Rev Left Radio - The Midwest Left Assembly

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Mel, from the organizing committee of the Midwest Left Assembly, and co-host of Coffee With Comrades joins Breht to discuss the upcoming MLA event!  Learn more about the Midwest Left Assembly, and register, here: http://midwestleft.com Donate to the Midwest Left Assembly here: https://chuffed.org/project/midwest-left-assembly-2019 Follow Mel on Twitter @ColdBrewedTool and check out Coffee With Comrades here: http://www.coffeewithcomrades.com Outro Song: "People" by AJJ Support their music here: https://www.ajjtheband.com ------ LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio

Hello, Hello everybody, and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. All right, today we have on Mel from Coffee with Comrades. If you're a longtime listener of this show, you've definitely heard Mel on this podcast, on our Patreon feed, and on our public episodes many times. And if you listen to Coffee with Comrade, you're certainly familiar with this voice. Mel, how are you doing today? I'm okay. I'm a little tired.

I worked until 5 in the morning, but I'm here. Mel is an incredibly hard worker. All right, well, today we're talking about the Midwest Left Assembly. And this is a big event that the second annual event of this one? Okay. And Mel is on the organizing committee for this event and does a lot of work in organizing it, which is a fucking headache when you're trying to do a regional assembly of different leftists. So just for people that might not even know what this is, what is the Midwest left assembly and what are its goals? The Midwest left assembly at its core is just a meetup of those who live in the Midwest region, anyone who's sort of working on a socialist project at any point in the very large, broad category of what is the Midwest, you know. anywhere from Colorado all the way to Ohio and from the North Dakota all the way down, all the way down, the middle of the country.

Tornado Alley. Pretty much, yeah. Anyone who's interested in sort of helping us build a regional solidarity network is welcome to come to this conference. Last year, Horizontal State Line, which is the Rockford-based group that put together the conference in the first place, reached out to members of the Nebraska Left Coalition and asked us, you know, at the time, if we wanted to help sort of host this conference. And it went really well last year.

And the whole idea is just to have a place where we can meet each other, where we can start to build those relationships in the real, because so many of us work together online all the time, and sort of lend material and emotional support to various projects that are happening across the Midwest. So it's a weekend of camping, taking a break. um getting to know one another sharing skills talking about issues that are important to us and and really getting a chance to meet each other face to face and build those relationships in a meaningful way yeah getting offline and getting in real life and and you said it's camping so

can you talk a little bit more about the setup and what people will have to do if they want to attend yeah um it's located on a remote land trust outside of rockford illinois um it's a beautiful place it's a wonderful place to camp. It's a little out there. I think it's probably about 30 to 40 minutes outside of Rockford proper. It's in this farmland area, and it's surrounded by trees and a river. It's really cool. If you want to come, bring your camping materials, jump in the car with your friends.

Just make sure that you RSVP beforehand. Our website, Midwest Left.com, has the RSVP form. You don't have to give us much personal information. We're not going to ID you at the gate. We just want to know who's coming. We would like to have a general headcount of who's going to be there for the sake of resources because we try to offer at least some food and some other things for individuals who may not have a whole lot to bring with them. And let us know if you're bringing any guests.

Definitely. And we'll get into that later as it relates to safety because that's an important part of this. You mentioned Horizontal State Line. They're sort of the hosts for this. Is that correct? That is correct. Can you say a little bit about that organization? Yeah.

They're good friends with us as I'm a part of. of NLC and we've definitely worked with them and met up with them and went to conferences with them. They're great, great people. Oh, they're so nice. They're so lovely. Horizontal State Line is trying to build the solidarity economy based on community land trusts that are collectively owned housing, community farming, and direct democracy. The land trust that we are having this event on is sort of their first project that they attempted in Rockford where they did some clever entryism onto the board of this land trust now own sort of majority voting rights on the land trust and use it as a community garden in a space for people to meet up and get to know one

another. They staged a coup. Essentially. A slow coup. Well, yeah, it works out. They actually really improved the land and they've improved it for the community to access as well, which is really cool. They also recently came upon some rural farm property and created a farm. And it's been incredibly successful this summer. This is the first time they've done it. The whole group is just working their asses off, trying to create a sustainable ecology project for the community. And they're doing some really cool stuff. A lot of the members are, you know, our age and incredibly well-educated or well-read and, you know, come from all sort of walks of life. And all of them are super nice. Very hard-working, lovely comrades.

