Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 35: Who Are We? (w/ special guest R.L. Stephens)

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

Season finale featuring R.L. Stephens. Enjoy.

Hello, Trillbilly family. Before we get started with this week's episode, we wanted to make a bit of an announcement. As you know, we all have jobs and families and cats and pets and other things, lives outside of this podcast. In this time of year, we like to prioritize those things over our special creative projects, like this podcast, for example. Especially when those projects don't bring us enough money to constitute being our actual jobs. So we will be taking a break. Call it a hiatus if you want, or whatever, over the winter. Call it the end of season one if you want.

It's been a crazy year. We've put a ton of work into this podcast over the course of that year, so we think we've earned some time off. But before we go, we would like to present to you our season finale, episode 35. It's an interview with writer and organizer R.L. Stevens that we really think you'll enjoy so be good be safe

have a happy holiday season and we hope to see you all again very soon now now we cook it with gas it's the best quality Now we cooking with gas. Okay, hold on. This is the best quality Skype interview.

All right, we're in business. All right. It helps. Okay, what's up? Not a lot. I guess it helps having a podcast guest who has also done podcasts because most of our guests don't have mics. So this is good.

Yeah? Yeah. Yo, yeah, I'm in Brooklyn right now, actually. I'm not even at my crib. I did bring my mic, but it is not as good as this one. That looks, is that a sure? Yeah, it's a sure, but it's like the shit, like, only thing I need,

I feel like this is the kind where you can hook the spit guard to it yeah you know just drop some some raps yeah right like like it's like it's uh the basement 106th park in like 2002 or so i missed that show oh man hold on real quick you know get in my zone i was i was listening to tupac a lot um for the last hour just on repeat getting ready for this thing i'm ready getting ready to talk to uh two appalachian white boys yeah that makes sense yeah no this is everything to me right now actually no lie this is exactly i've been laying low um for the past you know a couple months and this is the first media shit that i've done for a minute i haven't published anything since uh

july 30th i haven't i haven't talked to anybody nothing i'm laying low i'm i'm glad you finally decided to wise up and go to the big time what y'all are doing is very significant like very important like we i really want to get into it with you like what how you conceptualize is what you really feel about what you're creating and the conditions in which you find yourselves now and like how like what is happening there you know so let me know how you want to start i picked the wrong day to leave my blue book at home i'll get back to you i'll get back to you dr stevens no man no we appreciate you coming here we appreciate you coming and doing it with us for real we uh we love what you do uh and you know the other day when you were tweeting

out about rural you know i think that's something that i think uh a lot of people in the same sphere we occupy i feel like uh don't understand a lot or don't really i, it's no shade. I mean, I understand it, but I probably don't care to understand too much. And that meant a lot to me, personally. Yeah, it means a lot to me. Part of... A lot to me? Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot to me.

This is fucking real. Yeah. I mean, we about to break into some real shit. Oh, man. This is. I want to hear some stories. One, I want to hear some stories. Because one, I don't think I've ever been to Kentucky for real.

I've been to Tennessee, but I've never been to Kentucky for real. Probably driven through maybe, but I've never been. Right. Right. And the closest I got is that TV show Justified, fam. Woo, that's my shit. I've seen every episode. Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait. Is this shit bad? Is it good? Is it bad? You tell me. Well, what I would say is like Harlan is like the next town over from us. And they kind of made it look like Lexington, Kentucky was Harlan, like the same size i felt right you know what i mean right but uh no it was pretty good i've never to be quite honest with you i've never watched it

um but i do respect i there are a lot of people whose opinions i respect who like it and so i'm still waiting to get into it but you need to watch this shit the first like three episodes are just like it's straight up western shit i fucking love it like they count off they count steps i'm blasted boom because my dad used to like cowboy moves yeah so i used he would have the western channel on all the time so then it but it took all of those tropes and then this noir. It was kind of tight. The shit is kind of tight. I'm not going to lie.

Yeah, it's funny. It's got all these Western themes and stuff. And it's funny because I'm originally from the West. I'm from New Mexico. And I moved here. And there are a lot of similarities and stuff in terms of lack of infrastructure in general. It is kind of outlawed in a lot of ways. So it seems like a show that would be right up my alley. So yeah, I've got to get it.

Walter Coggins has got a pretty believable accent too. He's ill. Yeah Yeah he's really good He's the real deal Boyd Crowder Well RL thanks for joining us Just to all our listeners Who don't know who RL is Although I'm sure there are very few of them

You write for Jacobin You you've written for Viewpoint, you can be found on Twitter at RLisDead, that's your handle. I really like, I was telling Tom that I really wanted to have you on for like a Halloween special, so we could do like a RL Stevens, sort of like RL Stein type thing.

We were going finesse and we didn't know what it looked like and we were too embarrassed to ask you quite frankly but yeah that'd be tight man i was i've been um i've been traveling i just moved to to small town texas to a town called brian texas which is outside a college station uh texas a&m which is where yeah a&m is and uh yeah it's uh so this whole con you know conversation that i've started having like i mean it's like real life to me now like it's not just in the abstract like i'm looking at how do politics play out in this context and who is here you know like our conception of who lives here and what they're like and it is not reality you know um and uh i've been challenging myself over the

past uh year or so to really think through who who is we in a sense like if we articulate if we are articulating and reorganizing and committed to a movement to build a new society who are we then not in the future but i mean now right yeah like what is happening what are the moves happening what is what is the nature of like class society now and who's living where and how is that how are the constraints of of uh the present like like hierarchy how is that reconfiguring people like i think this really started in 2015 with that uh dylan roof shooting at the at the church and then they had this interview and i don't know if whether it was real or not or what but like they interviewed this black kid that lived with him i was like what like what is

this that's interesting i didn't know that you didn't see this yeah see i don't even know if it's real or not i'm assuming it's real i it's probably real because like later on he was like i never talked to black people like you're lying you're fucking lying like i i uh. I don't know. It's that. It's Ferguson. It's Charlottesville. It's all of these places. I mean, obviously, they're all very different spaces.

