It Could Happen Here - The Man Who Egged King Charles

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Robert sits down with Patrick Thelwell, an anti monarchy activist who hucked several eggs at the King of England and was arrested and charged. TikTok: citizenofearth.patrickInsta @Cosmocracy.EarthTwitter @PatrickEggsKing https://youtube.com/@thecitizenofearthshow  https://www.republic.org.uk   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hey, everyone. Robert here. Before we get into it, I want to note my internet was terrible during this call. We tried to have the guest record locally, but there was kind of a technical glitch there. And Zoom glitched a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable, there are going to be like three or four points here where I pop in and just say what he was trying to say or what he said, and the internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice pops

in and I read a line, it's me reading something that he said that got kind of distorted. I do apologize. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode that is in the latter category about the struggle to makeuck several eggs at the current king of England, Charles the... I forget the number. Patrick Thelwell. How are you doing today? Hi, Robert. Yeah, I'm good, thanks. Yeah, it was five eggs, five eggs, and he's the third king, the third Charles. Third king. We've had far more than three unfortunately yeah you guys have had a few um is was was one of the ones y'all killed a charles

yeah yeah that was the last one that was the last one well yeah but i won't say so let's start by talking about this is in a 20, about a year ago at a, he, he was doing a, they called it a walkabout, which I guess is when the King shows up in a city. I, in the video, I watched the video of this and like, there's a bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes and some ladies got a massive sword, like a sword, a sword of the size that I know for a fact that man cannot lift above his head. Yeah, it's funny. He comes out of his little car and all the little trumpets go. And everyone starts, you know, waving their flags on cue and going like, look, there he is. There he is. Pretty unhinged, to be honest.

It's quite embarrassing but yeah i i uh there's like the um the american chauvinist in me that like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy but i'm just finished reading an article about uh uh diane feinstein where the journalist interviewing her was like so you've missed a bunch of votes over the last three months. And she's like, no, I haven't. I've been working the whole time. So I guess we're all kind of enthralled to the corpses of our past. It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem. So you decide to show up.

When do you kind of find out that the king is going to be showing up here? And what kind of leads you to decide I'm going to throw some eggs in my pocket and take my shot so I actually only found out that he was coming to York about three days before the megaphone and of course obviously

the queen had died about a month or so before and during the funeral processions there was you know several people were arrested for uh someone shouted at um you know prince andrew you know in scotland they were like oh you're a sick old man and they did and that was probably my inspiration but then on the morning um when he came to York, my megaphone was just like busted. So I was just like, oh, fuck it.

I'm going to go get some eggs then. And why eggs? What kind of led to that decision? Man, everyone asks that. Yeah. I guess I was under the assumption that we all just knew that you throw eggs at people you don't like. Maybe it's a British thing. I think it may just be that in the u.s because

of the gun stuff people are like a lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun right if you're throwing stuff at somebody it's serious yeah although someone someone threw a beer at um ted cruz yeah they sure did that was good that was good yeah um i think you know i i actually had a lot of time to think about before my trial about um why eggs and stuff and i think they're just funny you know like there's a lot of egg puns that came out of it uh that that you know not to get too philosophical about it but they're kind of you know they're they're really harmless you know yeah but inherently humiliating as well like yeah yeah yeah it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg but at the same time getting yeah well exactly and i think there's there's something to

be said for contrasting the violence of the state yeah with what's obviously like very low level violence um and yeah i'm the one standing trial for it um yeah i mean it is it is like the the language that got used by the state kind of in the proceedings against you was was amusing like i know that it was a pain in the ass you had to go through but like the the kind of the the framing that they they put with it to make it seem like this was such a serious offense against public order was quite funny. And I think it's beyond me to know what was going on in the now king's head at the time. But you got quite close. You can see right after it hit, there's goop on the ground directly in front of his foot. And his shoulders slump a little and he looks down.

And I wonder if it made him feel bad. I hope it did. You know, I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe he's not capable of that. But I wonder. So, yeah, I mean, I threw five. And I will say for the record that one of them did bounce off his arm. But he does have a force field.

