It Could Happen Here - To Remember Occupy, Part One

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

We talk to writer and agitator Vicky Osterweil about the emergence of Occupy, the 2011 revolutions, and the perils of non-violence Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. And when I say it did happen, I mean, we occupied an extremely large number of places, and we did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways. And with me to talk about this is Garrison, as always. I like that you used the Twitter handle for our podcast, not the actual name, but that's fine. Where can I go for it?

But hello, hi, I'm Garrison. With me, I have my special guest, Vicky Osterweil, who is an agitator, who is a writer, who has done many, many things, probably most famously writing the book In Defense of Looting in 2020 from Bold Press? Bold Type Press. Bold Type Press, yeah. Very good book. People got very good book people got very mad people got very angry yeah thank you it's it's really i'm really excited to be here to to talk about the uh the anniversary of occupy from which is basically you know when i when i all got this whole train rolling so yeah and the the other the other thing um that is that is probably relevant here is that vicky was one of the first people at Occupy.

And correct me if I'm wrong about this. I found an oblique reference to this in one of the things I read. You facilitated the first meeting? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's on the record now. Yeah.

During the New York City General Assembly, it was called in August. There was, you know, ad busters hopefully called for a general assembly. And, you know, a bunch of us sort of went down there and there was a tanky party there doing a general assembly, which was just them on speakers doing their regular ranting. It hasn't changed much in 10 years. speakers um doing their regular ranting um it hasn't changed much in 10 years um and uh and we um yeah so a bunch of us just went and sat down uh you know to the side of it and started an actual general assembly and by by by happenstance i i facilitated that meeting and it was the first and last occupy meeting i ever facilitated yeah okay so i i want to roll back a little bit to just before the start of occupy because yeah the the more i've been thinking about this the more i've just realized that 2011 was just a

profoundly weird time in in a lot of ways i think people have forgotten like the entire american security state is at this point being terrorized by a joint anonymous low-sec hacking campaign called Anti-Sec, the symbol of which is a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask wearing a monocle and a top hat. This was just like normal. This was a thing that everyone was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's the Anti-Sec top hat, troll face guy in a monocle. A full-faced guy in a monocle. Fun fact about that, just before we forget, David Graeber, rest in peace, who was there in the early days organizing,

claimed that he had heard and talked to some of the, overheard the police talking about the reason they didn't sweep the Occupy encampment the first day, when we were pretty weak, frankly, or the first week, was because there were a bunch of Guy Fawkes masks and they were scared. They were scared they were going to get hacked if they attacked. They were scared we were going to get hacked if they were scared we

were going to hack them and steal their yeah so so it was a weird time indeed yeah yeah and i think the the other thing that's you know i think important about this time period if we're looking back at what occupy was is that so this is this is three years after the the financial collapse and you know so i think this is you know in the run-up to 2011 there's been a few there's been a few protests there's been there was a big thing in greece 2008 that was kind of related kind of unrelated but i i think in my sense of you know i was like i don't know i was like 13 i was like i was like an actual baby child but my sense of it was kind of just like like there's there's this like sense that everyone's just kind of waiting for something to happen yeah and it's just like

hadn't and it just like kept going and kept going and kept going and then you know and then and then tunisia starts yeah and suddenly there's you know there's protest in tunisia there's protest in egypt there's like people fighting tanks in the street in bahrain and you know and this this is you know this this becomes known as the europe spring and it starts to spread to a lot of places and vicky i want to talk i want to ask you about this because you you were in spain when it starts started there i want to talk about what what what was going on there and yeah so i i wasn't there when it started. But yes, basically, you know, and I want to shout out, like, there were a bunch of, like, movements, like, in 2008.