I'm really proud to call them true friends. Absolutely. So it's in Rockford, Illinois. Geographically, it is called the Midwest Left Assembly, but obviously if you're a leftist and you want to get out there from anywhere in the world, be our guests. Exactly. We're carpooling from Omaha.

It's about a six-hour drive, so that makes sense for us here. But, yeah. So, you know, don't let that name dissuade you if you're outside of Midwest proper. But I'm sure we'll reiterate this, but what are the dates? So people can orient themselves to this. Labor Day weekend. August 30th to September 2nd. People can start showing up on Friday, August 30th, and we will have events sort of planned

from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday is the second, I believe, when people can either stay to help clean up or head on out. We wanted to try and do a three-day weekend because last year we did it over just a two-day weekend. Most of our attendees thought that it wasn't enough time to get to know one another. So it also helps that later in the summer means less mosquitoes because last year was goddamn nightmare. It was a little too hot. I heard about that, yeah. Yeah, a little too sticky, a little too much deep, but yeah, no, it was great. It was a good time. And yeah, again, that's

August 30th to September 2nd. Really, you can show up any time between Thursday night and Friday. There's going to be, you know, I'm going to be in town Thursday night with my sort of crew of people. Same. I think I'm going to be up there with the Nebraska SRA a day early as well. Nice. Cool. So we'll see each other. And then I'll be picking people up for. from the airport on Friday, so to any listeners who need someone to get a ride into Rockford at any point on Friday from O'Hara Midway, hit me up on Twitter. I will pick you up. I don't care. And what's your Twitter name? Cold brood tool. It'll obviously be linked in the show notes, but absolutely. And yeah, like you said, you can come for the full stay, and obviously

that's great. And if it only works for you can come for one day and leave the next day, that's fine, too. People can pop in and out. It's sort of flexible in that way. You're not going to, quote, unquote miss anything if you don't if you come a day later leave a day early um but just sort of since it's the second annual how did it go last year and uh who is coming this year um okay so last year it was way more informal um we really didn't have a whole lot of one we didn't have a whole lot of time to plan we threw that together in about six weeks i think we got contacted in like mid to late may and the event was like july 17th so we put a lot of work into it but still about 50 to 70 people showed up and camped the whole weekend as people from a lot of like northern

Midwest states. So Illinois and Ohio, Indiana, there were a bunch of people from Wisconsin, us from Nebraska. A couple of people showed up from Iowa, if I remember correctly. And yeah, we just sat around for a weekend and really got to know each other. Everyone had a project that they were working on in their local town. There was a communist versus anarchist soccer game, Shout out of the anarchist for winning last year. Oh, shit. I'm not to change that this year. Yeah. Oh, it's going to happen again. But yeah, we just didn't really have a structure.

We didn't know, first off, the organizers didn't necessarily know exactly what they wanted to do with the event. We did know that we wanted to provide a safe space for people to sort of come and get to know one another, but we weren't sure if you wanted to take it in any sort of direction. Really, this was in the aftermath of Seaville. This was in, you know, a time where a lot of people felt isolated. from other leftists and were afraid of what was going to happen, you know, post-Trump inauguration and didn't really know how to reach out to one another. And so this was sort of reaction to that, you know, and it was a great time. The biggest, biggest, I wouldn't say complaint, but critique

from last year was that there wasn't enough of a structure. So we've taken that into consideration and sort of created a workshop schedule and opened up space for individuals to bring skill shares, workshops and even some bands to perform so that it becomes more of a participatory experience where if someone has something to share that they want others to learn about, they have a space to do so. There's also, let's see what else, we're changing things up a little bit with security and trying to make it a little bit tighter and safer for everyone. And we're also working our hardest to make it more disability accessible this year. We didn't necessarily know how, you know, the best way to do that last year. And after some very wonderful

comments from comrades who didn't feel like they would be able to come, due to a lack of access, we are working our asses off to make sure that anyone who wants to come who may feel that they can't hack it out in a rural setting for various reasons, physical or otherwise, we want this to be a space where you can still come. And if you have any questions about disability access things that are important to you having a comfortable safe stay. Hit us up at our website on my Twitter. We'll leave some more contact information as well on the show notes, I'm sure. And I do want to say, like, you know, the only proper outlet for bitter sectarianism is not on Twitter. It is a friendly soccer game. It is. It is. It really nice. You guys are offering that.