So it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get the full impact but yeah i honestly think he didn't have a clue what's going on he's pretty pretty seen now to be honest um i i yeah but but you know monarchists were like so imp we're like wow look at how stoic he is he just doesn't even care he just shrugged it off he's such a badass and it's like he's just being guided through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's got to pretend that he's you know smiles and waves at normal people and he doesn't think that we're all plebs but yeah yeah and it was the um the the the crowd reaction around you was pretty intense from what i understand i mean like people came after you when they realized what had happened yeah and i think in some ways that spoke more more itself than like anything that i could have done you know the reaction to to the

video you know people immediately just start like pulling my hair out in chunks and just like screaming like you know like just kill him like stick his head on a spike, kick him to death. And you know, and it really, um, I think maybe, maybe that kind of rhetoric is perhaps more like, you know, the, the overt violence is more prevalent in American politics, but yeah, you know, it exposed that, you know, these people are essentially fascists, you know, and, and that they, yeah, they're, they're, they're very, very violent people. Um, yeah, they're very, very violent people. Yeah.

And I think this is something people have are starting to to recognize a little bit more about kind of the most recent law that's gone through parliament, um, that effectively like expands the ability of the police to crack down on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems based on what I've read, pretty credible that it, it basically makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for almost any kind of activism. anyone for almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind of anti-monarchist protesters who were more on the liberal side of things, and you're kind of approaching this as an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters with signs that were saying stuff like, not my king, attempted to rally doing so. I believe their goal, from what I can tell, was to comply with the law as they understood it.

And that did not protect them from the police. No. So, you know, the context is in the wake of the police, there was a police officer, you know, last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah. And in the wake of that, they passed the police court's sentencing and crime bill. And that bill was really like, you know, the most overt crackdown on protest. It banned, it allowed the police to arrest at the discretion of an officer, any process that was deemed potentially uh annoying like that's the specific language is any any any action that could

be loud or annoying so you know there was a there was a lot of protests against that at the time that obviously came to nothing and they they passed the bill anyway and then and then so the public order bill just goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest anyone who might be about to do something that's loud or annoying. And including this new thing called a serious disruption prevention order, which is something that they can apply to someone who is considered an aggravated activist. He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more than twice for protest related offenses? Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the Internet to communicate about your ideas. He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more than twice for protest-related offenses? Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to communicate about your ideas. Basically stop you from attending protests in the first place and arrest you at the train station.

And we saw that in play with Republic, this organization that had been extensively liaising with the police. And know it just seemed quite like pikachu face when suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah but for literally you know no pretext it was they had they had um like 12 000 pounds worth of signs in a van um and they were they were all wrapped up in um yeah just like rope rope and um the the pretext for the arrest was that the rope was a lock-on device that could be used to you know i, I don't know, like jump in front of the procession and tie yourself with rope to the road. I really don't know. Yeah. From what I could tell just from the coverage I've read, if their protest had gone the way they planned it, it would have been like a show, a visible show that there were people who didn't like the monarchy.

But it would not have caused it like they would not. These people were not planning to like burn down any public buildings or, you know, smash car windows or stop a road. Not that I'm specifically condemning that behavior, but I'm just stating this. This was not the state cracking down on people because they were afraid of a riot. This was the state cracking down on people because they didn't want the display of any kind of dissent to exist. Yeah. And, you know, that's where we're at in this country. And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was the best thing that could have happened for the movement because, you know, what it really did was just shine a light that it was impossible

to ignore. And in some ways kind of overshadowed the coronation really was far more than any speech that Graham Smith was planning to give, just so overtly that there is no acceptable form of dissent now. The very concept is so distasteful to our aristocracy that it's banned. And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think it is true. I doubt I would have heard about that protest if it had gone as the organizers planned, right? Because it would have just been, yeah, there's some people who don't like the monarchy in

the UK. That doesn't surprise me at all. But seeing it, it was like everywhere, all over my social media. I got sent it by multiple friends, by a family member, because the state decided to go after these people. And I do think, I think it's also from just a standpoint, when you're talking about a struggle with as long odds as kind of struggling against the uh the the monarchy in the united kingdom which is you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure outside of the vatican right basically yeah um when you're

talking about that it is so important to be able to look at moments like this and see the upside in them rather than just rather than just kind of feel the boot all the time. Otherwise, you're not going to have the endurance to keep fighting. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. 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. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda 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, 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. 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 We'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, for me, specifically with the eggs, I've been conscious the whole time that the backlash and the disproportionate state reaction would speak more than my own actions.