But all these marginal spaces have been the anchor points for major disruptive you know explosions in this in this country over the past few years and i don't think that's a coincidence given you know this is the flip side of gentrification and the like like where what is happening socially what is the motion going on and where are the sites of struggle they've always been there you know they've always been significant but now that there's a a recomposition of things where the suburbs is where you don't want to be like in many cases uh like in in uh i used to live in dc when i was going to law school out there like yo pg county was not where you were trying to be like it was but like where people are uh has

as far as like where the needs are where the dislocation is, where's the decay? Where's that, you were saying earlier, the lack of infrastructure and services? What's walkable? You know, like I was in Houston. I was like, dang, they got white people living out here with no sidewalk. What is this? Like what kind of place is texas like i was i was it's just a ditch like they don't like is brian a pretty rural place i mean it's a

small town so it's just outside of uh outside of college station which is where texas a&m is yeah and i moved there because you know I'm dating somebody special and whatnot. And she's a PhD student at Texas A&M, you know. So I was like, hey, I'm tired of this long distance thing, girl. I'm ready to get real. You know, I had to put on that, you know. Yeah, you know, I had to put on that brother love voice real quick. Like, hey, you know what it is. Because, you know, like that's put on that Brother Love voice real quick. Like, hey, you know what it is.

Because, you know, that's Puff Daddy's new name now. Are you ever going to refer to him as Brother Love? I will call Puff Daddy Puff Daddy until he tells me to call him Brother Love. Because just the fact that I'll be in the same room with Puff Daddy is enough for me. I'll just say his name and then he'll get mad. And I'll be like, okay, it's cool, Brother Love. I'm sorry. I just had to say it.

But I am fully down with calling Puff Daddy Brother Love if that means that we get to be friends. Like Puff Daddy, Puff Daddy went to the UK, right? And he was about to buy a sports team because Puff Daddy really wants to buy a sports team. I'm sorry. Brother Love really wants to buy a sports team, right? brother love really wants to buy a sports team right as one does so brother love gets out there right and he's like hey let me get the most ballerist team possible he doesn't try to buy a chelsea he doesn't try to buy manchester united no he looks to try to buy a team called crystal palace because he thought that shit was exclusive. Crystal Palace.

That's the team that Puff Daddy wanted to buy. And then he got there, and Crystal Palace is in the hood. Like, this is the hood team in London, okay? He got there. He was like, fuck this shit. This stadium is terrible. He didn't want the hood shit. He thought it was Cristal.

He probably thought it was Cristal Palace. Right. It's a true story. Facts, B. Facts. He probably thought it was Crystal Palace. It's a true story. Facts be facts. But no, Bryan, Texas, like, yeah, it's more diverse than I thought it was going to be. Like, when I first went down there, I was like, yo, I went to visit her and I was like, oh, snap. There's going to be black people around here.

I'm sweating. Because, you know, I'm scared of Texasxas no lie i'm not gonna lie like texas if you're from the north like you're told do not go to texas like don't you you're gonna die so i get out there right and we're we're going to the grocery store i go into the grocery store i'm like shit man what's going on and then i look i see brothers with dreadlocks i'm like i'm home i'm safe i'm good okay and there's actually it's like majority black and latino like the texas the demographics in texas are quite interesting like the way it's a segregated state but both like residentially as well as politically as far as the representative government gerrymandering and all of that. But the actual demographics,

it's far more diverse than I had anticipated, even in a quote unquote rural or small town context, which is something I wasn't prepared for. And that's really, visiting there and like checking it out over the past few months has been something that has, you know, forced me to rethink who is the we that we are fighting to become,

that we are right now. Who are we trying to organize? Who are we trying to bring into the... Who are we trying to make the bedrock of this society that we want to, that we say exists, that we say we want to bring into meaning, like into meaningful, into a meaningful political reality? Who is that really? really and uh you know this this has been a journey for me to to rethink that and to and and and to begin to really question what is political leadership really um given like like what what is like what is what is what is incarceration in Kentucky for example you know like this is something that intrigues me like where the majority of the

prisoners are white yeah you know like you have both like the the demographics of kentucky like in prisons right you've got black people are eight percent of the population but they're 29 percent of the prison population okay so you got a racial disparity cool we are we are aware that racial disparities are typically how we measure racism in this country so all right you got a racial disparity cool we are we are aware that racial disparities are typically how we measure racism in this country so all right you got a disparity but at the same time 64 66 percent of the prison population in kentucky is white right and that's so that's a still a strong majority even though it's not you know consistent with the civilian population which is 86 white that's still a ton of people so many people in fact that if kentucky were a country it would have the seventh highest incarceration rate in the world that's wild it's fucking wild yeah we it's this is a topic that's kind of, you know, kind of, well, it's topical because in the county we live in, Letcher County, is the only proposed federal prison in the federal pipeline right now that they want to build here.

And it would make the eighth in our congressional district which is also as terrence mentioned the poorest in the country like dead last in every quality of life measure whoa whoa whoa y'all got eight federal prisons in your district they're not all federal they're not all federal we have like yeah four i think this would be the fourth federal prison i believe in our congressional district and then we have um yeah it's it's been a sort of like very slow and incremental but you know there's this huge rural prison construction in the 90s late 90s and early 2000s well as mountaintop removal um you know advanced and um you know as that mechanization happened more people lost jobs but more but more land was created for development.

They started using prisons as a sort of economic transition for a lot of these rural communities. For folks that don't know, mountaintop removal, coal mine is when they just blow the mountaintops off to get the coal out. Right, right. And so, yeah, there was a huge prison boom in the 90s and early 2000s. And, you know know it's not just eastern Kentucky and you know southwest Virginia you know there's a lot of places you know where I grew up it's everywhere every state yeah yeah like no but you were saying we're in New Mexico I want to hear this what New Mexico how are they doing it how are they how are they uh doing what

exactly uh building prisons or yeah where are they where are they what what exactly? Building prisons? Yeah, what's it look like there? It's all rural or is it suburban? Where are they putting them? And are there fights over building them in your area? What's it look like? Yeah, no, actually in New Mexico it's really fucked up because the prisons that they're building in those areas are mostly used, they're building in those areas are mostly used.

They're private prisons and they're mostly used to put immigrants in undocumented immigrants. And a lot of them, it's really, you know, it's really fucked up because a lot of them house children. They put children in these things. You know, they're locking kids up. And it's big. You know, that's that's also the thing in Texas. And it's interesting that you mentioned that's also the thing in Texas. And it's interesting that you mentioned that about like the demographics in Texas surprise you.

