthly community calls for people who are going to be attending. All the different groups of folks who will be coming to this is going to be, I think like the depth of experience

is going to be really phenomenal. And people coming from, we definitely have people confirmed who are coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks with experience, the indigenous communities in Mexico. We may be having, we're fairly confident we're going to have people who are like,

just come from areas like Northern Syria and Iraq and taking all these different ideas and experiences and then generating next, like coming to new conclusions, maybe unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite, that we weren't anticipating. But asking new questions, right? Like this is a kind of, it's intended to be a prefigure of space for engaging with things where we don't know what the right answer is and I think we all need to really sit with the fact that we do not have like a clear right solution to the

problems that we're facing right now like I've been uh kind of pulling on the slogan a little it's like no gods no masters no right answers you know just like get used to it we need to be more creative and we need to be more open to experimentation. And, you know, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that's going to be coming at us fast. And, you know, this is a, we, we hope this can be a space where we can kind of take some time to slowly get square with what it is we're going to have to be thinking about,

even if we don't know what to do exactly yet. I had a really good experience where I was listening to a person who came out of ACT UP giving a talk in my neighborhood. And she was saying, because we had had questions, is this going to be about a lot of theory? Are we going to be talking about a lot of abstract stuff and um this uh organizer was like you know act up had no theory right they did they took action and the theory followed afterwards and so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming to this with with the right answers already figured out is just not something that I think is going to be a super generative discussion.

getting kind of in a general sense and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is i think um a big key a key aspect of what we're trying to do when we come to uh come together which is not to say yeah which is not to say that there won't be theory because that's not up to us that's up to y'all so you know um i probably you know like i what i'm really interested in is having conversations about uh like community mental health care you know and like what I'm really interested in is having conversations about like community mental health care, you know, and like for me, the theory is less interesting than, you know, like talking about what we actually need in the spaces that we work in. But that's, you know, that's where I'm coming from. And everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective, too. So I'm really excited to see what people bring to that space and what we can get out of it um by just thinking that we all

are contributing something constructive to that conversation well and then also there's going to be a lot of discussion about like literal practical skills like here's how you like here's how you uh this has always been the perennial thing this is how you pick a lock this is how you uh this is how you pick a lock. This is how you organize comms on a picket line. This is how you pull together a demand letter for tenants. These are the sorts of things that we're going to be talking. We're going to be doing concrete skill shares, plus these discussions about our experiences and sharing our stories. And, you know, hopefully we're going to come away from this.

A big goal of it is to come up with a lot of different content. We're going to be recording videos and audio and then transcribing things and writing things up. But we're hoping that once we're done, we're going to have a big report that we can share out with people who can't attend. Yeah, privacy concerns, obviously, considered. Yeah, for sure. Consent is a big thing with us as organizers. I should hope so you would think but you know not everyone

is as down as you would imagine so basically we're building a perfect little utopia for like four days and y'all come out because we're going to fix the revolution so kidding obviously We're going to fix the revolution. So kidding, obviously. 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. 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. 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 the 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. angel. I mean, he looks so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, own head and see what's going on in someone else's head search for therapy gecko on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's the one with the green guy on it on on on a more concrete level like what what does like a day here look like like what are what are what are what are what are we doing oh that's fun that's a fun question uh if i may john yeah yeah go for it um what we're thinking right now basically is that a day it looks like we get up in the morning we drink coffee we have breakfast and we have a little assembly check-in to see how things are going if we need to make any major

adjustments and we put up a sort of schedule for the afternoon's events that was populated from the conversation that was happening in the evening the night before, and anything that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that happened between yesterday and this morning. Then we're going gonna roll off into um basically what would be some of the kind of like things we already know for sure that we wanted to see happening that we could get on a on a sort of schedule ahead of time so some of these skill shares that were planned that would require kind of like pre-planning or maybe some discussions that people reached out ahead of time that they definitely wanted to have so that stuff would be happening earlier in the day. We're talking about having sort of just like

sandwich bars and make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There should be a lot of different things happening in different geographical locations on the site. So you kind of get a choice of where you want to go. It's not like there's one big event. We're going to try to group things that are sort of thematically similar so that they're nearby each other of where you want to go. It's not like there's one big event. We're going to try to group things that are sort of thematically similar in so that they're nearby each other in case you want to go around and see what the different kinds of stuff is going to be. And then in the afternoon, it's going to be like, I mean, okay, of course, this is how we're intending right now.