Right after the crash, there were a bunch of protests, like, outside Wall Street. They were very small, but they were, like, sort of they, like, produced some images. And then there was, you know, in 2009, there's the Oscar Grant rebellion in Oakland. in 2009, there's the Oscar Grant Rebellion in Oakland, and you have the Madison occupation earlier in 2011, where the unions took over the state house in Wisconsin. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. Everyone does. It was actually really important at the time. But yeah, so I think I'm glad you brought up Greece, because I think actually Greece

really, that sort of anarchist rebellion in 2008, 2009, really kicked off the cycle in a certain way, but also didn't quite, it wasn't quite the first domino. It was sort of moreist rebellion in 2008, 2009 really kicked off the cycle in a certain way, but also didn't quite, it wasn't quite the first domino, you know, it was sort of more of a like forecast. So yeah, so Arab Spring, you know, is huge. It's this huge, huge event. And the US media is loving it

because obviously like these sort of old, you know, quote unquote Marxist dictators are falling. And so of course the US is like all about it, which of course later on the return of the tankies will use to, um, to confuse, uh, everyone on the U S left and destroy all solidarity with Syria anyway. Um, but that's neither here nor there. Um, so then, then in, uh, then in that summer, um, you get this, this wave of early summer, like May and June. In fact, the 15th of May was when the movement started in Spain, and then it starts soon again in Greece. And it was similar to Occupy in that there was these people coming together in these sort of encampments in the

center of the city. I don't know if people remember or know this history economically, but Spain and Greece had recently been sort of going through these like big, big booms, economic booms, just for about five or six years that turned out to be real estate bubbles funded by their entry into the EU. And 2008 just smashed that. And they were just like incredibly impoverished. I mean, like Spain was facing something like 50% youth unemployment. Greece was like similar. Spain has recovered more than Greece has in the intervening years, but it's still bad.

So, so yeah, so you had all these, it was, you know, predominantly young folks who were, you know, had been pushed out of the economy, who'd been pushed out of their homes, whose families had lost their homes, gathering together. And it was all over both countries and it was huge. I happened to just be in Barcelona. I had been on a planned vacation with some friends, you know, that we had planned like sort of six months earlier when it all popped off. And I had also just started my writing, I would say career, but that's very generous. I had started technically being paid for writing things. And they were like, oh, write about it, like cover it while you're there. And because no one in the US was talking about what was going on in Spain, when my article popped up, like, and this is like, this is really strange, but it was like the early days of Twitter as well.

2011, like I guess Twitter started 2009 or something. And so like, so the, the, the, one of the accounts from the camp tweets out my article. So I went there the next day. I was like, I wrote that article. And then I was like embedded for a week. And I was there for like kind of the height of the popular power of the movement in Barcelona only for a week. But I was there on the day when there was a two and a half million person

march through Barcelona. Just like still probably the biggest march I've ever been part of and probably ever will be was like that. And so, you know, so that goes on for, for a few months in Greece and Barcelona, it sort of hits similar limits that Occupy would eventually hit,

which is that like, you know, that, that if you can take the space away from people, that's, that's the common ground. And like, you can't really have the movement without the encampment and also all the way in which the, the camps sort of force a kind of internal naval gazing and people like get really obsessed with maintaining the camp rather than the struggle with the city at large. All of those, all of those contradictions sort of like came up in Spain and Greece as well. But at the time, you know, I was there for the height of it. I come back to New York. I'm like, this is going to happen in the U S like it has to. Um, I think a lot of folks who had been watching felt that way as well. Um, I actually took part in this thing called Bloomberg

ville, which was like 50 people on a sidewalk. It was from Michael Bloomberg, right? 50 people on a sidewalk. 50 people was generous. That was like when we were doing really well. It was mostly 15 of us. It was like 15 of us on a sidewalk in the financial district, like getting yelled at by cops, sleeping on cardboard, Occupy style, but without any attention or solidarity. sleeping on cardboard, you know, Occupy style,

but without any attention or solidarity. And, but because I had been in Barcelona and I still had these comrades in Barcelona, I was like, oh my God, we're doing it in New York. So we had this thing where Bloombergville, which is like 20 people, like got to talk to a general assembly in Barcelona at the height of its power, like on a like internet link,

like a really early internet link, you know? And, you know, so there was all this energy that was happening. And then I think really crucially, the London riots pop off and that doesn't get talked about very much anymore, partially because the UK left really stabbed the rioters in the back during that

and repressed the memory of it largely and have suffered ever since, in my opinion, strategically. But, you know, that was, for in the U.S., that was huge. It was huge watching those riots unfold. Like, you know, again, this was like early live streaming. So like we were like watching live feeds of the riots, you know, which like was not a thing that you could really do without a TV before.