No, it was really good. A lot of people sort of check their ideology at the door last year, you know. People do that in real life. Isn't that funny? They're not assholes when you're face-to-face with somebody. You find ways to connect, not alienate. No, it was really cool. I think everyone introduced themselves in the first night and sort of said, hey, I'm so-and-so, I'm with so-and-so, I'm an anarchist or whatever. And it sort of ran the gamut of various tendencies or ways that you identify with leftist politics.

And that was the last of it. We never really had any major arguments about it. Friendly debates and a little ribbing here and there, you know. but really what it is about is creating an environment of mutual aid and solidarity across the whole spectrum and coming together in our region and viewing the material conditions of our region which are so different from all sorts of places in the United States and finding ways to collectively combat major problems that are only getting worse this year. Absolutely.

So Reve-Left is coming. I'll definitely be there and I'll be there for the entire event. I'll come a day early and I'm pretty sure. pending some other variable that I'll be there throughout the entire weekend. So it would be awesome to meet as many people regionally as I possibly can. But who are some of the musical guests that are coming? As far as I know, and I'm going to get better information, but I'm pretty sure that Neckbeard Death Camp is going to be there.

Shout out to them. Yeah. One of our fine friends on Twitter hosted them when they came through Omaha, and they became instant best friends. which is great. Sweet. Adorable. It's so cute.

The Krusty's all hanging out together. It's super cute. But yeah, we wanted to have some bands this year and some entertainment and a place for the more creative types to have an outlet. So there's some local Rockford bands that have agreed to come and a few other any fascist metal and rock bands that are interested in coming as far as I know. Yeah, there's going to be music every night in some form or another, which is really cool because. you know, we had one crackly speaker last year. We had a, you know, a PA system and an iPod, and that's how we got our way through the weekend, which worked out really well, but live music sounds pretty fun. Yeah, that'd be so fun. I can't wait for that. So what is, I mean,

insofar as it has the theme, what is the major theme of this year's event, and what are some of the individual workshops that will be on offer this year? So the major theme that we really want to focus on in lieu of the dire nature of climate change is eco-socialial. and building social ecology and in the current conditions that we live in. Is it fair to say horizontal state line is sort of social ecologist in their outlook? It is, yes, and it's definitely fair to say that they have sort of pinned in the map their own sort of approach to eco-socialism in a way that makes sense for the place that they live in and they're doing really well with it.

Honestly, I want to get more information about how well this farm project is going. I'm excited to see my friends again. Yeah, a land trust and a farm, and then using that for these purposes. I mean, that's really good practice. Yeah, you know, I think the end goal is to really build a commune on the land trust, which would be perfect, you know. Other, let's see, we have, other workshops are climate justice and a solidarity economy. There's another workshop on religious Christian communism and child care within that.

Trans-Liberation in capitalism. We're also having a deep ecology, grief, and healing ritual inspired by work that reconnects. There's going to be another workshop on fossil fuels in energy and the infrastructure of the rusting fossil fuel industry in the Midwest. This is from comrades from Michigan. And then a journalist who works with Commune Magazine is doing a workshop on the Gilles-Jean. movement, and I will probably be offering my own insights into what I saw in France with the Gile Jones. A lot on the ground in Paris, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That article still needs to come out. There's also going to be an interesting conversation about the Jackson-Cush plan and Cooperation Jackson and more information about just the Rust Belt in general. And then there's going to be, let's see, the next eclipse in the Carbondale Spring. visions and experiments in building the commune in southern Illinois, which I think is Bradley from Horizontal State Lines workshop.