The afternoon would be the discussions and skill shares and events and circles and spaces that were generated out of the conversations that have been happening in the space so that people came and thought, you know, we had this conversation yesterday that really inspired me. Let's talk about this and I'm going to make space for that. So we're going to have big map where you figure out where you want to go and you're going to be able to wander around and meet people. We're trying to incorporate a lot of events that make it easier to meet other people that you don't know yet. There's going to be tables where you can do arts and crafts. There's going to be game space for

whatever kind of games you want to play. There's going to be places for kids to hang out. There's going to be a quiet tent where you can take some contemplation time. You know, at some point we want to do it like a kind of brief circle for people to deal with what they've been kind of going through in the world and, you know, some, you know, utopia envisioning arts space, you know, these kinds of things like where, you know, somebody wants to teach someone else a dance, like that's the kind of thing that we're really hoping can go on in the afternoon. Then we would be feeding everybody dinner. And we kind of had this idea we've been playing with that we would have two campfires after dinner. And at one campfire, we'll have kind of an open forum where anybody can talk for like

10, 15, 20 minutes, you know, whatever, however long people need who are there, depending on how popular that is, and just kind of air everything that's in their head and we'll have a note taker so we can try to incorporate what comes out of those discussions into the next day's agenda um and so that's sort of like what we were what we were envisioning and then for the other campfire it's people who don't want to do that don't forget this the other the other the other campfire for people who are like i'm done with talk i need to just sit and stare at some flames for a little bit yeah i imagine i'll be going back and forth between the fires so you know that's also an option uh but the idea is to get kind of like somewhere between i think what

are we calling it like somewhere between a conference and a music festival you know what i mean like they're where you're able to sort of move around and you don't have to go and sit in one place and do like, okay, for this hour, this is where I, you know, it's meant to be a bit more informal. And we're hoping that that makes a lot more space for people to sort of explore and people to meet other people

that they don't already know. I don't know if that sums up sort of like what I'm imagining. Cause that's like, you know, that's the spirit. So I think if that's the question, like, what does the day look like? Well, hopefully it's fun. You know, that's kind of the main thing we're thinking here. So make it a sort of low stress and low stakes place that we can talk about

some of the highest stress and highest stakes questions that we have to deal with. Yeah. And like that being said, like like because we're modeling it this way specifically based on people's experience with like the symbiosis uh federation's founding conference that sort of thing where there were a lot of stakes and people were trying to kind of like funnel different discussions through different ways and this is not a necessarily critique of how that all went down it's just like based on our our experience and our experiences with those sorts of things the goal is to for this to be if it's successful the first of many of these sorts of things um many of these kinds of gatherings and discussions and to provide a model for how it could happen

but to keep we deliberately decided that this we're not going to make like a bit we're not going to have a big points of unity debate and discussion and voting on assembly sort of thing we will use assemblies for you know certain things like setting up like our community agreements and that sort of stuff and getting the days rolling and getting the days closed. But the goal is to bring people into conversation who maybe don't have the basis of trust for those bigger collective discussions yet.