So, for example, one of the reasons why I think it you know, it went pretty viral when I, when I threw the eggs in the first place, um, uh, I was a bit surprised by, by how it went kind of quite internationally. Um, but, but, but, you know, so the fact, so my bail conditions were, um, between, between my arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed to carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so that is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right. I got to know, is there like a provision for if you're going home from the store

or are you just eggless? So the copper who was literally just like making this up at the station says like, okay, so your bail condition is you're not allowed within 500 meters of the king. You're not allowed to carry meters of the king you're not allowed to carry eggs in public and then he

goes like oh actually like what happens if he wants to buy some eggs and then okay so they changed it so it's like you're allowed to carry eggs as long as you're going home from the

shops and you've got the receipt and I think that went more viral than me actually doing it you know I mean like people were like you know that's that, that's Britain for you. Have you got a license for those eggs?

I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway with like a 1940s style shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each arm. Yeah. And so, you know, when I, so I had my trial um you know which was for yeah threatening behavior um that that made someone fear imminent violence um in the wake of that like i was convicted uh i narrowly avoided six months in prison which is the sentence that i thought I was going to get. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so, you know, in my trial, you know, I had the option to either downplay what I did as being like, oh, it's not really violence. It's just an egg. But then of course, you know, legally it was, you know, that just

counts as assault. But then I chose to instead to say, okay, yeah, it was violence, but it was legitimate violence because it was necessary to but it was legitimate violence because it was necessary to resist the far greater violence of the British state. You know, citing the historic impact of colonialism. He's saying current foreign policy, like the King personally negotiating weapons deals with Saudi Arabia. And then also, you know, climate breakdown and the way in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels, global south, like intentionally.

And so therefore, you know, I was basically defending the right of, you know, acting in defense of others with violence. I'm glad I did it. And I'd have done much worse. So in the end, I got a hundred, I got a hundred hours of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away with it, essentially. Yeah. Did you get a, I wonder wonder was it just a situation did you just get lucky with a judge or like um because that that's it that's surprising i'm surprised that like that that worked as well as it did in a positive way i think yeah yeah me too yeah i mean i had a big bag with me with all my like undies in because i thought i was going down you know um yeah and uh i think it was partly yes getting lucky with the

judge partly i think they were in a really difficult position and this is what i wanted to put them in essentially which is the following all of that the the morning you know in the lead up to the coronation there was a lot of of negative press around the king and the monarchy. And they had a choice between either sending me to prison and looking extremely authoritarian and blowing out proportion or letting me get away with it. And I think they chose to minimize the negative press. I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an independent judiciary and there would have been no conversations with the palace and the police about the charging procedures. But that's a load of rubbish. But, you know, yeah.

And so but I think I wanted to put them in that difficult position because I knew that, like I said, their backlash would look worse than what I did. And so when I chose to go to the coronation following my conviction, you know i i had to tell my probation officer look i'm going to the coronation i am going i'm going to peacefully protest i'm just going to be there deal with it you know and uh basically he told me that the counterterrorism department uh had was seeking an injunction from the courts to stop me attending um but then the court had ruled that no i was allowed to attend i'd already been given my punishment and he wasn't going to put any further conditions on me not be allowing allowed to go so so but i knew that if i went to the coronation they would arrest me anyway

and it would make them look bad you know and then they they did you know i was as well as well as all of the organizers um i was there you know just, just not my king, blah, blah, blah. And then I look up and there's a little watchtower that they had erected in the center of Trafalgar Square. And I just saw that there was about seven police officers just all like staring at me and filming me from, you know, like 200 meters away. And I was like, oh, okay, they're going to arrest me now. So I gave my phone and my wallet wallet to my brother and then smart and then within seconds within seconds they were just dragging me out like you know in handcuffs um from the center of a of a crowd of about you know 20 000 people um and it honestly couldn't have looked like more like overtly

fascist if they tried and and that was kind of the point, really. Man, it's such a wild story. But I'm glad you did what you did. I'm impressed by the amount of thought that kind of went into the optics of it. Because it's really the only way to turn an egg into an effective weapon, right, is by very careful planning. I'm kind of curious, what do you see as the route forward for both, not just kind of opposing the monarchy in your country, but sort of opposing the overreach by the police? This is a problem in more places than the United Kingdom, but y'all are kind of on one of the cutting edges of sort of global attempts by law enforcement and its supporters in the state to effectively make dissent impossible ahead of what everyone knows is going to be kind of a heightening period of climate-based activism.