Other workshops that people have been interested in providing have to do with zine making, self-defense, firearms training, all sorts of stuff. Everyone's bringing sort of their own skill share. Workshop registrations are still open until the end of July. So if you are SPP and you want to bring some sort of skill that you would like to share with whoever's going to be there we welcome you please please sign up we would love it that's awesome and at the end of this short episode we'll tell you how to sign up and all of that so so stay tuned if you're interested we'd love to see more people you know participate in this and host their

own workshops it's awesome so during the day you'll have all these workshops uh what did you said something earlier about a possible gun gun range how did how let's discuss on that um so the gun policy for the land trust is uh generally no firearms we don't want firearms we don't want fire coming onto the Land Trust simply because it's a family-friendly event. We don't want children to accidentally stumble across an unsecured gun and potentially hurt themselves. However, we are in conversations with a member of Horizontal State Line who is willing to hold an off-site firearm sort of workshop at a local range down the road and is willing to shuttle

people who are interested in sort of getting a better idea of the fundamentals of gun safety and potentially practicing and doing a range day. We're still sort of finalizing the details of that, but that is one of the things that we really want to talk about. But members of the chapters of the Chicago and Omaha SRA are sort of helping with security this year. So there's a lot more conversation about safe handling of firearms among the left, and we're definitely not trying to make it a space where we don't take that in the

consideration. Right. And I know that the national SRA has, you know, contacted me once before and said, you know, you guys say that you ran security for this event and some of our members are a little worried because we don't want to put that necessarily that optic forward as a national organization. Like, we don't think that we're ready as an org to take on that sort of stuff. So I just wanted to reemphasize that it'll be mostly like de-escalation, just keeping things peaceful and calmful, making sure that, you know, if anybody comes onto the land trust that is not wanted or wants to start something that you'll have a buffer of just good-hearted people trying to de-escalate the situation and protect everybody else.

So I just want to make that clear for everybody involved. But, yeah, we are working with the Chicago SRA, which is going to be awesome to meet those comrades up close and personal. Right. And all of those members who are SRA members or members of other, you know, affiliated organizations that are bringing their own groups to the event, which is really cool. And it's really cool coordination among everyone to try and get this event off the ground. It's definitely been a project that's, you know,

near and dear to everyone's hearts. And we want to make sure that it's a fun time for people, you know, and that they feel safe and they feel like they're in a safe space to enjoy themselves and relax. Definitely. And that's what I think is so important about the stuff, you know. Organizing in your community is great. It's super important. But, you know, the next step is not just a loose network of, you know, community organizations that never meet up, but how can we get a bunch of those people regionally to come together and work together and talk and learn from one another? and that's the next step towards maybe a national movement or some sort of loosely connected national movement.

And so the left is on the rise in the North American continent, and this is a concrete step towards solidifying the ranks, bringing people together, getting offline and not just seeing each other as avatars of tendencies that we disagree with, but as human beings who are ultimately on the same side. So I think that's so incredibly important, and I couldn't make it last year because of a last minute problem in my personal life. But I've been waiting all year to make it happen this year. So I'm so excited to go. Yeah, it's going to be fun. We touched on it a little bit in the last question, but, you know, getting a bunch of leftists together in one spot can raise safety concerns.

I know last year it was sort of in the wake of Charlottesville. And so people were extra sort of concerned about that. So can you talk about the different ways that the organizers of the Midwest Left Assembly are addressing this problem and going, you know, the extra length to ensure that everyone is completely safe? Yeah. One of the main things is, yeah, our firearm policy. Other safety concerns have been taken into consideration that were either concerns that we felt that attendees felt we didn't necessarily handle appropriately. That's not the right word. Didn't spend enough time really thinking about last year. We've had more than a year to sort of pick our way through many of the various safety concerns to make sure that they are addressed

adequately. The website is going to have a sort of code of conduct that I would say most on the ideological left already agree with as just a general way to act as an appropriate human being. Don't be a fucking asshole. Respect other people. Yeah. And that's going to be posted on the website for anyone who hasn't RSVPed yet. You'll get sort of, you'll be able to see that. Also, August 1st, anyone who has RSVP is going to get a copy of like this baseline community agreement. The community agreement is meant to be a space for individuals to have whatever concerns that may not have been addressed in the original document heard and added or tweaked. If you have any issues that are pressing that you think we need to have a conversation about, if you are able to get to the event on Friday evening, before Friday evening, you are more than welcome to participate. The idea is that a community agreement is something that the entire community on the land trust agrees on.