But maybe they will later. But the goal is for now is we're we're getting we're building and expanding our networks we're building and expanding our trust with different people and building and expanding our knowledge so that we can go out and do the kind of work that we think we need to do to i don't know survive as a species on this planet so um that's one of the reasons why if there are some people are like oh i don't know this seems really kind of wishy-washy it's very it does a very deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who'd been to these sorts of things and the goal is really to to have a place where we can have discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested

in it that we feel like if our concept of how to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution that we've somehow failed so it's like yeah i was to say that i think one of the one of these things that you that you brought up that's really important. It's like not even just in these previous conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to. Have we seen this be a problem? But basically, at least I can speak for myself in a lot of organizing spaces that I've been in over the past, you know, like 15 years that I've been pretty active in the organizing universe. that I've been pretty active in the organizing universe. Basically that one of the main problems that we have with this kind of like space of trust that we definitely know that we need

to be able to work together moving forward is that we don't really have shared language a lot of the time. And we think we do because we use the same words, but we often use them to mean different things or we often use different words to mean the same things as well and then we come from kind of different organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that some are more or less we should say that maybe that there there are different places where you show solidarity in a different way you show good

faith and you show that you're committed in a different way what it means to be democratic in a space seems different depending on this, on the tradition that you, that you maybe come from. So what we're really hoping to do is kind of make space to incorporate all of that. So we were, I was joking. It was a camping trip where many camping trips fit, you know, that like that there should be an opportunity for people to kind of like learn to talk past those, those barriers that we might

have to to understanding each other and like that success would really look like people coming away like believing in other people's commitment to get this done and with the kind of contacts that they need to support each other moving forward as things come up in different places as opposed to just like, here's a solution, like, here's a blueprint for how to get this done, you know, that relationship that you have with a person who's had that experience in the past is going to be way more valuable than any document they give you based on their experience, because you're going to be able to say, well, shit, I wasn't expecting this to happen. Like, what do we do? And then you can talk through that with them. And like, that's really, I think that's really the foundation of our being able to share

this knowledge with each other is that we have the opportunity to kind of engage in these ways that are more focused on the kind of just sort of dynamism of the, of the challenges that we're dealing with right now. Emergence is a big thing. Things are always going to, like things are always going to be changing. Like we are, we need to be prepared to deal with a world that's going to be throwing challenges at us that like we haven't like we haven't had solutions for and like because we're going through this like really kind of like catastrophic like uh moment of like uh climate change and um and i mean i don't know how else to say it, but like, and so it's just like engendering the idea, the idea that we're constantly evaluating what's happening around us, both like at our local level and across the regions and globally, and then taking new knowledge in and coming up with new solutions.

new knowledge in and coming up with new solutions um in a real like in like a truly experimental way like thinking about things just like experiments and how we're going to like come up with new solutions to these problems because it's just well like as we kept telling people because when we're out there uh trying to bring groups in everyone's telling us our capacity this sounds great our capacity is incredibly low uh and that has just been across the entire like spectrum of organizations yeah and that includes huge big put together organizations like you know unions versus little mutual aid groups everybody is dealing dealing with this feeling of exhaustion and capacity. Our goal is to get people together so that they can build capacity through these discussions and be prepared for things

because capacity is always going to be an issue. And our goal is to get people to this point where, because their mindset is, okay, new challenge, let's think about it critically and come up with solutions that fit this moment as opposed to keep trying to force things into preset, like easy. I mean, I don't want to say easy, but I think that sometimes everyone's trying to mine history for the one weird trick to solve all these problems.

And I think that the one weird trick is that human beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like, our brain is like this thing for taking in information and generating new thought and action. And we need to embrace that. Because if we don't, I don't think we're going to be very successful. Certainly. And these times of just increasing uncertainty, that kind of humility and flexibility

and like continued building of comfort with that uncertainty is going to be super essential to our being able to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to take action, I think. So we're going to be super essential to our being able to maintain even sort of like the basic ability to take action, I think. So we're going to have to like continue to like to lean into that uncertainty and to sort of, I think, you know, like kind of historically the being comfortable with things changing and being comfortable with uncertainty is actually one of our great strengths,

right? Because we can actually start to get moving while everybody else is still going, what the hell? And so I think, you know, that's going to definitely be something that's going to serve us. And yeah, anyway. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at 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. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex 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. 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. 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now