I mean, honestly, you know, and I'm probably just preaching to the choir here. But, you know, the masses in a lot of these places, I think, are much farther to the left than the people governing them um and you you almost have a very autocratic situation because places like texas are so gerrymandered and now kentucky and depending on who wins the governor election governorship election in virginia a lot of these places they're so fucking gerrymandered that um yeah people there is no representation you know people actually they're they're far they're much farther to the left of the people governing them but they have absolutely no um vehicle or way to challenge that is the challenge now that's what excites me you know like that when i've been questioning what is political leadership it is to answer that call

is political leadership it is to answer that call like that that is that is what we are trying to do you know like like we have an issue where the the language or the articulation put forward by the so-called left has no basis in reality that we especially what we just talked about right like the reality is across this rural urban division we have to confront that to even dig at this issue of prison because the prisons that are being built are out by y'all, you know? And so they're taking these people either from like the now like a Ferguson situation or but traditionally like the urban core and transporting them to upstate new york or whatever like and this is this is the economy the circulation of it so how do you measure the racism is it merely in the disparity between eight percent and twenty nine percent or do you look at the economy of of the the the trafficking of these people and that the the the separation the the brutality waged against them, and the containment mechanisms that are created

to put these people in these spaces. And where are these spaces, you know? And like, how do we organize in such a way that attacks both contexts, you know? Because those are the divisions. So like, if you say, we want to cut prisons, right you don't do and you don't lead across these this division of rural and urban then you're saying then they can go out to the to the rural area yo they're about to just cut your jobs it's a wrap and you have no mechanism to engage these people no not just not just in terms of organization but i mean a political horizon in which they constitute the we that is the that that is the vehicle though who gets to be politically heard and relevant and can and and they and they subject in the political order that is the that is the principal

question that we have to ask and like that's what's mind-blowing. What does that mean? What do I mean by that? That's just a lot of words it could seem like. What I mean is you're talking about when the left talks about prison, they say it's black. But when we've had this conversation just now, we've said it's black. It's undocumented immigrants, which are all kinds of people um it's white people in these rural areas who it's it's all none of this is you cannot essentialize

it in such a fashion you have to tell the truth about how this society recomposes itself which racism is a component of it for sure but the way that we talk about that racism doesn't actually capture the motion of all the people which are all involved in it you know across all of those divisions racism is relational it's not static and and that's that's the issue yeah no that's an interesting point and um and it actually gets it something that you've written before um i think it was in the jacobin article about walter scott about um about how i think what you said was racism is is uh class politics in motion um and i thought a lot about that like when um when what you were

just saying is that how um if we're not rooting these discussions in political economy, then yes, then it does lead to essentialization. You know what I'm saying? I guess that's kind of the that's kind of my takeaway from that. Yeah. I mean, I've been exploring what I just think, yo, I'm gonna keep it real. Like I kind of see sometimes when I'm writing things, like I feel like a rapper, like racist class politics in motion. I know what I know what I'm trying to say with that, but I mostly like it because it sounds hot as fuck to me. Like I think that's like a ill line. Like when I wrote that, I was like, boom, racist class politics in motion. But what does that mean, dog? Like, what does that really mean, you know? And that's the struggle that I've been engaged in

intellectually, politically, is what do I mean when I'm saying that, because that article was an attempt to articulate a class-based understanding of racism, because I believe that breaking these things apart is dumb. Like, I'm saying, saying like what is class society if not for the subjugation of women? What is class society if not for the oppression, the national oppression of black people? How does it work?

Like I'm not saying that it's always the case all over the world that that's those are the terms not necessarily i mean the question of women that's a different you know i think yeah but when we're talking about racism like these the the national oppression of black people in this country is part of the recomposition of class society and like my my beef with how we talk about these things is like if we separate if we separate it out as being special and I don't mean special as in terms of significant I mean special as in peculiar or distinct you you can't do that because it's relational because without like what is the transatlantic slave trade without feudalism in Europe like like what is the transatlantic slave trade without

feudalism in europe like that that is the context from which this shit emerged so how do you be you cannot separate it you cannot treat it as as as as independent and and and so the struggle for me is how do we talk about that in the here and now how and how do we do so in a way that articulates a vision that allows us to be bring forth to speak into existence new political identities that say no i'm not that i'm anti-racist and then have an argument over like what you know who's the real anti-racist no like like no i don't want to have that argument you know what i want to have i want to speak into being a new political reality with whole new subject positions that contest fundamentally what it means to be a human participating in this in society like that's what i'm saying so like

was heather hayer for example like i went out to char Charlottesville the week, like a few, a couple of days after the attack happened. Right. Is Heather Heyer an anti-racist? Like, who was she? Really? You know, we have this white woman who graduated high school, didn't go to college, had low self-esteem, didn't really believe in herself. Struggled. She came out of a trailer park.

Okay. struggled came she came out of a trailer park okay she she she was a bartender and then she she talked to this guy and she the guy was like yo you should become a paralegal she becomes paralegal at this firm that has a lot of black people in it she had a lot of black friends she breaks up this was spoken at the memorial for her i don't know if you all heard this but she meets with her boss after work late at night and her boyfriend's in the car he's white she says bye to the boss and they hug each other she gets in the car the boyfriend's like who is that you have a black boss something like that she breaks up with this dude that night dumps his ass is she is that did she like give i'm an anti-racist like what is this really like what is going on you know like what what did that

the the language the what i was saying like the articulation of our concepts and and and and subject positions right now is so out of out of touch with what what the terms are in life where you were saying earlier like how what are the vehicles for our for for mobilizing a different politic well i say that that different politics starts with a different language and a different political leadership on what the problems are and number two who we are yeah and now right now who we are is totally locked into this kind of false conflict like between like a a neoliberal order that in no way will pose a legitimate uh resistance and and and threat to a rising fascist tide globally where resources are are being being fought over i'm talking about water and stuff like there's this capitalist class thing is in crisis globally on multiple fronts and these basically you know we