And that these are both guidelines and rules that we all abide by, organizer, lead organizer, guest, or no, right? And we want to make sure that individuals are able to voice any concerns. And then that agreement is voted on and ratified and set up in the clubhouse. If you can't make it on Friday night when we hold this community agreement and you have concerns that you want to be addressed, you can call in you can also email us with your concerns and we will make sure

that they are discussed and if there are any questions about that hit us up we're not trying to be a bunch of you know shitty fashy people

who are like you have to do this you know what I mean we want to make sure that everyone has the chance to participate in what is going to be a community event

right and if you don't give a shit then you don't have to worry about it You know, essentially the idea is that once you step on the land trust, this is the agreement that we all choose to abide by. You know, there are going to be mediators. There's going to be a de-escalation team that is sort of responsible for any issues that may arise while people are on the land trust. We want it to be a space where people can grow and get to know one another.

And if any issues arise, we want to make sure that we can handle them appropriately, essentially. And just to be ultra clear, like nothing bad happens. been last year? No, it was great. Nothing at all. It was so great. Honestly, it's the three or four of us that like spent all our time on it. At the end of the, we cleaned up and at the end, we're sitting underneath this major, big tree in the middle of the land trust and we're looking at each other and we're like, how do we pull that off? How did it go that well? Like, we have such a cynical view of humanity that we thought that something was going to get like shitty, you know, nothing popped off. It was wonderful. Of course. People maybe got a little bit bored, but, you know,

It was just nice to sit around and get to know one another. And the boredom is not going to be present this year. All these workshops and all these live music bands, it's going to be fun as hell. Yeah. And, you know, I've, just for what it's worth, like I've been to many regional conferences of one sort of another, the Marxist Center conference. I went to ProzCon, the Polls of the Roundtable held a little conference, and then I'm going to the SRA convention in Denver at the end of this week.

And in every instance that I've gotten together with a bunch of other left is there has never been a single problem or issue or a person being an asshole, everybody really does respect each other and, and it behaves properly and respectfully, and I don't see any reason why that wouldn't continue. But just in case you have thought through deeply all of the possible contingencies and have a plan for each one, and that just really can make people rest at ease knowing that, even though this is not a problem, if it ever is, there are a hundred solutions to it. And they're embedded into this very organizing project, which I think is beautiful and props to you and the rest of the organizers for taking that shit. so seriously. So how can people register for the event? And this is sort of related to safety,

right? Because the reason that you want people to register is so that we have some idea of who's actually coming and there's also a vouch system. So why is it important for people to register ahead of time? And what would you say to somebody who might be worried about registering their personal information? We're not going to be checking your idea at the door. You know, if you want to put your Twitter handle in the last name section of the RSVP, go for it. You know, we're not trying to accidentally docks anyone, if anyone's concerned about safeguarding their personal information. We need a first name. If you want to put your last name, you can.

And we need your email address so that we can get a hold of you. That's really it. Let us know how many people are going to be in your car. The idea is, is if you're affiliated with a group, then you already have, you know, a crew of comrades who know you and have worked with you and, you know, that can, you guys can come onto the land trust and we know there's not going to be any issues. If you're unaffiliated or if you're a friend of a friend, try to come in pairs, try to come with affiliated groups or just let us know who you know. It's just a way to sort of maintain the safety of a bunch of strangers coming onto the land trust to get to know one another, hopefully leaving his friends.

But we try to minimize the chances of some random person coming off the street, curious about the event who ends up being a bad actor or at worst. someone who's attempting to infiltrate our group. As alarmist as that sounds, we on the left are all too familiar with what can happen when that happens. And I'm not saying that, you know, a bunch of fash are going to, like, wander up and, and try and cause a ruckus, you know what I mean? It wouldn't be smart on their part if they did. No, not at all. As far as I know, like, you know, my comrades working in a fascist activities have heard nothing about this event among Fash Channel. So if that is something you're concerned about, please don't be.

And even if they did, they would have no idea what to do with that information, like, really. But yeah, that's the whole idea. We want a headcount just because we want to know how many people have showed up versus how many people actually show up, you know, registrations versus showups. Because last year, I think we had 120 registrations, roughly 70 to 75 people showed up. It's good to know just to sort of get an idea of how successful this event is and if it's doable for the next year. And it's also good to know if individuals who are coming, you know, have contact information and something pops off where we need to do a call to action across the region, this list is already curated for people, you know, to tap into sort of like a call line, if you will, which is a personal pet project of mine that I think I want to work on more. But yeah, that's really it. It's just basic safety is really what we're hoping for.