There was just like there was a lot of stuff going on that felt exciting and was really important and inevitable that it would come to the U.S. because things were so messed up over here. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures 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, and digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just

hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 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 Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere

between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think we should talk about what a general assembly actually is, because I think a lot of people are going to have like never actually ran into what exactly is going on or have sort of forgotten in the last 10 years after they've sort of fallen out of favor. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's it was never my favorite either, honestly. But it's a it's a meeting style designed. It actually does largely actually come come from European anarchist traditions from Spain and Greece, but as

many of us know, a lot of those traditions go back further and have crossed the water. General assemblies, actually, there's a long history of them in indigenous communities in Turtle Island, for example. So it's an old meeting style in which the Quakers famously also sort of co-opted it from indigenous folks out here on the East Coast.

But it's a meeting style in which, you know, with the exception of a facilitator, agenda sometimes, but it's basically a meeting designed where everyone present in the meeting has like an equal voice and it's not really designed generally for, um, decision-making specifically or in with like really specific goals in mind often. Um, although there will be sort of like things that are trying to get settled. Um, but it's, it's, it's, it's designed to allow, you know, a very, very multivocal approach and for everyone to sort of put in their, their thoughts and their ideas and often is connected,

although not necessarily, but is often connected to consensus operation where things can't get sort of decided on unless everyone sort of agrees. And in Occupy, that was, the General Assembly was sort of, was a bit controversial because it was just whoever showed up obviously participates in it. So, you know, unlike, unlike, you know, an organizational meeting where you, you know, everyone knows each other and you have to have a, you know, you have to be there with an invite or whatever, you know, whatever cranky wingnut wanted to show up could, and that had pluses and minuses. It was charming sometimes, but it was also very frustrating.

And in New York, where I was, it was made almost impossible to function by this thing called the People's Mic, which I think still happens sometimes. People still have say mic check um and and then everyone repeats what was said but that means that it takes four times as long to talk as normal so when you have a wingnut you know like advocating for wrong paul and then you've got 30 people echoing him every four words it makes it makes discussion completely impossible and a micro history of the people's mic the reason that happened was because in the first week uh in zuccotti park um whenever we got on a megaphone police would come and arrest whoever was on the megaphone because you weren't allowed to use amplified sound in new york and one organizer was like oh no no we can like use the people's mic we can like repeat back to each

other and this is when we they're still mostly like 30 to 40 people in the park at any one time it's very small that didn't feel so bad. But then when the movement really got big, the People's Mic became completely unwieldy and also was a response to a – was a cowardly response to police repression, frankly, and was a way of – so the People's Mic is, in my opinion, a reactionary form. Anyway, that is – so it's been 10 years. I haven't been able to complain about this in like eight years.

Thank you so much. But anyway, so yeah, so the General Assembly is just a meeting forum that often associated with anarchist practice or radical democratic practice in which sort of consensus is aimed for by allowing everyone to speak their mind, I would say. Yeah, and so this I think gets us back

to where we opened this episode, which is AdBusters calls an event with literally no plans to like do anything. They're just like, yeah, everyone, we're occupying Wall Street. And then, yeah, and, you know, as I was talking about the beginning of it, you guys basically hijack. Well, sort of. I mean, so AdBusters doesn't show up, like you said. I've never met an AdBusters person. And it was funny.

We would do jokes about it. But I think it's also thinking about this in preparation for this interview, it's also interesting because AdBusters and their culture jamming is kind of like one of the results of the sort of alter-globalization movement of the late 90s and early 2000s, the summit- stuff, um, the anarchy movement of like one generation ahead of, of Occupy.