and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. I have i have one last uh question on an extremely practical level which is like what what is the like facility situation here like how what what are what are people sleeping in uh so like in right now we like we have a camp space reserved for 200 people um and so we understand that camping is not always super accessible but we are very fortunate that like the national lakeshore has specific accessible facilities um for folks and we do have uh disabled like uh comrades coming to this event and we're working on making sure that those uh that their particular needs don't um keep them from participating fully in the events there's um the discussions and circles themselves will be um at like shelter space um a bit away from where the camping is happening so we're organizing transport between those two spaces um for people who cannot camp we are uh working on organizing some hotel space for folks. And then for people who can camp but don't have any equipment,

our goal is to, we're going to basically acquire enough camping equipment for a sizable chunk of folks to come. And it's like literally today walking through Walmart with my daughter, looking at their camp equipment and pricing out things like sleeping bags and camp, like sleeping mattresses, tents, that sort of thing. So, yeah, if people have have stuff they want to donate to the cause to like, I think we should be able to take some of that in. Like, I think we should be able to take some of that in. We were just talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp gear repair zone. So if you have things that you find at the thrift store that like a torn tent or something like that will help you fix it.

You know, we just want to make sure that everybody has these supplies as well because they're they're broadly useful i know i've used my camping gear in uh some politically motivated ways in the past so i think that it's not bad for people to have it if you need it just say also uh you know the camping aspect of it is also it's more of a feature than a bug like there's like a, like, so to, so to speak, like the pandemic is not over yet as we're like seeing, right. In spite of everything that like the, our ruling class is desperately trying to get us to agree to. And so having the accommodations outside and doing the,

doing the actual events like out of doors where there's lots of ventilation we think it is like right now one of those events so that we're not going to get so that people aren't going to come away from this

getting sick which is really important from I mean as a person who's recovering from COVID round two, and as a healthcare worker, that was one of our big concerns because when we started making these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to be happening in terms of the pandemic. Having it out of doors was just a surefire

way that we knew that we could at the very least we could minimize the chances that people would be getting sick from just showing up and being in the same space together absolutely and we're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with friends and comrades and little groups to self-organize their camps as much as they would like to do that, to sort of make plans together to limit the, you know, the need for spaces, you know, with sharing up tents and all this kind of stuff, to the extent that people are comfortable with that, that you know people, if you need to get in touch with people from around you, if you don't know anybody, you can reach out to us. If we know anybody else who's looking for somebody

to try to coordinate with, we'll definitely put you in touch. That's something we want to be able to do is like offer some of these connective services to help people kind of link up with people who are coming from their areas or people who are interested in the same kinds of things. And so we're kind of thinking of ourselves

in the organizing body as facilitators of those connections and trying to like imagine how what we do will make those connections most likely to happen. So in terms of the facilities as well, I think we talked about trying to get some camp stoves together for people who need to use sort of a kitchen space to try to limit the amount of things that people need to bring for that. But definitely feel free to bring your own stuff and set up whatever you need. And let us know if you need help from us. We'll do our best to accommodate that.

And people are getting fed. Like, so we're planning on having meals arranged and that'll be vegan. And with the caveat that folks who want to have separate food can like do their own self-organized like cooking if that's a thing that they're really committed to um and we're planning on having like all the necessities of like lots of water making sure that like we've got um first aid lined up there's going to be street medics who are participating in the work of organizing all that harm reduction um and just

generally like uh like some of the other things that we haven't really mentioned it's like we know that we're bringing a bunch of people with a lot of big ideas and big personalities together and that means we're probably gonna have to deal with some conflict maybe i don't know so uh having um conflicts uh like people who are good at mediating conflict we're going to have a crew of people who do that we're working on um like child watch training because this is going to be like a family family space um making sure that we know how to take care of each other in case like shady people from outside try to do something like whatever like our goal is to just make sure that like this is um as safe as it can be bringing people together as accessible as it can be understanding