got donald trump in there fiddling okay the political class is in total disarray and who who will we be meaning more specifically who will step into the void? That's the socialism or barbarism question. But it's anchored on us now. But you're right, and you've mentioned this before. It's about building capacity for the poor and dispossessed to actually run society like that's what we're talking about here yeah you know and it is sort of in and again you said this before too and i think it's actually topical because you know we're a year out from the election uh literally a year um and we're

having this gubernatorial election in virginia and this, you know, it's almost myopic to say, like, Bernie would have won. You said that yourself. Because, like, that's not even what we're, what's at stake here. That's not even what the issue is here. The issue is, like, we're trying to get to, yeah, we're trying to get to a situation that the poor and the dispossessed and the marginalized can actually challenge this, yeah, the oligarchy and all this. Not just challenge it in the streets and in the workplace,

but run a society. You know what I'm saying? Allocate resources, distribute resources equally with justice and all these other things we talk about. equally with um you know you know with justice and all these other things we talk about yeah i think here's you know i'm rethinking everything right now you know i so bernie sanders wins this is obviously like an insurgent campaign i think like yes there is corruption but number two like strategically it was going to be very difficult for him to win. And I think the campaign was structured in a way that limited his potential. Like not just because the DNC was corrupt, but also, you know, the way that his campaign was structured. And particularly in the South, particularly in place in all these different types of places. And that we tend not to think about, you know, these places that we tend not to think about, these places that we tend not to engage.

But my criticism of the Sanders phenomenon and its limitations does not mean that I don't think that it's part of the elevation of the relevant question of who are we as a people and who gets to participate in not just the the leading of society and at a point in the future but in the now because that is what the nazis are putting forward and sanders allowed people to articulate themselves in a different way particularly a class of petty bourgeois and i speak as a self self-identified petty bourgeois

motherfucker so it's not i'm not trying to diss but this is significant in that this layer which constitutes a major element within dsa for example of which like i'm a i'm an elected leader it allowed a different a distinct articulation of self. That's what created the waves in the DSA. It's not that DSA organized to create this bump before. No, it's that Sanders created a new articulation, which has found a home in this organization in part. And I think the challenge for us now is, okay, what does this mean going forward to prepare not just for a social welfare state, some sort of Keynesian model, but for the question that you're bringing up right here, who gets to lead this society? And on what terms and into what future? I want to fight for the future. So when I say that Bernie Sanders is looking at Bernie would have won is myopic. I'm not fighting for the past. I'm fighting for the future.

Based in the now. Okay. And what is happening now? Our members got hit by a by the car of a fascist in August. I go there. I see real trauma in the aftermath of a fascist terror attack. That's what I saw. People were shook to their cores. And yet, the example of this woman, Heather, allowed through the memorial in particular, people to articulate a different who we are that was what was happening in the demonstration it wasn't it wasn't a protest this is a demonstration

of power against the demonstration of power by the nazis the nazis came through charlottesville walked through the university of virginia with the torch lights friday night they tried to kill people that night in charlottesville virginia on the night, they tried to kill people that night in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the college campus. They tried to burn people alive, okay? This is what people told me when I was down there, right? And Saturday happens where they face off against them in the streets. These are violent clashes with the new articulation that this shall not stand, right? Now, there was a huge coalition of people. It wasn't just like anti-fascist per se or like the activist class, but it was also like people who lived there, like in Charlottesville,

who were like, this is not the town I want to be part of. There were also people from the projects. My favorite story from this whole thing was the Nazis tried to run into the projects. And gangbangers were like, nope. And they pulled out the yapper and they said, y'all are not coming in here. And they were reinforced by protesters,

like demonstrators. So there were unarmed people facing off against armed Nazisis police not doing shit okay and that's who prevented the nazis from going into this project um and and messing up the people and but here's the thing and this is this is the challenge right so we have established who we are being meaning we will not allow overt fascist uh action to take place on the streets in a in a demonstration and what that means is we won't let you run up in the projects on some race war type shit okay cool excellent this is great but this same project has been set aside for redevelopment into like mixed income housing

which is gonna gut the poor people that poor black people that live there yeah and it's all authorized by the city and the police so who are we really so fascists run in, that's bad. The cops run in to evict all these people. That's okay. That's the question that's on the table now. Because especially relevant when you have a Donald Trump in office, when you have proto-fascists making waves in the representative government, which is what is happening in Europe, in a in the representative government which is what is happening in europe in in germany in particular all over the place the far right fascists are achieving legitimacy

at levels that i have not seen in my lifetime so who are we going to be yeah and it also happens when um you have a democratic party uh sort of that because it can't take a firm stand against any of this like the evictions the mixed income housing all this that you're saying that creates a window for the fascists to implement their vision of the world. And so, yeah, it redefines, it should be redefining for anybody who calls themselves an activist or a leftist or wants to see the world a better, more egalitarian place, it should be redefining their conceptions of who they are. In terms of, do I want a future that works just a little bit nicer, that is just a little bit,

you know, the banks are just a little bit nicer, and then, you know, we redistribute income a little, or do we want a total upending of the order and and and having the poor and dispossessed and et cetera running society? And, you know, we're 100 years literally this this week. We're 100 years out from the Bolshevik Revolution. And I think it's a it's a it is a question that is. I'm glad you brought that up. Let's talk about that for like a second. Like, yo,

what are we trying to do here for real? Like, who are we trying? Like I said, who are we trying to be? Because like, I mean, yo, there's so much to be said about that particular issue, but let's set it aside for a moment here. Walk with me here for a second. Why I keep bringing up who are we, right? And I'm talking to two white boys in Kentucky, right? And I'm telling, I told you before we started recording that I think what you're doing is the shit, okay? Part of, here's part of why though, right? Part of why I think this is incredible goes back to uh like i i don't want to just

criticize so-called um identitarianism which i think is is chauvinism essentially like i think we use the wrong language to talk about this stuff like we shouldn't see identity politics whatever actually it's just like chauvinism like this concern for yourself and like you know this essentialism and blah blah blah so what does because it doesn't leave us with a a definition of self a political subjectivity that is capable of standing and rising to the challenge of the crisis in society both now and in the future and what i mean by that is look at who can white people be under the current, as we articulate political subjects now, who are they able to be? And this movie came out like last year, The Free State of Jones, right?