Um, so I think it's sort of appropriate that AdBuster is sort of like, you know, was present in this legacy in a certain way. And a lot of those organizers were as well, but yes, I'm sorry. I do. Did I, did I just jump in for you? No, no, no. Okay. Um, the, the, yeah, so, Okay. Yeah, so a bunch of people,

I don't actually know who, calls for an August 2nd General Assembly to talk about the call for September 17th to occupy Wall Street. And at that point, that's when the thing I was describing earlier happens where a bunch of folks, and I really want to underline this,

most of them were people who had been in Spain or Greece. David Graeber was also there. It was like a lot of old heads. There was like a, there was a comrade from Japan. It was a very international crew who had like had experience in these movements over the summer, came and had this general assembly and sort of ran it that way and broke out.

We had, we broke off working groups and then there was meetings sort of once a week, and then working group meetings within that, and general assemblies from August 2nd until September 17th, at which point, you know, Occupy, the date that AdBusters had called for actually happened. So my impression of this, and I was very small.

I had very limited idea of what was going on. The way I remember it in the media is that, like, I had very limited idea of what was going on. The way I remember in the media is that like the media was weirdly interested in it in a way that I've never seen them. I've never seen them cover another social movement that wasn't like literally burning their offices down. And it was like it was like in the beginning it was I mean, you know, obviously the right wing media is is losing their minds but they were kind of kind of supportive of it and i think i don't know what you think about this one of the things that that happens in both in both greece and in spain is that the the the product movement of the squares is these electoral movements and these electoral movements just fail like catastrophically like sarzia takes power like like they they like they they have they have they have a like their their finance minister is a left

communist he is like he is the most far left person ever like the whole office since like the spanish anarchists in 1930 like 1936 and they implement austerity anyways uh in spain you get podemos and it's like well okay you have you know they have this thing called the electoral war machine they're gonna take over the spanish political system and they just it collapses it just doesn't work they've never like they've they've they've never taken power they've never really got anywhere they they they successfully evicted a bunch of squats in catalonia but yeah but and i think this is my impression of it was that i i think the u.s media thought they could they could do this to occupy and and i i think they kind of it was that I think the U.S. media thought they could do this to Occupy.

And I think they kind of – it's weird because looking – so, you know, I come in like to this kind of stuff around 2016, 2017. And I think it's like it weirdly worked, but it worked because they were able to recruit the anti-Occupy people. Yeah. And so it's like, yeah. And so they did finally get their like cadre of like pseudo-left organizers that they could use to build a democratic party. It's just it's like, yeah. And so they did finally get their like cadre of like pseudo left organizers that they could use to build Democratic Party. It's just it was like Jacobin, the whole sort of anti- of Occupy. You know, as you said, Jacobin, a lot of those sort of social Democrat groups. At the time, and those of us who were there remember, they hated Occupy. They would show up, but they like would critique it constantly.

They would write all these articles about how it was terrible, how there were no demands, it was too disorganized. And then I think, you know, when Black Revolt got put on the table, they were like, bring back Occupy, we like that better. But I think to be as harsh as possible. But I think like, you know, yes, there was a lot of media coverage. It didn't feel

super friendly at the time. There was a lot of media coverage. The media was very curious. It was very interested. But a lot of that coverage was like, why do they have no demands? Like, why are they so disorganized? Why are they so smelly? Whatever. Like, there was a lot of slander in the press, but also a lot of that coverage was like, why do they have no demands? Like, why are they so disorganized? Why are they so smelly? Whatever.