Yeah. And so with the climate activist movement in the UK, we've seen Extinction Rebellion active since like 2018. And I've been arrested multiple times with them at different actions. you know, the part of their strategy was the mass arrests, you know, blocking roads, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience would force the government to take action. And I think really we're seeing that strategy like having run its course. And I think for a while now that's been evident that it wasn't working because they've just banned the types of protests that we were doing. And also, it was essentially quite naive to believe that, you know, if we cause enough disruption, they're just going to put aside all of the, you know, lobbying interests and their literal role in upholding capitalism to just go, oh, no, OK, fair enough. They've blocked some roads we we are going to like radically transform society to deal with climate breakdown um that was never going to work

you know realistically and so so even though you know we've seen every time they pass these these new legislation there are there's a there's a backlash there's some marches there's some protests that fizzle out and the state just keep consolidating more and more power, and people keep getting more and more disillusioned with what an effective strategy of resistance looks like. And so for me personally, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now. recently have is that you know we have to stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local level and essentially you know using like democratic confederalism you know as they do in rojava to to look at creating um a national uh network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside of the state because because because i think a lot of the problem with these direct action movements is that they don't have the legitimacy of a democratic mandate.

Even whilst the tactics might be in some way effective, Extinction Rebellion has always said, our message is to say that climate change is a serious threat, but we cannot propose the solutions because we don't have a democratic mandate. But the way to work around that is to build a democratic mandate through holding people's assemblies, creating forums where people can create their own vision, and then direct action can then be used in service of those aims rather than putting the cart before the horse, if that makes sense? No, yeah. I think that that's certainly one of the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen. We're always talking about an uphill battle here. And I think the inherent difficulty of fixing any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the, and what we mean is dismantling the systems that are causing climate destruction. Like that is such a lopsided battle that I think whenever you present

an option to people, because it sounds hard, there's this tendency to just be like, well, you know, we have to go by the thing that we know, which is just kind of like trying to vote in better people. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturno, 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. 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. 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. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If we can take a lesson out of the last 30 years, it's that the standard electoral methods cannot provide the solution to climate change. Like they simply aren't going to do it. And I think the police in a lot of – I mean in the United States right here in one of my old hometowns, Austin, Texas, they just voted on a police accountability bill that the police have basically said we're not going to abide by. Like this is and you can find stories like that all over the United States and other

parts of the world. Like the kind of the hope that you can just sort of like put in your however long it takes you to do voting in your country or city or whatever, and that that's the method forward. It seems more realistic because it's more familiar, but I think the vision you're putting forward, not to say that it's that simple, but it's effortful. And I think that whenever someone's positing something like that, that requires that kind of like effort from a large enough segment of the population, I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that we can just all kind of keep putting our 20 minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and expect it to get better. Yeah. And it's like one of those things with, you know, like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have week then people say well that's not going to be accessible you know because so it's like well you're right we'll probably have to set up a system of mutual aid yeah that uh supports you

know working class people to be able to attend those kind of events and you know yeah it's like how are you going to pay for it and it's like like, well, you're right. We're probably going to have to, you know, set up a solidarity economy where, you know, uh, if we, if we decide, for example, that we want free public transport, uh, then, and, and, and bus drivers to be paid a fair wage, you know, then you're going to have to look at a whole system whereby people are potentially getting free housing in return for being a bus driver, free food that comes from the local food cooperative, and you're, like I say, building dual power rather than attacking the system head on. Because in a battle, in a pitched street battle,

in this country at least, between us and the police, we're going to lose. And I think that we need to think smarter because at this point they haven't yet made organizing public meetings illegal but you know they probably will at some point and then it's like uh is it the only way we'll be able to resist that is if we've had some public meetings to decide how we're going to do it because at the moment we haven't even had the meeting to decide what our collective strategy is because there is so much uh atomization between between these different like you know uh left-wing like social movements and civil society organizations um and so much sometimes it just depresses me to think about how many people are working for

environmental charities or whatever where all of their work and their research is going towards creating policy proposals for politicians to ignore. And it's like, if you were putting that amount of energy and your enthusiasm in service of the vision that's been created democratically by the people, then we don't need to petition anyone to make the changes we need because we'll have organized effectively enough to do the things that will really challenge state power. For example, like a mass rent strike and a general strike.