And I thought, I haven't seen it. Shame on me. I haven't seen the movie. I've been reading articles about it. I ain't watched the shit. But the Matthew McConaughey movie, right? the matthew mcconaughey movie right in alabama jones county you know all this stuff this this cross cross-racial uh uh alliance and rebellion against the you know it's these confederates and you know blah blah blah it are here's what i found was interesting though not from the this isn't a

commentary on the film itself but rather in the the circulation of the film and how it calls to question this this idea who are we so allowed, there was an article that came out and there was this white man in Alabama who said, I fucking hate being from the South and a white man. What do I have to be proud of for real? And this movie for the first time in my life gave me pride in being white and from the South on legitimate grounds.

Like this is who I am right here right it this movie opened up space for him to think about this question and what i'm saying we need to do politically is provoke the same kind of space which is not what we're doing now because like look look look look lookity lookity fucking look the reality here is white people are the majority the other reality is petty bourgeois layers are essential for any revolutionary movement period you even want to look at the the black ones who is tucson lovator fuck who is nat turner the motherfucker could read as far as the slavocracy goes, he's up there. He was in the house, okay? Like, he could read. So this, pause for a moment. This is one of the things

I don't like about Malcolm X. Like, I love this dude. Love him. But when he talks about the field Negro and the house Negro, and he, I'm like, yo, the motherfucking house slaves was killing crackers. What are you talking about? Nat Turner was a house slaves was killing crackers what are you talking about nat turner was a house slave like what are you doing anyway what what i'm saying is what i'm really saying here is that the when we get revolution when we get this this thing that allows for a different leading a different constitution of society are we fighting for the political order of the u.s constitution or are we fighting for something else who are we as citizens what does that mean like when we put that question to the test really why people do some interesting things so like john brown for example i was talking

i was talking to a homie i'm here in new york talking and and really like just training up i've i've i'm rethinking everything right that's why i was really excited to do this interview with you because i'm in a new position now i'm thinking this is this new shit i'm on a new level like future and asap ferg i'm back in the game i'm ready to go let's get it okay because this is what i'm thinking now man i'm fucking my mind is open i'm thinking new thoughts john brown right what what is happening in kansas at time? Free soil movement. This is fucking settler colonialism. John Brown is a settler, white settler. But he believed that black people were what?

People of God just like him. He was not some Marxist. But he was a revolutionary. And what made him a revolutionary? What created him as that political subject that took him from a mere white settler, you know, fucking devil cracker, Yacoubian. Like what took him from this shit? Melanin challenged and made him into a revolutionary who went to war before the state even would against the institution of slavery. That's what we're talking about here like how do we create these subjects that see

themselves not as what the system ascribes them to be white settler or petty but you know but but but choose to varying degrees on the spectrum so you have the john brown example you also have the lincoln example who chose to identify the way that his father treated him in and made him work for free and said what the fuck how could you exist this shit was shitty for me working for my daddy for free who kept all my motherfucking money imagine being a fucking slave fuck this. This petty bourgeois motherfucker says this, right? Now, if Abraham Lincoln were today comparing like working for free at a law office or whatever to slavery, he'd get ripped to shreds.

This shit would not be allowed to be discussed, right? But this motherfucker sent Grant and Sherman to get them boys and burn this motherfucker to the ground, which is the only reason why I'm sitting here able to talk to you today. Fuck this shit that's going on right now. I want these new subject positions. I want to know who are we. Okay. I want to open up what is possible politically for this petty bourgeois class like myself like y'all like

who are we going to be and how are we going to be in solidarity with the poor and dispossessed moving in a revolutionary motion and that's what the bolsheviks answered yeah right yeah that's what that was about who are we and that's why they put a bullet in the back of rose's brain and carl and motherfuckers don't want to talk about this shit but we need to be real about what this sock them social democratic stuff can be what this can look like yeah we need to be real yeah what what are we who are we that's what i'm saying that's the question you know because people don't like when i talk this shit they don't like when I talk this shit. They don't like when I talk this revolutionary shit.

But I'm not hiding that shit. Because what you said was the masses of the people, right, are to the left. Not just of the people governing them in a formal capacity, but to the left of the people who say that they are the champion of the marginalized and oppressed. They're to the left of them. But how do we create this new, how do we provoke this new subject position, this question of who we are? How do we create more Heather Hayers, more Trayvon Martins, more people that actually take a stand right now. And through that, bring into, provoke a new, new world. That's what these people did. Trayvon was just a little boy who said, what you following me for?

Pow, you know, pop this fool. But yet, the way that we choose to remember him is as a kid that was just totally passive. Victimized completely by George Zimmerman. Never took a stand. No, fuck that. Trayvon Martin went out on two feet. Trayvon Martin resisted. He fought.

And it's important to recognize that. Why do we have to present black people as dead? Especially men. Why do they have to be dead to be respected or worthy? And then even if the circumstances of them dying is such and what is it like in trayvon's case he resisted and he was murdered like why do we have to erase that resistance who are we or as you've written before if not dead inanimate like uh yeah you know as as bodies or whatever. Yeah, the coats thing, yeah.

And, yeah, no, it's a rhetorical issue, but it does hint at, yeah, the way we've sort of situated these people in the political economy itself. Who gets excluded, you know? And like, so that's what I'm saying when I'm talking about this social, so part two, I was supposed to drop part two of this article, right?

And it's been very difficult for me to write because I lacked this degree of political clarity to articulate exactly what is the positive vision that I'm laying out. So I critique Coates, and I say, okay, this Afro-pessimism stuff in which the racial subjugation of black people is viewed as distinct from class society, and therefore somehow essential to the character of black people and their relationship to white people, which he, they view as this libidinal arrangement

where white people see the black flesh, and they're like, oh, I want to fuck it, and they want to dominate it. Like, what the fuck is this shit? Like, there were no white people see the black flesh and they're like oh i'm gonna fuck it and they want to dominate it like what the fuck is this shit like there were no white people in africa when this slave shit started like what then what i don't mean there were no europeans or anything i mean there were no white people okay like the what is race when did it where did it come from and when like that let's really talk about this and but you know i i cast that aside i say this is whack this pessimism stuff is whack the way coats isates is looking at black people and the question of liberation, this is whack. And it's totally liberal and it's like I'm not fucking with it. But part two and what I'm trying to dig at is that articulation of who are we then?