Like, there was a lot of slander in the press, but also a lot of attention, which, you know, it turned out was as good as you could get, but at the time didn't feel very good, particularly, I think. Yeah. But yes, those forces were already present in, you know, in Occupy itself, you know, sort of denouncing it for its disorganization and then eventually claiming that it was the reason that Bernie Sanders happened, which isn't totally wrong. I want to be really clear. Like, I think, and I think we'll get into this more, but I think like the thing about the thing that was important about Occupy and the

thing that the people who, in my opinion, like my comrades during Occupy or people I meet who were like doing Occupy stuff, but like who I didn't know, but like now I roll with them. Most of us have the analysis like it was really important that we were doing politics in the street. It was really important that we were back together, that we were talking politics. And then there were really, really intense extreme limits occupy could have done um and i think oakland really pushed those um yeah and and you know and got to those but um and i think the folks who were like no no occupy was good at the time were like occupy is terrible um and i think that's worth notice noting and thinking about so i i think yeah before we sort of go into talk a bit about what happened in Oakland and talk about some of their stuff. So on a day-to-day basis, like, what is Occupy actually doing? Because I think that's also been sort of lost in this whole, like, everyone remembers like the slogans and everyone remembers the fact that there's a thing. But, you know, like there's a bunch of working groups and they're doing things. What was that like, like day-to-day and then on a sort of broader level?

things what was that like like day to day and then on a sort of broader level yeah so so um so first of all again i was only in new york i spent some time at occupied boston as well um but like i don't have a sense of what other places were like so i i really can't i mean other than having heard from people so i want to be very clear that i'm like mostly addressing that um i think the thing that was going on was that zuccotti park like the park was like total chaos. Part of that was because there was a drum circle that basically was going 24 hours a day there, which meant that whenever you were down there and it was like a canyon, Zuccotti Park is surrounded by skyscrapers. So it was just this incredible cacophony all the time, which I think was cool. It really ruined a lot of Finance Bros like, like, like orally with an A there.

But I think like, but it also was pretty intense and unpleasant. Sometimes you were like, please stop. Oh my God. Like that's at one point at general assembly, I think decided that drums were like only acceptable during certain hours, like near the end of the movement,

like the drum, the drum circle got reproached when in fact they were like actually the biggest agents of chaos in Zuccotti, which is another important lesson. But yeah, I think so. So, you know, also because I had been in Bloombergville, because I'd been in Barcelona, I didn't invest myself very heavily in camp management stuff. So I mostly was doing work. One of the things that I think gets forgotten about is that there were snake marches basically three or four a day, every day. After the first week, when we were really small, when it got big, there were just constant,

constant marches through the city, just like always going off. Like you would run in, you'd be on one march and you'd run into another march. On a Saturday or Sunday when people were really out there, it was really like there was a lot of mayhem there would be big planned marches that would then be bigger um so there was like a lot of like um what people now would call direct action what i i would call largely like sort of symbolic practice for direct action mostly um i don't mind i like marches i certainly got my miles in then. I don't feel like I need to do that again. But so then at the camp, people were just living there.

There were a lot of punks, a lot of homeless folks, obviously. And some encampments had more, had a higher concentration of unhoused people. In New York, because of all the media spectacle and all the money that came in, we had a lot of nonprofit grifters by the end in the encampment. But there's also like a library, a free library with all these books that would be donated.

There's a lot of like, you know, political agitation. There'd be people standing around the, you know, the corners of the park, you know, with signs and yelling at people. And it's also important to remember that like Zuccotti Park in New York is tiny. It's tiny. We had originally wanted to do it on this big plaza, like Citibank Plaza. And the cops had heard about that and fenced it off.

So on the 17th, we just like, we just, what's the word? We did a, oh my God, football metaphors. Called an audible. That's why you shouldn't do this. We called an audible, thank you. Yeah, there we go. So Zuccotti is this tiny little park. It's incredibly dense and it's surrounded by, you know, like I said, skyscrapers.