Yeah. Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting policy papers on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered was going towards putting forth policy on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered, was going towards putting forth policy that is then being backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes, that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking roads, that's able to actually throttle some of the life support system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not looking at a recommendation, a white paper

that's going to wind up on some bloodless bureaucrat's desk or that's going to wind up getting cut to pieces in parliament. You have something that has teeth behind it, right? The kind of force that might be able to make change. I don't know. Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff, you have to contrast it with what we've been trying so far, which is nothing. Yeah. And, you know, diversity of tactics is huge. And so, you know, a lot of these direct

action groups in the UK, like Just Stop Oil that have been blocking motorways and stuff, have received like, you know, huge criticism, especially from people who, you know huge criticism especially from people who you know really ought to be allies and and at least recognize that the the that this action is coming out of a place of desperation because people cannot see a better way yeah um and and you know there was there's someone from uh just stop oil who just got three years in prison for blocking a motorway um and and that's that's insane you know's insane. And on some level, that person is a martyr and you've got to take your hat off and say, what that has done is shine a spotlight, again, on state authority in a way that if they have these laws on the books,

but they never have to use them, then it's easy to forget that they exist and have that power. books, but they never have to use them, then it's easy to forget that they exist and have that power. Do you want to talk a little bit about Cooperation UK? Yeah, yeah. For me, I'm a democratic confederalist. I'm in awe of the Rajarvan Project, using direct democracy, but also confederating that up to sort of replace the state with a form of governance that's democratic. And, you know, I also, I'm a big believer in cosmocracy, right? Which is the proper name for global democracy. He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about

this while I was doing my master's. And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this system world, we can use the internet to confederate to a global level, you know, and really start to tackle the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which is like the fact that our separation from nature and the rise of fascism is threatening us with extinction. And so, yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and that's what motivates a lot of my actions. But in some ways I've been kind of stewing on these ideas alone. And so recently I met a group called Cooperation UK who are connecting. I can often get bogged down in abstract theory about like how, you know, changing the whole world and never actually doing anything practical. That's my downfall.

But, you know, you need to start a movement like that locally. Uh, and, and, and so they're copying, um, cooperation Jackson, you know, who have been incredibly effective, uh, you know, setting up people's assemblies mutual aid economy in jackson um and also like a community land trust you know they own like like 50 different buildings you know that are used collectively by the community and this group are planning to set that up in hull which is just a city in the northeast that's incredibly deprived it's got like the lowest voter turnout in the uk but it also has a thriving network of food banks and you know cooperatives and mutual aid groups and and i think that the next step for me is when those

those groups send delegates to meet together and decide on collective strategy right like because there are so many people doing so much good work but there's almost like no faith in our own vision which is that if we're the people you know who are say a union for nurses then you know we should be deciding the conditions that exist in health care you know, because who better besides patients and like staff is there to decide the conditions that they operate in. And so yeah, Cooperation UK, there's a group of us that are moving to Hull. I'm moving next week. I'm really excited about it. And yeah, we're planning to set up lots of local neighborhood assemblies with the intention of within a year holding a citywide people's assembly

that can create a shared vision and then potentially, you know, standing candidates for local council, but whose only policy is we will enact, we will give power to the people's assemblies and then they can use the financial power of existing institutions to support the transition to a new model. And whilst they're doing that in whole, the work that I hope to be doing

is document in that process, so people can learn from the mistakes. And hopefully we can set them up in every city across the UK, because there are already people who think very similarly. And we're at a time now where that's coalescing into people recognizing the need for this new movement with a new strategy that's based around democracy rather than just activism. And yeah, it's really exciting yeah i mean that's uh i i think that's a worthwhile idea i think it's uh it's it's uh

bold and something that uh i'm i'm i'm glad to see being attempted um well it's been really great talking with you today did you have anywhere anywhere you wanted to direct listeners in order to help if they're interested in what Cooperation UK is doing? Yeah, definitely. So there's a crowdfunder that I think there'll be, I believe there'll be a link that you guys can access. He says, and we'll be using that money to set up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their local community. And my hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate, you know, we're going to start reaching out to each other, forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing like the mutual aid that we that we need to support each other. You know, for example, you know, if we're talking about Palestine or Iran, um, to provide the real meaningful solidarity,

these, you know, liberation groups will require more organization than just like thoughts and prayers really. And yeah. Yeah. Um, well,

thank you so much, Patrick. Uh, it has been great talking with you. Uh, good luck as you, uh, uh, continue has been great talking with you. Good luck as you continue moving forward. And yeah, yeah. Thanks very much. Yeah. I guess I should also say I'm on, I'm bizarrely, I'm on TikTok. That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish it wasn't.

I'll probably want to start making more YouTube videos discussing these ideas. So maybe I'll send you a link that you can put in there. The citizen of earth show is my YouTube channel. Excellent. Well, uh, Patrick tell, well, citizen of earth YouTube channel,

and, we'll, we'll have your tick tock in the description. Thanks again for coming on the show. Uh, everybody, um, go out and,

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