that articulation of who are we then, you know, like, so in the, so, so Coates is right in saying that Bernie Sanders' redistributive policies will not, in fact, deal with racism, fundamentally, that's true, like, but what I challenge, what I'm, what I'm digging at, or what I'm thinking through is just because a program that he identifies as a class-based remedy, you know, just because that class-based remedy is insufficient does not in fact mean that class struggle itself is invalid. believe that social democracy is insufficient for dealing with this fundamental these fundamental questions of the liberation of women the the the the oppression of black people and because in these in these european countries in which it exists more profoundly the the the the proletariat the the the the the is externalized who who is brought into these places to do this kind of subjugated work you know it's not norwegians why are they so pissed at these migrants you know like who are the migrants what are they doing in these countries you know who are we okay what are the dynamics

here like it's it goes beyond the mere redistributive policy for who gets defined as a citizen or resident. Like what are the dynamics? What's relationally going on here? And that I believe is insufficient for the task at hand in which fascism's on the rise. And they have a clear articulation of who we are. They say national socialism.

And they say we are us. are them get the fuck out or die and this shit is for us not you so they look at that white man in the south who had nothing to be proud of before he saw this movie and they say you know what you got to be proud of the subjugation of these barbaric fucking niggers and spics and that's what they say or on the flip side they come in and they say in black communities you know who you got these fucking mexicans coming the reactionaries across the board are working on the move through prisons through streets through where all over the place in government and they know who we are quotation marks but do do we out here talking this shit about you know we're gonna get this policy or that policy and triangulate this way

and it fuck that the people in the street like you said they want something they want to break a rupture not just in the present order of things but in who they get to be and that's what we got to provide that kind of leadership that kind of vision yeah you're absolutely right we have to provide that kind of vision and we have to provide provide it in a way that shows that it's tangible and um like for example like um one of the best parts of the French Revolution is after the Bastille Falls, but before the king, Louis, and Marie Antoinette have run, and they're hiding in their house or whatever, and the people walk like 60 miles.

They're led by women. I can't remember. They walk to the town where they're holed up at and they just invade the king's residence. They just literally they walk in. They said this isn't going to fucking do, you know, like we need bread. We need resources. We need all these other things. And it's because for a brief moment, they can see that a break is possible and that in that all of the things around them have been thrown into question, the legitimacy of everything. And it's interesting that you,

you put, you provide the, you give the example of that white Southerner who saw that movie. And another task of ours is showing, and you talked a little bit about it again in those walter scott article is that um racism actually is materially detrimental to uh white people it's to materially uh in in not just in the case of welfare and all this but also incarceration like earlier you mentioned 60 of white people in prison and like and and you gotta work in a fucking jail what kind of job is

that this shit is trash y'all got four four you said four jails you want to work there hell nah like so like that's how they sell that shit to us though like it's right they're talking about like they're building a goddamn sea world or something like yeah like some sort of amusement part right what is that that's the question yeah that's what i'm saying that's the question so get beyond this anti-racist articulation but get it into that right do you want to is how do you who do you want to be you want to be a corrections officer now keep in keep in mind one of the one of the uh most a disproportionate number i think it's somewhere around 24 or something of all correction or yeah of all correction officers are black

so it ain't just white people doing this right you know like it's a it's this whole it's a it's an economy of us okay and like that's why we put out this prison abolition thing this police and prison abolition which like you know i don't work at jacobin anymore by the way but my former colleagues at jacobin are like oh this is a maximalist demand you know this is this is deranged i knew you were taking some shit for that what you said what did you say you said that you said everybody in prison is a political prisoner and i knew you oh taking some shit for that. What did you say? You said that. You said everybody in prison is a political prisoner, and I knew you. Oh, yeah.

Lee Fong and the boys really took exception to that. I was like, oh, yeah. Listen, when you begin to break down what is prison and what are the narratives and affective, what are the affects in circulation? All right, this is an article that that uh that you know my partner and i have been working on for a while right it's about this this prison abolition thing like what what is the economy of violence and what is what is that

affectively because that's what we need to get into when i'm asking this question of who we are that's both that's partially an affective question because i'm talking about a feeling okay the feeling that provoked marching on the king okay like the feelings were involved in this just as feelings are involved in the they're a cons they are a constitutional force they they make things right like fear okay is the is the ground is the anchor point for the economy of violence in which prisons are and police are are the default social response to the crisis of capitalism in this country and you cannot do even the most tepid of social democratic reforms without confronting head-on social democratic reforms without confronting head-on this issue of police and prison violence okay and so like there's this example that we use in the article that hasn't come out yet but

i'm i told you i got new shit okay new level i'm coming this is very uh we're still working on it but but it's an it's an example that i want to give of like what why this question of who we are is relevant and that you know the affective element is is essential all right and and why it's worth saying the political horizon includes the abolition of police and prisons and that this is not some deranged maximalist shit but it is a it is a necessary component operationalizing who we are in the here and now and if you can't get down with this then how the fuck are you going to be down with the revolution to shift the social terrain that defines everyday reality for the masses of people including yo ass okay so let's get down

and break down what is really going on here affectively so prison break did you see this in alabama again the South. The South. Okay. We need to talk about the South. We need to talk about Kentucky. We need to talk about Alabama. Okay. We need to talk about Texas.

Okay. Anyway, prison break, Alabama, right? Right. Now you think prison break, Alabama, you think it's a bunch of brothers out. Nope. It's a bunch of white boys get out. The shit's real. Okay.

News bulletin, newsflash. Crazy ass inmates on the loose everybody panic okay this is what the this is what the the news says right right right yo tell this is what they say to keep safe okay what you think the cops tell everybody after they say like these these lunatic inmates are their violent criminals are on the loose what you think they say they think you know we're gonna we're gonna occupy every street corner and we are gonna we are okay we will protect you no they don't say that shit you know what they say turn on the back light turn up turn on the porch light that'll keep you safe we'll take care of it what the fuck this is literally the type of shit that you tell a three-year-old to keep the boogeyman away, okay?