It's in this really weird part of the city that no one would ever spend any time in if they didn't have to otherwise. So that sort of, so there's all this stuff going on and there are all these, there are general assemblies twice a day, which as I said, in New York were particularly unhelpful. which as I said in New York were particularly unhelpful. But I think anarchists in a lot of cities we have talked to, like I had a comrade down in DC, one in Denver, they sort of said that the general assemblies either quickly like got shifted or got, or became irrelevant. I think the general assemblies were not, were not in the end, were symbolically important, but not,

but not really a driving force of my experience. And then there would be, there would be, like I said, there'd be a lot of organizing outside of the park. There'd be a lot of like meetings and, you know, talks and direct actions and marches. And then there would be, you know,

I guess that's kind of the extent of it, right. Is that there was like a lot of direct action that, but there was always this park where you could go and like run into people and like hook up with people, meet people and like do a weird thing. And I think that was really like the heart of the movement was the fact that there was this place you could go meet someone and like link into something weird and maybe cool and

maybe not, it doesn't matter. But like there was always something to do kind of, and it was constant. It was like this sort of 24 hour, right? Like experience. And I think that was really what separated it from other movement waves that we've had since and was probably, I think, its greatest strength in many ways. 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. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough.

So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

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

And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere

between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I think that was the impression that i got and part of this also was when i was in college like every once in a while you just get assigned like some person writing about occupy and it was like most of them were just extremely cranky about the whole thing but sure you know one of the things i think was interesting about it is that everyone seemed to agree at least to

some extent that part of what was going on was that it's it's this way to do i don't know if identity formation's quite the right word for it but it's this way to sort of like rebuild social connections and rebuild like social sort of bonds in a way that just had you know as public space becomes just the cops and right like i there's a table in chinatown that i like call the cop table that i'm really mad about that like like this is in chicago chinatown i would like go there certain from the library and there's a sign sign on the table that says if you loiter at this table you will be arrested it's like this is a picnic table like the cops are you this table is threatening that it is going to arrest you if you use it for what's using you know for what you're supposed to use tables for yeah yeah yeah exactly i know i

think i think that's right i think like it was you know there was a lot, at the time, a lot of people were talking about, um, uh, embarrassingly about heart and degrees sort of like multitude stuff. Um, really a, really a much better book that was important was also, um, David Graeber's debt. Um, but I think like, you know, and there was like a lot of like people saying things about like the Agora, you know, um, democracy, the sort of political, the political and count space of encounter. And that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like, I mean, I'm sort of being a little sarcastic with a lot of it, but I think

like there was a lot of, you know, part of how I think we should understand the over-discussed, under, you know, like over-analyzed word neoliberalism that like has largely become meaningless. One of the things I think is valuable for understanding is a process by which capitalism responded to the long 60s by disorganizing its production process such that the long 60s could never happen again. So the control, the concentration of workers within production

in such a way that they could be agitated by students and then, like, sort of radically unionize Wildcat and sort of, like, almost overthrow government, right? Like, neoliberalism is, like, you know, it smashes the unions, yes, but it also, like, distributes out the act of production, right? So that that's not so easily done. And I think one of the real problems of, you know, that was facing social movement, you know, in the, in the period, you know, the long period, like, you know, you had stuff like in the U S again, this is where I know the best, but like, you know, you have the LA uprising, which is huge. And you have, you know, the, the, the summit

hopping movement and anti-globalization, which, you know, could attack a target. But there wasn't really a sense of like how it felt hard to do a local struggle beyond like literally like a revolutionary riot like L.A., which, you know, you can't really precipitate. I mean, you can't really precipitate a movement either, obviously. But I think like but like a political a political movement, a form of political organizing that didn't require something on the level of George Floyd, which is what the LA Rebellion was,

right? But that also didn't require like an action from capital that you were like striking against, right? Like the, you know, the summits or whatever.