So if you are interested in coming even a little bit, you can use a throwaway email. We don't care. We just want to have a way to contact you with important information that we're going to be sending out in the weeks ahead of the event. Like the community agreement, like information about where to park, how to get there, you know, resources that we may ask people to bring, things like that. And so the registration is at the RSVP section of the Midwest Left. excuse me midwestleft.com website um do your best to do it if you're not registered when you show up that's fine um but we really want to make sure that we know who's coming so please do it beforehand yeah yeah and the uh the rsv process is important as well just because as you said it's sort of

in the middle of nowhere and so it's not like you can just like google this thing or have syri direct you to this place like you're going to need to know how to navigate these roads and get to this place. So it's important to do that on top of all the reasons you said, of course. Right. So sort of winding down a couple more questions. How are you funding this and specifically how can people help support it? Because I can imagine lots of people listening who for one reason or another might not be able to make it out to this event, but believe in this sort of regional meeting up idea and want to support it financially. So how can people do that? We have a chaffed page. You can reach it through the donate button on our website.

is also a link pinned to the top of the left Midwest Twitter that's at left Midwest, which I run haphazardly. It's completely donation-based. Horizontal state land does, you know, set aside a portion of their own finances in order to make sure that we have insurance for the event for the land trust, which is the base requirement that is needed to host people on the land trust. I see. And how much is that?

$1,000. $1,000 to insure the event. So funding really helps in that regard. Yes. And, you know, we've gotten pretty far with it, but we're having a little trouble meeting the last of our needs. A lot of the extra money goes towards resources, like making sure that the clubhouse has electricity, for example,

putting a refrigerator in the clubhouse, making sure that anything that needs to be improved upon in terms of infrastructure for ease of camping and safety is taking care of ahead of the event. really all of this money goes towards ensuring that this event has the resources it needs to take care of the people who show up. I will say that if you are coming, it's best to bring your own food, your own booze, bring fire material if you would like. Last year we had a little bit extra working capital so we could really sort of provide more. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to provide as much this year.

so please consider that if you're coming obviously we will try our best to provide a covered space for individuals who maybe have hammocks that they want to hang up or something and maybe a couple extra tents but really we're working really hard to make sure that it is accessible to as many people as possible but the funds are a little low so if you would like to donate please do I've taken, you know, about 10 to 20% of each paycheck for the last six months and put it into the donation pool as well. So, you know, I really believe in this event. And I had a life-changing experience last year getting to know these people. I've gone back to Rockford multiple times since then.

And I want everyone to show up and have the same experience that I did. I would say that this has been the highlight of the last, like, five years of my life. That's awesome. Yeah. It really is that dope, that moving, that interesting, that worthwhile. Absolutely. It's beautiful. I can't wait to go.

And just to reiterate, we will put that chuffed link in the show notes. We will put the website where you can go to RSVP in the show notes. And we will also put Mel's Twitter as well as the Midwest Left Assembly's Twitter, which she also runs in the show notes as well. So any of these things we've talked about so far, if you have any questions, anything you want to do, we'll have all those links right there. Definitely go. if you have a few extra dollars, even one, two dollars per person would help a lot to just ensure that this entire event is insured and this event can really take place. It's a great way to support something, especially if you can't participate directly. So that's where you can find the event. All that stuff

will be in the show notes. Finally, last question, you want to talk a little bit about your podcast, coffee with comrades. How's it going? I know that you guys are doing this episode with the seriously wrong podcast. So I'm looking forward to that. I heard I got a little pre-exclusive sneak peek at one of the uh the skits you guys did for that episode and it is fucking hilarious it's going to be great coffee with comrades is great uh we we cut back our uh content schedule to just every two weeks because both of us are in grad school and i'm going to start teaching soon and our schedules are hectic to say the least um but that's you and pearson yes yeah um coffee with comrades is really just one individual Chris from neighbor science body solidarity goth on

Twitter called it sincere posting par excellence I think beautiful which is true you know we're you know two ideologically sound sort of headed into the anarchist direction I don't think either of us are using labels anymore and all we talk about is things through radical lens really anything we have a lot of really cool people who come on the show just recently we did a two-part episode with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation on indigenousity and decolonization and on rural anarchism. I love that. They're beautiful.