This shit is about fear, okay? And they want you to be afraid in order to justify containment and brutality, which is racialized but not exclusively racial, to deal with the criminal because we believe that violence is individualized captured in the in the body of the criminal who only needs to be beaten murdered and locked away in order to and keep the rest of us safe and this logic is the fascist logic because that's exactly i i have this paragraph in there where i'm talking about this is this is what this isn't this is this is this is this is normal and it's fascist it's fascistic because Dylan Roof when you read his manifesto he's talking about segregation as serving de jure segregation as serving a similar function not to keep us safe not just safe from violence but safe from degradation into blackness it's all tied together and like so this fear of

violence which is legitimate no one wants to be violated physically like it's horrible it's legitimate fear yeah but the economy itself is it reproduces itself through this circulation of violence which is in part like physical but also affective through the circulation of fear of violence which is like i said a constitutive force so you get laws like criminal law that's the first thing i really that i really took to heart when i was in law school was how do criminal laws get made this is some bullshit oh man this is some bullshit the way the criminal laws get made some shit happens motherfuckers get scared and they're like oh shit write a fucking law to deal with that

shit don't want that again these mother and they just panic and then the state just creates more containment and brutality to deal because it's the state violence the the the violence of containment and brutality through police and prisons is the same as the nightlight. Because it doesn't fucking work. It has nothing to do with the actual violence. It has to do with the fear of violence and its circulation effectively in our society. in our society. And that's why the question of who we are, are we people that get afraid and rely on the brutality and containment of police to deal with that, with the crisis of capitalism, or are we different? Do we take on this issue of violence, which is localized,

it's intensely local, it's intensely interpersonal. It's not, so you can't, obviously you cannot take on the question of police and prisons in a macro sense only. Clearly, we have to take up the lives of the people, though, that experience violence. Violence is real. Just because the fear of violence is this easily manipulated force

doesn't mean that violence itself doesn't happen. It does. But the left it's quote unquote does not take this up as a subject because the question of who we are who is part of us is so limited in scope so of course like in chicago on the west side on the south side they're not us. They're not who we are. Let's just talk about some disproportional, you know, trickle-down shit for them. They're not us, though.

And that's what I want to challenge, you know. And that's, that, it's not about left and right continuums. Like, this is about who gets to be us and to lead society, ultimately. Just this notion that that is a maximalist demand just doesn't, I don't know. I find it repugnant in a lot of ways, but mostly just on a moral level. It's like we do this program here at the radio station where we take phone calls from family members of, because we're so remote and rural. And we've got a blue million prisons. And we've got a blue million. In our broadcast area.

We've got a lot of prisons in our broadcast area. A lot of the family members of incarcerated people live in places like Richmond and Roanoke and, you know, Hampton Roads, Eastern Virginia. And, you know, hell, we even got people calling from Baltimore and New York. But we take phone calls of people calling in for these prisoners. know just getting to know these people and getting to know the prisoners in turn it's just like just on a on a moral level like that you could just say that like that's a maximalist demand i don't know i think it's totally accurate to say that they're all political prisoners in some way or another because we create the conditions for um for for them to um i don't know, react and to, I don't know, like you said, criminal law and all these other things. It's a political process that puts them there.

Exactly. The fact of their existence there is political. Like it's all, it's quintessentially political. So it's quintessentially political. Yes, there are obviously people who are imprisoned for their political acts or beliefs in an organizing sense. Like they organize in a political way in which the state doesn't like, the ruling class more particularly doesn't like. And so they become imprisoned or murdered or whatever. That's a real phenomenon.

Yes, let's respect that element but we cannot respect that element to the detriment of accuracy as it relates to the overall system itself which is fucking political and it it is necessary for populate for for these these others in quotation marks that are relegated to not at best menial labor labor but mostly like redundant like the number of people between 25 and 54 who are completely outside the workforce that that those people are at record numbers okay those are that is the working age 25 to 54 we have record numbers of people in that block out of work record numbers all what was that report that came out that said 94 of the jobs created in the last 10 years this this fucking temporary shit totally precarious and insecure types of jobs that provide

no meaningful basis for life 94 of these jobs of the jobs created are that working at the gap like i used to okay like that's the reality right so are they us that's the question right are we designing so if you say that's a maximalist demand and then you say oh let's not compare this to ending slavery you know what was the maximalist thing underpinnings the the abolition movement in slavery all these motherfuckers are human. I am a human being is a maximalist position, the ultimate maximalist position. Even today, these people are human beings locked away for the perpetuation of capitalism and necessarily so.

And who are we going to be in relation to the everyday motion of capitalist crisis today are we going to be people that say it's okay they're not us or are we going to say i am them we are in this and that's the struggle that's what heather hayer did i don't give a fuck about this. Like, what the? Did she do this? Well, I don't know. How does she feel about linen?

What? Real talk, Heather Heyer, this high school grad who, like I said, didn't go to college. You know, this white woman. When she was working at that law firm, I interviewed a guy who was a heroin addict who went into her, like she had a relationship with this nonprofit. And he went in to meet with her to help him be able to sort out his life financially so that he could stay in an apartment, able to sort out his life financially so that he could stay in an apartment which allowed him to kick that kick heroin which he then became a drug counselor helping other homeless people get off the streets and get off drugs and find stable stable living situations that's who heather hayer

was she didn't get out there in the streets by accident okay you know and there's a whole force of people out here that want to be that want to be who they can be who they feel they want to be who how they feel about this they feel something is wrong you're people listening to this show feel that something is wrong and we're talking about shit that nobody else is talking about really so i'm listening to you talking about you getting calls from people that families of that shit is tight as fuck like prison's not tight but the fact that like you're getting these calls that this is part of the we for you right that this is how you're this affects how you're thinking politically that is significant

that is the choice that we want to pose that's the the that is that is the the the that that is the leadership political leadership that we want to cultivate and develop and that in circles that that is about fundamentally the question of who gets to be us the nazis got a clear answer do we i don't think so and like that's the problem because we keep arguing in the context of fascist versus fucking liberals and we haven't actually put down raise the banner for us for a true not fuck maximalism i'm talking universal how you gonna be talking about universal demands and you say fuck maximalist demands how your universal class based shit and you saying oh that's just maximalist what the fuck the shit is called

universe that's the core that's the core word and the shit universe universal what you're talking about pretty maximalist to me straight backs b what you talking about so like that really goes into the question of the particularities because what i've been saying in the criticism of coats is that what i'm saying is the particular the particularity of racism has to be unified with the university you got to unify the particular and universal so if you break down what are the particularities what is the line that they're really drawing when they're saying that prison is okay? Basically, who are they saying is not us? Yeah.