limitations of there's going to be you're going to be outside so there might be you know all the some of the fun of having like a collective group of people all outside together which can be a lot of fun like i'm i'm waiting for karaoke and for um like our open mic and people bringing out like instruments and like just having like you know uh we were even discussing like um you know some soccer uh potentially being a thing um determining uh like placing bets on who's going to be more into soccer based on various ideological affinities and past experience and um yeah hit us up if you want to play some music if you've got an idea for something fun that sounds cool to do and just to come to circle back to this i think like with the point about conflict mediation i just want to make that like super clear just because we're not going to spend half a day trying

to come up with community uh with the points of unity does not mean we don't have expectations about how you act in the space so our plan is basically to say like don't be an asshole and then that means you know like in all the ways that we know uh that those things can happen and then if somebody accidentally is being an asshole or somebody's are accidentally being an asshole like those are things we can we can manage because we all know what it is that we're doing here um so it's definitely not a free-for-all you know it's a this is a space where the normal things we would expect in space are expected you know explicitly yeah yeah oh well oh man i'm excited yeah me too um yeah i'm looking forward to people i don't know i i don't actually know how widespread bonfires are in the u.s but we do a lot in the midwest

and bonfires are a great time i'm excited people to experience that it's it's great love it um yeah so i guess um do you two have anything closing that you want to say and also where can people find this and attempt to go to it and also when is it happening because that's that's another important it's going to be july July 29th through 31st. And attendance is free. There's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're doing a fundraiser through Open Collective. an offer of matching donations from one of the organizers who got a little bit of a chunk of change to contribute to that sort of thing. We're very

excited about that. So if you go on to... You can follow us on Twitter and I believe that's at dualpower22. Let me double check. It's at dual power 22.

Let me double check. I think it's at dual power gathering is our Twitter. And the website is dual, dual power, 2022.org. Yes. Yeah. If you go on the website,

you'll find the links to everything you need to know. You can get in touch with us. You can like, you know, give us your, your feedback. If you love it, if you hate it, if you, you know, whatever, we're, we're probably not going to change the whole thing right now, but show up and we can change it at the time. I'll also say we do have like a organizing discord and people who are like serious about like getting involved and want to have things like want to come to this and with things that they have specific visions for now, it's like absolutely time to get engaged with that because we're like, we're working towards making,

getting people into the, like who are the participants to really own the event itself. So that'll be like, that's something we have i believe we're going to do probably two more community calls one in uh june and one in july every one of those calls has been really amazing lots of great people um and during those calls we're going to be doing some training on because you got to do some prep work when you're doing this kind of like generative discussion like popular education like unconference style um events like coming to them with a little bit of an understanding of what that looks like is really key to uh being successful so um we encourage people who want to come get signed up and then we'll get into our mailing list.

Our mailing list is where we disseminate like when those calls are happening and you can also hop in our discord. And as long as you're cool and agree to our community agreements, we would like bring you in and like get all sorts of shit together. And we're very excited for people to come in. There's still a fair number of slots open for the event itself we're like almost halfway full so yeah i mean definitely we've been trying to think about this as an event that we would want to go to and we want it to be an event that you want to come to

also so help us make it so yeah that that's yeah this is is really exciting. I'm going to be going to it. Yeah. So. Yeah. Thank, thank, thank you. Thank you to both for,

for joining us for talking about this. And I'm excited to, I'm excited to see lots of people there. Hey, I mean, we've all been wanting to see each other for two and a half fucking years. Right. So I miss your,

I miss seeing your face with dimension. Yeah. I'm sick of your flat face. For real. Yeah. Thanks so much for having us on to talk about it. Really looking forward to it. I mean,

we're getting closer and closer. It's just like, it just gets more exciting and also a little nerve wracking but thankfully a lot of people have been stepping up and I'm very I'm confident it's gonna be really like a really great thing yeah and we will we will have

links to everything in in the show notes um yeah this has been it could happen here you can find us in the usual places happen to your pod and stuff all right goodbye have fun it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It

Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your 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 lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite

and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech 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. 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.