And that, again, all of these eras are very important. This is not to like, you know, obviously like this is with respect for those movements. But yeah, we felt I think it felt like we were in a political wilderness. And I think that that like Occupy really and the movement of the squares globally, I think, really like demonstrated that it was possible to practice a kind of street politics, even without, you know, a shop floor where you can organize, even without,

you know, a capital P party to organize within. And I think that was really important. I think it also scared a lot of people who, and continues to, who are committed to those politics. Yeah. And to the 20th century workers movement or the 19th and 20th century labor movement, which they somehow fantasize will come back, um, if they just wish hard enough and write enough books or whatever. Um, and I think like, um, so I think that was powerful. I also think like, like, yeah, sorry, we can move on to legacy later, but yes, I think

that was like, I think that was very much like an important thing was, was just like, and you know, um, I graduated college in 2009. Um, so I was like part of that millennial generation that like, you know, had gone into incredibly deep debt, like we'd have a college degree and then like the, the bottom fell out of the economy. There were no jobs. Um, and like, I think there were a lot of, you know, like people who like had anticipated a middle-class life, um, of some kind, uh, not that I really had at that point, but whatever, like, but, but a lot of people like in my economic cohort, like had, um, uh, suddenly facing pet, you know, proletarianization. Right. And I think that was one of the strengths

of the movement. I think that was that, you know, like I mentioned the statistics in great in Spain and Greece, like, I think that was a global aspect of this kind of movement. Um, uh, um, Arab spring too. Like there was, there was a lot aspect of this kind of movement. Um, uh, um, Arab spring too. Like there was, there was a lot of like, that was really a response to the economic crisis. Obviously those folks were already more proletarian than the people who, the young people in the squares movements. Um, but they, they innovated, they, they, they created the tactics in Arab spring, right. Um, Tahrir square, most famously in Cairo. And I think like those creating a meeting place where you didn't require a pre-constructed like political community in order to engage was a

strength and a weakness. And I think it also, you know, as a result of the dynamics of the General Assembly, the dynamics of the sort of voluntarist nature of that, what I'm describing, it led to a lot of people who were already confident, who were already feeling good, being able to like take more power, right? Like, and I think it also was a very white movement, certainly in New York, but I think across the country, it was largely, you know, it was majority white in a way that, you know, by higher percentages than any movement that we've really been part of since was. And that was obviously a limit for reasons that will be obvious to everyone, including the idea that, like, a lot of people pushed that, like, the police are part of the 99%. Yeah. Right.

Okay. So let's talk about the police because, you know, talk about the illegalism. Like, that's, you know, that's one of the other extremely important aspects of this is this immense militarization. I mean, okay, so I think the militarization of the police as a phrase, I think, is somewhat misleading in that, like, the cops have always, like, shot people. Yeah. But, you know, there's, yeah's there's there's still like there's an intense sort of ramp up of the prison sector there's you have this intense boom in the size of prisons you have uh yeah you have increasing parts of the economy that are just the entire

towns that used to be sort of manufacturing sectors used to be sort of involved in sort of industrial production that are just like it the economy is now just there's a prison there and right and i think this is also looking back one of the things that look like occupy kind of ran up into because you know occupies this attempt to like you know form a democratic space and it relies crucially on this this thing that is nominally in the constitution but doesn't exist which is the like the the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly and freedom assembly like that is that is like that is bullshit it does not exist if you like if you actually believe that this exists like try getting like 70 people into a space and see how

like just like i don't know like into a street or just just like into like have a bunch of people in a park and just like see how fast the cops show up because you know it's just like yeah yeah first time i yeah that i was i was at any kind of protest cops immediately wanted to take anything i was holding you're not you're not allowed to take the first thing if if you have anything in your hands that's that is a that is a problem yeah it's like the first amendment is just it's super completely superseded by traffic laws like laws about like sidewalk maintenance like not it's it's all fake like none of it yeah like you're not you're not allowed to and this is this i think is is partially why this is kind of a talk

but this is parts i think why there's so much focus on the right about the first minute because they want to they want to draw attention away from the fact that like the actual thing that's fake about it is that you can't gather people and meet anywhere and they want to draw it into these like inane like this professor like said the n-word a bunch of times in class yeah isn't it bad that people are mad at them but but i think also yeah go tying this sort of back to occupy you know okay so so occupy functions right in insofar as there is a a physical location where people can go and physically interact with each other and that's a problem because at some point the police are just like no and they start clearing the encampments and i think this is this is the other thing with occupy is that outside of outside of like parts of Oakland and that's a whole other thing that – yeah, but it's incredibly studiously nonviolent in a way that like nothing I've ever seen before or since is.