Okay. And like how, and is that affirming what's happening now? Or is it subverting it? Is it creating a rupture for people to articulate a new type of being or not? And I think like that's why I said like I might be critical of Sanders, but Sanders allowed a new articulation of being for people. One of the people on the praxis slate that I ran with is Bernie Kratz, you know, ran with for the for those of the Democratic Socialists of America. I'm on the National Political Committee. I ran with a slate called Praxis. We pulled in people from Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alaska. I was living in Chicago.

Ravi was living in New York. But the person from Tennessee, Allie, she came through. She was a delegate for Bernie Sanders at the convention. She's so tight, y'all. She lived in the South for forever, right? She lives in Knoxville. And so, you know, what I'm calling for isn't an ultra-leftism, right? I'm not saying, like, I'm not saying, no, it's not ultra-leftism. What I'm saying is call to question the relevant contradictions. So that is not a call for Puritanism. Instead, it's a call to relationship. It's a call to leadership. It's a call to recognizing the crisis of our era.

And that means that you look at someone like Allie, who lives in Tennessee. Yeah, she's in the Democratic Party. Allie also did a solidarity circle for 20 straight weeks uh in solidarity with the dakota access pipeline protests and you know standing rock and stuff and part of part of what they did during that was they walked over 10 miles to every single sun trust bank in knoxville demanding that people divest from sun trust bank Bank because it was invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Yeah, I fucks with that. Okay, like this is, so in the context of Tennessee, she exists, like she's in this,

she's dealing with those contradictions and developing leadership. And it is our duty not to judge and discard people for, oh, I don't believe in the democratic right. What? Fuck you. No, our task here is to collectively articulate who is us in a way that answers the relevant political question of what kind of society do we want

and who gets to lead it and you can't do that without creating political subjects that can rise to the occasion and if you're constantly triangulating talking about oh this is a popular idea and therefore that's the only thing we can ever do like the shit that really moves shit is not fucking popular okay when you're talking about the masses you're not it's not a popularity contest talking about power okay and like power is not donald trump is not popular that motherfucker could murk out any one of us and still order some fried chicken and be chilling cutting it with a knife and a fork on the white house plane okay on air force one he could still do that shit kill any of us okay he wouldn't be popular but he could do it so what is what are we really talking about here the civil rights movement these

people weren't popular they weren't even popular with black people okay black people like these motherfuckers are crazy some Some of them, you know, you create a critical mass. And you have to have principle and you have to exercise political leadership in times of crisis. And we are in a crisis. And that's what y'all recognize.

And you're providing, yo, I'm gonna stop preaching real quick. I know that y'all ain't about preaching in this context, but I can't help it. Okay, my daddy was a preacher. My daddy's daddy was was a preacher my daddy's daddy's daddy was a preacher i cannot fucking stop okay but i wanna i will preach the gospel of trill billies to the day i fucking die i swear to god because i swear on everything what y'all are doing is that.

Creating those communicative practices that provoke new subjectivities for people that create a sense of pride. Like what I mean by that is like I went to this convention in Pennsylvania. This organization called Put People First, which is a base building organization out there in Pennsylvania, right? They don't have their convention in Philadelphia. They don't have their convention in Pittsburgh.adelphia they don't have their convention in pittsburgh they have their convention in somerset it's it's like almost two hours outside of pittsburgh all right they bring these people from johnstown where apparently they film slap shot it's in this they're they're from this town called johnstown right the convention starts out with these people from Johnstown talking about the history of their town.

They talk about all the floods that came through that destroyed the place over and over again. They talk about the fact that Slapshot apparently was filmed there. Okay? But they get an opportunity in this context with their peers to talk with pride about where they're from these white people from rural pennsylvania and the convention is there that brings all these people across this division of rural and urban to organize together in that space and they get to be proud

that shit means something and i'm saying that when you take up this this subjectivity the trill billy okay whatever the fuck okay and you speak to these people and you provoke a sense of pride not just in self but in a collective articulation of struggle for a for a bigger us, for a transformative us. That means something. Because you're calling, you're trying to call white people to actually be,

to choose. Like John Brown chose. What makes you a settler isn't the condition itself. It's what you do. And so, that shit's important. You motherfuckers take that shit seriously. I love it. It's important.

I'm swelling with pride all of a sudden. Yeah, we're just about to quit. Yeah, have you on more often, RL, because yeah. You do it across the divisions y'all y'all like how you're talking you're you're integrated like it it's a different reality that you're that you're creating this shit is important that's how we get more heather hayers man i'm serious and it's our task now as a as a dsa i believe. Because people say it's super white. Not gonna lie.

This organization is incredibly white, right? But the way that that's articulated right now on the left is that it invalidates something. But rather what I'm saying is what we have to do is create political leadership across divisions and find ways to build to build for the future and not just be locked into a re-articulation of the past and present in particular but to move to say like okay who are we now going forward and that's that's the key task that's the key question what choices are people

going to make to reconstitute this political reality? Because the Nazis done shows. So what y'all going to do? I'm happy. I'm ecstatic that, you know, 80, 89 percent of 30,000 people, white people are out here saying I want to be part of a new society. It's good. You know, and y'all are helping to anchor that culturally and i think that um in a really interesting way and i just want to i want to just give you know show show some love to that well um you contribute to it obviously by being a guest on our show as well so we appreciate your time uh you know i i hope uh I hope we can do it again soon. Yo, call me in next time to, like, talk about the fact that Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak, though, is the best Kanye album. Let me end with that.

Fuck anybody who says anything different. Fuck all this weed shit. It's all Kanye, son. That is an unpopular opinion that we both share. No lie. I agree. I agree. Well, RL, we appreciate it.

Have a great time in New York while you're there. And safe travels back to Texas. I was born in Texas. I went to school at UT. So it's partially my homeland as well. I'm going to have to call you up. I'm going to have to call you up and be like, I don't know what's going on here.

Give me a history lesson. What's what's good yeah feel free to anytime all right well we'll talk and you can follow uh find rl uh on twitter rl is dead and look out for his writings and other things thanks again all right peace thanks bro