Oh, my God. They're great people. Wonderful, wonderful eye-opening conversation. Our upcoming episodes are going to be on DSA with John, who works in Chicago. He's with the Chicago Tenants Union and Chicago DSA LSC Caucus. and we also did an episode with The Wrong Boys on seriously online leftism, which was an absolute scream. Those guys are so hilarious. They're great.

Wonderful human beings. I love them. But yeah, coffee with comrades is just about sitting down around a table with a cup of coffee and having a conversation. And we try really hard not to take ourselves a little, you know, too seriously. And we're coming up with merch finally. Let's go. Coffee cups? Yeah, coffee cups.

We figured it out. How could you not have there? We figured out how to put a really cool design on a coffee cup. Sweet. So we're working out exactly how to do that without going broke, sending it to people. Yeah, yeah. T-shirts are coming up. Stickers are coming up.

That's always the issue. It's so expensive. Yeah, the shipping is like you can go through third-party websites that you can go to put your logo on different shit and just have them ship it. Right. We've done that just to get by. But I really want to do something similar where we actually send them out. Right.

with like a little personalized notes and stuff like that. Is that what you're thinking of doing? Yeah. Essentially, we're just going to be like, hopefully this is how we do it. We're pretty much going to be thrifting coffee mugs. And our Gonzo Anarchy on Twitter, our comrade, figured out a way to do a sort of like vinyl sticker on it that can then be sealed so that it's microwave and dishwasher safe.

Awesome. And it's this really cool design. I'll show it to you. It's not your logo. It's a different design? It's a different design. It's just coffee with comrades. It's got a coffee cup with a black flag in it.

Nice. And it's really cool. It's so sweet. It's got flowers and stuff. I'm so excited about it because we've been talking about merch for the last like two months. And we haven't been able to figure out a way to make it like economically like feasible so that we don't go broke sending people stuff. Because we don't really care about making money. We just want people to have the merch.

And if we can't even mail it out, that it's a problem. So, but yeah, the rest of the year, we have a lot of really cool stuff. A lot of really cool Patreon exclusive is sort of Patreon first. Rather, we don't really do exclusive episodes. There are no permanent paywalls with Coffee with Comrades. If you support us, it's because you like us, not because you get exclusive. But yeah, no, a lot of cool stuff's coming out. Sweet.

Yeah. So that's Coffee with Comrades. Go check out that show if you haven't already, especially, as you said, the two-parter with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation. It's wonderful. And the upcoming seriously wrong episode, I'm super looking forward to the rest of it. I've heard only one skit. I can only imagine how that whole episode is going to be. especially the topic, the shittiness of online leftists, which is a favorite punching bag of mine.

Yep. So, yeah, so that's the Midwest Left Assembly. All the links are going to be in the show notes. Definitely support it. Come out if you can. Meet me, meet all our comrades. It's going to be a fucking blast. I can't wait.

Thank you so much, Mel, for not only coming on and informing people about this, but for all of the work behind the scenes that you do to make this shit happen. You're an absolute soldier. I appreciate you, man. Thanks for having me on and talk about this. This, like I said, is a conference near and dear to my heart. Absolutely. Please come if you can.

All right. Good night. Good night. People are wasteful. They waste all the food. People are hateful and people are rude. But God, I love some people sometimes because people are very, very special. And people are impatient and they don't know how to wait.

People are selfish. are prone to hate but god I love some people sometimes because people are the greatest thing to happen I said God I love some people sometimes because people are the greatest thing to happen and people are people regardless of skin people are people regardless of creed people are people regardless of creed people are people regardless of gender, people are people regardless of anything. I said people are people regardless of gender, people are people regardless of anything. And people are my religion because I believe in them. People are my enemies and people are my friends.

I have faith in my fellow man and I only hope that he has faith in me. I said I have faith in my fellow man and I will know that he has faith in me. I said I have faith in my fellow man and I love that he has faith in me.