Yeah. So there's a lot there. I want to talk about it so there's a lot there. I'm going to, I want to talk about it cause that's, there's a lot. But yeah, so I think, I think the militarization of the police thesis is, is incomplete if you don't also talk about the policeification of the military. Right. So like part of what happens with, with the great expansion of the, of the carceral state, part of that is also a response to the Vietnam war and, and mass resistance within, you know, the troops. There were like, in the last two years when ground troops are there in Vietnam, there's like 1,400 fragging incidents where privates and recruits killed their officers. The U.S. Army during Vietnam

was on the brink of collapse in the way that like the Russian army was looking in 1917. Yeah. It was like, like the numbers, I think, I think so. Number one point there was like 40% of the army by the end of Vietnam was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah, no, it was, it was complete. There was the reason that, that Nixon pursues Vietnamization, which is when they just start doing air campaigns, bombing and napalm is because they couldn't rely on ground troops anymore. They just, they were useless.

They were all high. You know, the talk about, you know, there's a lot of talk about like heroin, but like that was actually kind of a form of resistance within the lines in a complicated way. Whatever. Okay. That's all very, so the military realizes that it can't function as a mass military in the model that nation states have done since the Napoleonic wars, right? Which is like the, the, the right? Which is like the mass recruitment of the citizen soldier. That's sort of how war is fought between 1810 and 1970. And then it becomes

clear that that's not going to work anymore because the aims of the countries and the power of nationalism have become too abstracted. Fascism has done too much damage to that image. It doesn't really work anymore. So the military turns into a sort of what it always was also which is like a colonial policing force and so the police the military drift towards one another in form and function okay so in occupy um one of the micro histories that i think gets forgotten is that like i mean because because it took a week and like who remembers this week except for like weirdos like me who were there um is it like there was no one at zuccotti in the first first week and one of the big things that happened was these these these you know young white girls got caught in a police net

and pepper sprayed and there was this video that went around of them getting pepper sprayed and screaming this particular this woman on her knees you know screaming with with tears and pepper spray yeah going down her face and that really outraged people because, you know, they were, you know, it was police repression and police violence. So in terms of the question of nonviolence, yes, there was a lot of nonviolence. It was a constant fight that took, honestly took until the George Floyd uprising for the right side to win,

frankly. But, but, but, but during Occupy there was, you know, there was a lot of nonviolence nonsense. And I think like, but another thing that happened, though, was that like, you know, like I said, people were marching every day. So even in New York, where I think the political height was kind of achieved October 1st when we took the Brooklyn Bridge. I think I think New York never really like had a big moment again. Like it was largely sort of like smaller things after that but um but like and there was a mass arrest on the brooklyn bridge so we marched over the brooklyn bridge the brooklyn bridge got shut down they arrested 700 of us um it was the

first big infrastructure shutdown that happened in the u.s since the la riots it was it was a big deal at the time now it happens can i put a note out though specifically for the brooklyn bridge if you're because people i've seen every every single time there's one of these movements, people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge and they all get arrested. And it's like, can y'all, like, please, I am begging you, if you're going to try to take a bridge, make sure you have a way out. Like, yeah, you have to hold one of the sides. Otherwise, all of you are going to get arrested.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got to have a way out. A bridge is designed to not have a way out that's how bridges work yeah exactly please please don't all get arrested it's it's in fact bad and yeah sorry exactly i have seen a few people successfully take bridges a few times but that's because there was like three cop cars and like 15 000 people people. Yeah, exactly. If you have like a block with 200 kids, you're not going to be able to hold the bridge. Yeah. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Wow. 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. podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into 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, Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, Apple Podcasts, wherever else, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.